Ballet Encounters

Mark Morris Dance Company

Jenn and Spencer

San Francisco Ballet

Caprice

New York City Ballet

Rubies

 New York City Ballet

A Month in the Country

New York City Ballet

Coppélia

New York City Ballet

Le Tombeau de Couperin

New York City Ballet

Soirée Musicale

New York City Ballet

Acheron

San Francisco Ballet

Hummingbird

These are the ballet stills that brought me most satisfaction during a recent long session looking at new shots of old vehicles and new shots of new vehicles,.

Yuan Yuan Tan

San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Yuan Yuan Tan frequently makes guest appearances with Asian ballet companies during breaks in the San Francisco schedule. Back in 2008 she fulfilled such an engagement for a series of performances in Hong Kong. During that visit, the Hong Kong Tatler arranged to interview Tan and induced her to pose for fashion photographer Sean Davies with styling by Tina Leung. The resulting magazine spread only became available on the internet fairly recently. I can say this with confidence, since I regularly check for new images of this dancer and would certainly have discovered these fascinating photos sooner if they had been out there to find.

Erik Tomasson took the following pictures of Yuan Yuan Tan in performance with San Francisco Ballet. Since these also are fresh discoveries for me, I suspect they also were released recently.

Edwaard Liang's Symphonic Dances – Yuan Yuan Tan and Luke Ingham

Edwaard Liang's Symphonic Dances – Yuan Yuan Tan and Vito Mazzeo

Christopher Wheeldon's Ghosts – Garen Scribner, Yuan Yuan Tan, Damian Smith

Edwaard Liang's Finding Light – Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith

Yuri Posokhov's RAkU – Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith

Yuri Possokhov's Magrittomania – Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith

SF Ballet

The pictures above were taken by Erik Tomasson during the 2012 season of San Francisco Ballet. The pictures below are recent publicity shots by Erik Tomasson to promote the company's upcoming London tour. Yuan Yuan Tan with Helgi Tomasson in photo immediately below.

YYT

This blog's long-time official favorite San Francisco Ballet star Yuan Yuan Tan poses for Gap's fall ad campaign, which I spotted for the first time on a Market Street kiosk this afternoon. Icon Redefined will spread billboards and glossy magazine pages across the land with "an eclectic mix of musicians and dancers" wearing updated "signature pieces" like this plain white shirt – which certainly never looked better. 

Big Picture Wall

Intended to make a quick stop in the office at the library on Saturday, but then could not help noticing how vivid the long-established-yet-ever-changing wall of photos and postcards suddenly looked. This was because all the artificial lights were off. There was only the daylight (diffused and pale) filling the large north-facing windows. I allowed myself to get sidetracked for a while taking pictures of my pictures.














The oldest layer of images (now mostly obscured under later ones) were pinned up about ten years ago when my occupation of this particular space began. Over time, quite unsystematically, bits have slowly been added or removed according to whim. Then 17 months ago things changed. Mabel Watson Payne began remorselessly to colonize this wall in exactly the same way she now dominates this site. As was inevitable, considering that my granddaughter plainly possesses a sort of absolute force majeure.

Mermaid

San Francisco Ballet closed the 2011 season earlier this month with a revival of John Neumeier's full-length Little Mermaid. The ballet premiered here last season (when I used many superlatives here and here). Yuan Yuan Tan dance the role again this year – all the better, as several said – and was filmed during the run for Great Performances on PBS.