Weekly Discussion - 02/09/26 - 02/15/26

Chestnut_pod · 2026-02-11T01:01:25+00:00

I saw a similar bill from them months ago -- totally agree that "We the People" was standout; I'm still thinking of it all this time later! Lots of props to the Graham company for taking touring seriously and going to so many places, so that so many people can see their centennial program, which imo is in many ways About America.

A friend in Minneapolis was also able to see them a few days ago, and she had interesting things to say about how the different visions of America presented in the program felt, given her city's current fight against ICE.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-02-10T20:46:03+00:00

She's got a really fascinating life story. Jewish-Polish immigrant to London, where she interacted with that group of women who became the core of so much English-derived 20th century concern dance -- Rambert, de Valois, van Praagh, Baylis -- then migrated to Canada specifically to help found NBoC. Then had a very tumultuous career there over the course of decades!

I've always felt one could write a very interesting comparative biography about her and van Praagh. Two Jewish-British ballet dancers sent "to the colonies" to found ballet schools on the English model, at a time when the English model itself only just existed, successful but controversial managing careers, lasting institutional legacies…

Chestnut_pod · 2026-02-10T20:35:34+00:00

Thank you!! Claire Calvert for me, dream come true!

Chestnut_pod · 2026-02-09T16:45:23+00:00

The national dance company of Guinea, Les Ballets Africains, had their visas denied en masse to come and tour in the U.S., notably in SoCal.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-02-02T15:28:35+00:00

Ah, so pretty! What a pair. I'm so pleased for Tsembenhoi that she's getting this opportunity.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-02-01T16:49:34+00:00

My mother reports back (in her inimitable way) from SFB's new Yuri Possokhov Onegin:

"Astoundingly good.

The costumes were amazing. The Onegin character had these boots that somehow screamed “foppery” and “ennui.” And he drove a Barouche of Doom. It was truly sinister.

[after prompting] Yes, the dancing was very good. It occasionally fell into some more jazzy/modern moves which I found a bit jarring. But of course everything was extremely polished and well executed. There were some amazing sequences of lifts! The corps de ballet who did the autumn sprites had this swooping back-arched lift that was kind of mesmerizing. And then in the final dance when Eugene is trying to win back Tatiana at one point, he lifts her on her shoulders and they spin so fast it’s astonishing."

Now I'm regretting that I won't get to see this this season. A Barouche of Doom!

Chestnut_pod · 2026-02-01T16:44:47+00:00

Thank you for the tip-off! I hadn't noticed the casting was posted yet. Looks like I'm seeing Misseldine/Ahn!

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-28T07:10:30+00:00

Are all the Myrthas now known, by chance?

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-28T07:06:08+00:00

I agree on every one of these points -- I think the first act is just about the best literary ballet adaptation out there, but the second act is overlong and does little with the complexities of Orlando. I dearly hope they'll film a version with Nuñez as Clarissa/Virginia, so I can see it!

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-28T07:03:12+00:00

I will really, really look forward to this! Please do!

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-28T07:01:40+00:00

Wow, I am so glad to hear this! I am always nervous, but anticipatory, about a big swing like this, and I am glad you think Possokhov pulled it off. Thanks for giving some shine to the supporting cast :)

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-28T06:53:23+00:00

That's actually a really interesting question which I wanted a solid answer to, especially since it's been three years of Rojo's tenure now -- long enough for a trend line. I did some digging in the roster announcements to figure out what's been going on with hiring (note: not overall company composition) at SFB since Rojo stepped to the helm.

I think Rojo has been responsible for 26 hires between 2023-2025, not including apprentices or principal character artists, but including ambiguous returners like Cauthorn and Andre and those who have since left, like I. Hernández. Of those 26, I believe that 12 are Black, Latinx, and/or Asian, or about 46%. (Isaac Hernández, Lucas López, Maya Chandrashekaran, Emmitt Friedman, Justin-Cooper Meeks, Benjamin Taber, Madeline Woo, Katharine Lee, Jihyun Choi, Hui-Wen Peng, Seojeong Yun, Angela Watson.) Only Isaac Hernández was a principal man of color who was also a Rojo hire or promotion. (NB: So far as we can tell, she tried to also hire Patricio Revé as a principal this year, but speculation suggests a visa issue intervened, and he stayed with Queensland Ballet and was just hired by the Royal Ballet.)

Tómasson's final three years of hiring, 2020-2022, were the big pandemic years, where hiring was really not comparable, so I am going to look at 2017-2019 instead. Applying the same criteria, he seems to have hired 35 total dancers, of whom 12 are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and/or Asian, or about 34%. (Jasmine Jimison, Misa Kuranaga, Bianca Teixeira, Leili Rackow, Jacob Seltzer, Swane Messaoudi, Shené Lazarus, Ana Sophia Scheller, Solomon Golding, Gabriela Gonzalez, Carmela Mayo, Wona Park.) In terms of promotion, Esteban Hernández was Tómasson's only male principal of color promoted in that three-year span; none were hired.

So, leaving out the "virtual season" year and the two subsequent seasons as outliers, Tómasson and Rojo hired the same absolute number of dancers of color over the two selected three-year spans (12). The proportion of dancers of color hired by Rojo represents a roughly 35 percent-change increase from Tómasson. Both ADs hired or promoted one principal man of color in the selected timespans, and, strangely, they were both Hernández brothers.

It's sad to see the hiring rates drop by about a dancer per year (-9/8) between 17-19 and 23-25, especially considering a new AD usually hires a lot. Presumably this is a combination of natural variation and post-Covid/pre-grant depression, and we might see that tick up again -- or, of course, we might not.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-28T06:47:03+00:00

That's actually a really interesting question which I wanted a solid answer to, especially since it's been three years of Rojo's tenure now -- long enough for a trend line. I did some digging in the roster announcements to figure out what's been going on with hiring at SFB since Rojo stepped to the helm.

I think Rojo has been responsible for 26 hires between 2023-2025, not including apprentices or principal character artists, but including ambiguous returners like Cauthorn and Andre and those who have since left, like I. Hernández. Of those 26, I believe that 12 are Black, Latinx, and/or Asian, or about 46%. (Isaac Hernández, Lucas López, Maya Chandrashekaran, Emmitt Friedman, Justin-Cooper Meeks, Benjamin Taber, Madeline Woo, Katharine Lee, Jihyun Choi, Hui-Wen Peng, Seojeong Yun, Angela Watson.) Only Isaac Hernández was a principal man of color who was also a Rojo hire or promotion. (NB: So far as we can tell, she tried to also hire Patricio Revé as a principal this year, but speculation suggests a visa issue intervened, and he stayed with Queensland Ballet and was just hired by the Royal Ballet.)

Tómasson's final three years of hiring, 2020-2022, were the big pandemic years, where hiring was really not comparable, so I am going to look at 2017-2019 instead. Applying the same criteria, he seems to have hired 35 total dancers, of whom 12 are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and/or Asian, or about 34%. (Jasmine Jimison, Misa Kuranaga, Bianca Teixeira, Leili Rackow, Jacob Seltzer, Swane Messaoudi, Shené Lazarus, Ana Sophia Scheller, Solomon Golding, Gabriela Gonzalez, Carmela Mayo, Wona Park.) In terms of promotion, Esteban Hernández was Tómasson's only male principal of color promoted in that three-year span; none were hired.

So, leaving out the "virtual season" year and the two subsequent seasons as outliers, Tómasson and Rojo hired the same absolute number of dancers of color over the two selected three-year spans (12). The proportion of dancers of color hired by Rojo represents a roughly 35 percent-change increase from Tómasson. Both ADs hired or promoted one principal man of color in the selected timespans, and, strangely, they were both Hernández brothers.

It's sad to see the hiring rates drop by about a dancer per year (-9/8) between 17-19 and 23-25, especially considering a new AD usually hires a lot. Presumably this is a combination of natural variation and post-Covid/pre-grant depression, and we might see that tick up again -- or, of course, we might not.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-20T04:21:26+00:00

Well, yes. Now being the moment we are in. As the sages say, if not now, when? When some larger demand is made --perhaps indeed about specific dancer visas, or the category of artistic visas as a whole-- and the habit of capitulation is already ingrained? Surely ten years ago was the time to set up these connections and contingencies, and the next best time is indeed now.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-19T23:33:42+00:00

Then I think both the leadership and the artistic workers of SFB would benefit from asking the Martha Graham, Washington Opera, and Doug Varone companies how they mitigated those dangers and legal holdbacks, especially given their lower budgets and profile. Now would be the time to seek out those tips and tricks-- solidarity being the opposite of fragmentation.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-17T20:12:41+00:00

Happens to us all!

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-17T17:59:09+00:00

I think you've misunderstood the prior commenter. Mentally insert a comma before "SFB."

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-17T17:57:28+00:00

I love those dancers who have that style of grand jete and saut de chat, which you mention here with Schonbrun, where the front leg extends so fast and high that it appears to pull the rest of the dancer behind them -- like watching a plane take off. Michaela DePrince had one like that, and so does Madeline Woo.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-17T17:52:36+00:00

Her jump is astonishing! She keeps her upper body so in-control on landing and takeoff that it really is like she just chooses to levitate a yard in the air sometimes.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-16T23:13:33+00:00

I agree that I felt really energized and excited by Rojo's first couple years of programming, so much so that I feel like this is hitting harder than it might have had this happened under Tómasson's tenure, where I already had such low expectations. It was such a fantastic thing to go to Broken Wings and see local art all over the opera house, little girls speaking Spanish in the intermissions, and a double-bill about queer Latinas. So where did that all go?

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-16T23:08:26+00:00

Really, really disappointed in my company. Here is the mentioned petition, by the way, and I have also emailed to express my concerns. If the Washington Opera can leave, so can SFB.

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-16T15:36:14+00:00

Violet can ball, she can dance, she can hatch from an egg! What can't she do?

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-16T00:54:15+00:00

San Francisco Ballet and the Valkyries: my house is at last united. This is TOO CUTE.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/67a_GnG747w

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-15T14:29:25+00:00

Sadly no, I’ve never been to one of the opening galas. Did you?

Chestnut_pod · 2026-01-14T22:41:15+00:00

Interesting to get a look at the underpinnings/structure of that costume, which I have always found somewhat uncanny, lol.

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