By Octavio Roca
30 March 2000

And now for something completely different: San Francisco Ballet is in the midst of six world premieres, by as many young choreographers, on the heels of several productions of tried-and-true masterpieces this season. The first three ballets in this voyage of discovery premiered Tuesday night, with three more to follow tonight at the War Memorial Opera House.

A lot could be said about the riskiness of the venture, but there is one indisputable success among the results so far. The company is throwing itself heart and soul into these new works, and the dancing was uniformly splendid. It would be difficult to imagine better conditions for creating new dance than the spirited spectacle on view opening night.

``Impetuous'' by Vladimir Anguelov, set to the Philip Glass Violin Concerto, was followed by Christopher Wheeldon's dance setting of Edward Elgar's ``Sea Pictures.'' David Palmer's ``Concerto Romantique,'' to Max Bruch's Violin Concerto, brought the program to a close.

In a heroic performance, Roy Malan was the violin soloist in both the Anguelov and Palmer ballets. His performance of the Glass concerto in particular, with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra in resplendent form under the direction of Scott Speck, alone would be worth a trip to the Opera House.

Anguelov's ballet was the most exciting and also the most interesting. The interest lies partly in its being steeped in a sensibility we don't often get to enjoy: His is a classical language with the sort of modern varnish familiar from pre- glasnost Soviet ballets, especially from St. Petersburg. But the temptation to lump ``Impetuous'' with such ballets as Oleg Vinogradov's ``Knight of the Tiger Skin'' and such must be tempered by the dazzling flashes of originality in Anguelov's ballet.

It has a plot of sorts, as well as a strong emotional subtext. The all- male cast, headed Stephen Legate and Parrish Maynard, creates a dialectic of youth and old age against a background of considerable sculptural beauty.

With triumphant stag leaps and turns, through rambunctious ensembles that display the grace of wild horses at play, a tender relationship emerged as Legate lifted, guided and eventually let go of Maynard. The two were luminous, a result of Kevin Connaughton's lighting as much as Anguelov's moves. Maynard was anxious, wiry in his physical portrayal of the longings of youth. Legate was a vision of the melancholy serenity that can only come with a lifetime of experience.

The rest of the cast, many of whom shone as well in the other ballets, consisted of Peter Brandenhoff, Gonzalo Garcia, Steven Norman, Sergio Torrado, Kester Cotton, Jeffrey Golladay, Ikolo Griffin, Pablo Piantino, Mikhail Plain and Erik Wagner. Each was used sensitively, and together they moved with an equine elegance seldom seen outside the Spanish Riding School.

Sandra Woodall's scenic design, a vast backdrop suggesting the vastness of an open meadow, was beautiful. Speck's conducting was masterly, magical in its balance of purely musical and dance values.

Wheeldon has never seen Antony Tudor's ``Dark Elegies,'' but it was impossible not to think of that great ballet while watching the decidedly less impressive ``Sea Pictures.'' The new ballet, like the old, has a fishing village struck by tragedy, in this case one young fisherman among many who will not be returning home after a storm.

There is real promise here, and there were moments of great beauty on Tuesday: group scenes with communal feeling, gorgeous duets redolent of Kenneth MacMillan, even an evocative set cobbled from the com pany's ``Swan Lake'' and projected photos by John Lowings. Julie Diana and Damian Smith, even in Holly Hines' dowdy costumes, looked ravishing. So did Joanna Berman and Yuri Possokhov, each dancing splendidly to Emil de Cou's conducting.

Yet Wheeldon's dance betrayed them. There was no change in the choreography's emotional pitch from joyous sendoff to tragic finale, and in the end the result was probably the last thing the choreographer intended: a pretty, abstract ballet.

That was what Palmer's ballet turned out to be as well, except his ``Concerto Romantique'' was unspeakably dull. The less said the better, save to note that this is the sort of decorative, busy but empty choreography that makes ``Handel: A Celebration'' look like a masterpiece. Julie Diana and Vadim Solomakha, Rachel Rufer and Chidozie Nzerem and especially Lucia Lacarra and Cyril Pierre danced as if this were worth more. But it looked like hard work, and it did not seem worth the time.