San Francisco Ballet 2019 Program 7, The Little Mermaid
This weekend’s ballet adventure was a performance of The Little Mermaid. This is not your Disney Little Mermaid. This version, choreographed by John Neumeier, more closely resembles the original Hans Christian Andersen fable. The ballet was created in 2005 for the Royal Danish Ballet to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Andersen’s birth, and it was first staged by the San Francisco Ballet in 2010.
The Little Mermaid is considered one of Andersen’s most autobiographical stories due to his well-documented history of unrequited love of both men and women. Neumeier inserts an Andersen-like character in the ballet, in the form of “The Poet.” This is a very successful element of the libretto in as much as it clarifies the way in which the little mermaid and the sea witch represent different aspects of the poet’s inner emotional landscape.
The story begins with the poet aboard a ship, remembering when the object of his love, Edvard married Henriette. A single tear falls into the ocean, serving as the catalyst to ignite the story of the little mermaid in his imagination. The poet spends most of the production on stage, sometimes mirroring, other times seeming to direct the actions of the little mermaid.
Ok, now let’s talk about the production and the dancing.
In addition to the choreography, Neumeier also created the sets and costumes both of which are innovative and interesting. The way that irregular lines of light (think stage-width florescent light tubes flown in from above) are used to delineate the surface of the water is highly effective. The combination of the light tubes with stage lighting changes were used to great effect to indicate location changes from onboard the ship to under the sea to on land.
The mermaid costumes are very clever. They wear these extra-long, wide-legged, silky pants. The ends of the pants can be manipulated by other performers to create the effect of swimming, but the dancers can move around the stage and dance (carefully). One (three) of my favorite characters were the magic shadows (or as I like to call them, the Dread Pirates Robertses). These three guys partnered the little mermaid when she was enjoying her happy life under the sea. One would lift her and the other two would each manipulate one of the long legs of her flowy pants, it was a fantastic effect. Later, they became the sea witch’s henchmen. They wore black, billowy pants, long-sleeved black shirts, eye masks and black head scarves the whole time, so no matter what their function was, they were the Dread Pirates Robertses to me.
The dancing was very good. Again, this is a ballet with characters (even the background dancers were characters) which suits San Francisco Ballet’s strengths. A couple of crowd scenes on the ship made me think of Sweet Charity. There was an eclectic assortment of characters and everyone had their own little schtick/movement vocabulary. I’m a huge fan of Fosse’s work, so those moments were delightful to me.
Yuan Yuan Tan, our favorite, favorite ballerina was the little mermaid. This role calls for tremendous emotional expression more than virtuosic dancing and she was very effective. She was not just acting with her facial expressions, her hyper-flexible back and lithe figure helped to convey the difference between her happy, carefree life under the sea and her painful (physically and emotionally) life on land.
This was a psychologically deep ballet. All of the elements of the production worked together to tell a complex and nuanced story and I really enjoyed the performance.