Joyous ‘Seven Sonatas’ enhances SF Ballet repertoire

Another wonderful piece enhanced the San Francisco Ballet repertoire Tuesday evening, April 5, at the War Memorial Opera House.

[...] although the circumstances of its presentation were less than ideal, Alexei Ratmansky’s “Seven Sonatas” is an utter joy, a chamber work for six dancers that adapts handily to the War Memorial cavern and easily transcends the piano-ballet format.

The work, the second that the Russian choreographer made (in 2009) as artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre, does not much resemble the Ratmansky ballets we have already seen at the Ballet, those that probe the cultural history of the choreographer’s homeland.

The closest to the piece is perhaps “Russian Seasons,” in which intimately scaled dances gradually acquire inflections of meaning.

In “Seven Sonatas,” Mungunchimeg Buriad sits at the onstage piano and performs Scarlatti with uncommon elegance, while the cast, clothed in Holly Hynes’ sparkling white costumes, dashes in and proceeds to captivate us for 37 minutes.

The style of movement favors full-bodied lunges; the busy arms seem to pull along the torso, while the sudden freezes establish a unique rhythm.

The sextet sink to their knees, spin without apparent motivation and sometimes roll on the floor.

Yet sandwiched, as it was, between revivals of Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s “Prism” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “Rush,” the effect of the Ratmansky seemed blunted (this is an opening ballet).

Wheeldon’s “Rush” (2003; set to Martinu’s “Sinfonietta La Jolla”) gives us two movements of twitchy corps sequences surrounding an intensely sensual duet, dispatched Tuesday by Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada.