San Francisco Ballet’s World Premiere Eugene Onegin
 by Yury Possokhov: Cold Rush

Renate Stendhal

A new story ballet is a double challenge when a celebrated version already exists in the repertoire: John Cranko’s Onegin (1965) which was performed here to great acclaim ten years ago. The choreographer of the new Eugene Onegin, Yuri Possokhov, is a former Bolshoi-trained dancer and the stalwart Choreographer in Residence at SF Ballet, where he created a number of noteworthy works. My reviews of his superb 2015 Swimmer as well as his recent version of Anna Karenin (co-commissioned by the Joffrey Ballet like Eugene Onegin) can be found in this archive. While Cranko used music by Tchaikovsky, Possokhov used a new score by his long-time friend and collaborator Ilya Demutsky.

I am familiar with Pushkin’s verse novel both in the rhymed and  the literal translation by Vladimir Nabokov, and I watched the opera by Tchaikovsky many times. What would be new and surprising in Yuri Possokhov’s new version of the story? It’s the story of two mismatched couples: the shy, bookish, dreamy Tatiana and the worldly, disillusioned Onegin on the one hand, and  her light-hearted, flighty sister Olga with Onegin’s only friend, the sensitive poet Lensky. Tatiana falls in love with Onegin, writes him a passionate love letter and promptly gets her heart broken by his haughty, humiliating rejection. Lensky, who loves Olga more than she loves him, is wounded to the core when Olga lets Onegin seductively flirt with her at a ball given for Tatiana at their country estate. In their dispute and ensuing duel Onegin kills his friend and ruins Olga’s reputation. Several years later, after haunted travels  abroad, Onegin returns to Russia and finds a transformed Tatiana at an emperial ball. Married to a much older prince, she is now a shining presence at court. Onegin, instantly smitten, pursues her desperately and in vain.

In this brief story line, you can glean the amount of passionate turmoil, pain and tragedy in Pushkin’s story– but not much of it transpires in Possokhov’s ballet.

His two-hour-fifteen-minute-piece is beautifully staged
(Tom Pye) and costumed (Tim Yip). He presents the two couples in stark, simplistic strokes. At the country estate, the charming puppy love between Lensky and Olga– well danced by a charismatic Esteban Hernandez and exuberant new Principal Madeline Woo – reveals no shadow. Onegin is danced by another new Principal, Francesco Gabriel Frola, with cold detachment. He toys with Tatiana, a graceful Sasha De Sola, and takes quite liberal possession of the inexperienced girl. The bold, complicated lifts Possokhov is known for, are dramatically enhanced throughout the ballet by the gorgeous flowing skirts by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon designer Tim Yip. The choreography of this first encounter is stirring and the execution flawless, but Frola’s Onegin is not given the Byron-appeal, the refinement and world -weary yearning that would make him irresistible to any romantic woman.

Possokhov skips the letter scene (in Cranko’s version a tender fantasy of a girl’s dance with her dream lover) and makes up for it by allowing Tatiana to passionately cling to Onegin. This is over the top and entirely out of character, but I found it interesting as it expresses an almost brutal sexual awakening that would mark her forever. De Sola throws herself into the moves with conviction and she has a touching moment at the end, when she raises her arms to hide her face, her devastation.

Something odd happens next. In the following three major scenes after intermission, the tempo radically speeds up as if Possokhov ran out of time for the rest of the story. He storms through the dramatic development as though marking off a bare-bone plot. There is no time for Lensky’s heartache and humiliation over his faithless butterfly Olga. There is no clue how shattered Tatiana is by this new cruelty of Onegin. No clue that Onegin willfully provokes Lensky because he is bored by the provincial society and that he acts out his anger at his friend who dragged him there . One quick waltz with Olga – neither sexy nor seductive--and bam!, a duel!

There is no time to feel much for the charismatic Lensky of Esteban Hernandez in his brief solo before the pistols come out.

This is one of the most poignant moments in the opera: the doubt and pain Tchaikovsky gives to Lensky in the aria that sums up his  brief life “Where have you gone, oh golden days of youth?” In Cranko’s version, set to a different Tchaikovsky orchestration, Olga and Tatiana both rush in to hold Lensky back in the last minute, begging him to forgive his friend. But of course, contemporary composer Demutsky is not Tchaikovsky. Possokhov has the good sense to  show how both friends secretly hesitate before aiming at each other, but it all ends in cold detachment: Onegin shoots, kills his friend, and walks away without a glance.

The many shortcuts in Possokhov’s rushed narration are particularly puzzling as he takes plenty of time to add material that is not essential to the story. He intercuts the major scenes by abstract group dances representing the seasons. These interludes, accompanied by Pushkin verses written on the scrim, seemed distractions from the emotional drama. There is also an added dream for Tatiana after the duel: a surreal nightmare of people with animal heads gallivanting through her bedroom. Onegin – as a bear --  threatens her with a knife as if Dr. Freud had come by on an unexpected visit to tell us about dangerous repressed desires.

While Cranko alludes to Onegin’s desolate life abroad (after the duel) by letting numerous lovers float through his arms like shadows, Possokhov give his Onegin a brief solo of twisted turns before his return -- not enough to indicate a disenchanted man coming home lost and empty-handed.

Even less psychologically astute is his courtly ballroom scene with Tatiana as the queen of the ball. She is conspicuous in the only red dress (a strangely uninspired dress) all smiles with a young looking, handsome husband (Myles Thatcher), also all smiles. Wasting time with banal court dance and generic pas de deux, Possokhov then rushes through the dramatic tension. Tatiana, instead of being profoundly shaken when she suddenly faces Onegin again, is shocked for only one second before going on with her happy marriage demonstration, not giving Onegin a single troubled glance while he stands and stares.

Then, a last fatal short-cut. In the final scene, Possokhov creates the impression that Tatiana seeks out Onegin, right at the ball, in the next room. This leaves out the dramatic role reversal, Onegin’s desperate pursuit of her with letters she does not answer. Yes, Possokhov’s Onegin pleads, pursues, grasps her, and Tatiana fleetingly responds, confesses her own passion. It’s a fine pas de deux with finely marked hesitations by De Sola. There are again marvelous lifts when Onegin throws her up and wraps her around his body, but there is not enough emotional weight built up through the narrative to feel that two lives, honor and integrity are at risk in the struggle. Suddenly, almost without a climax, she  turns her back on him and walks out through the ballroom door.

Considering the detached, muted impact of the ballet, I felt that this time, Possokhov was not well served by the score. Demutsky’s neo-classical, often dissonant orchestration was danceable, but rarely rousing and certainly neither romantic nor tragic. Touches of poetry came from the sets of Tom Pye: a raven flying off a naked branch, a bleak carriage turning and returning for Onegin, and desolate snow at the end.

In an interview, Possokhov said how much he admired Cranko’s masterpiece, having danced the role of Lensky himself.” But my Onegin is a different Onegin,“ he said. I am still wondering what he meant.

Photos: Lindsey Rallo