One of the most tantalizing films I’ve ever seen is The Swimmer, a surreal masterpiece from 1968 based on a John Cheever short story. It stars a middle-aged but still very buff and tan Burt Lancaster as a man who impulsively decides to swim home from a suburban summer garden party at a friend’s house by traversing all the many pools that lie between other people’s backyards and his own. As the afternoon unfolds, the bright, jovial atmosphere becomes broodingly autumnal, until our hero, exhausted in his Speedos after a series of unfortunate encounters and mishaps, finally arrives at his empty, derelict home.
Cheever’s chilly narrative, reimagined as a 41-minute ballet by company stalwart Yuri Possokhov, is the centerpiece of Sensorium, a splashy soiree of dance, music, food and booze organized by the San Francisco Ballet (SF Ballet) as a way to reel the millennial crowd into the War Memorial Opera House. The event did well last year, so it’s back again for a second iteration on Wednesday, Mar. 23.
The choice of Possokhov’s Swimmer for this event makes sense: Of all the pieces in SF Ballet’s recent history, it’s likely to be one of the most impressive to a young, tech-savvy crowd. Waves of Tom Waits music and immersive video depicting mid-century scenes of suburban Americana sweep the dance along.
The other ballet on the program, William Forsythe’s Pas/Parts, an energetic work from 1999 comprising of 21 short odes to different styles from classical to jazz, has a new twist on it too: The art-tech-company Teleport Labs is bringing a virtual reality (VR) component to the experience.
As Artist James Buckhouse, who’s hosting Sensorium, writes in a blog post, the members of Teleport used motion capture equipment to digitize sections of Pas/Parts in SF Ballet’s rehearsal studios. “They then created a stylized rendering of the dancers that evokes both the history of art (line drawings, architectural renderings) as well as the history of dance (traditional ballet vocabulary expanded through William Forsythe’s and Yuri Possokhov’s contemporary choreography),” Buckhouse writes. “The results invite people to see ballet from a new perspective.” Buckhouse also says that this VR experience “doesn’t require glasses or headgear and can be experienced as a group.”
Beyond the proscenium, Sensorium gives audiences the chance to experience various pop-up events. These aren’t the usual thing. There’s a pair of massive 30-foot-long crashing wave video projections that you can actually walk through because the video is projected onto “theatrical string” like a 70s-style beaded curtain. Also, fashion designer Lan Jaenicke is setting up a “mini-atelier” in the lobby of the opera house where she and her team plan to create instant couture gowns tailor-made for a few lucky audience members…out of bed sheets.
Here’s what I’m most excited about: Professionals from the company are joining audience members on the dance floor after the main performance. After all, it’s not every day you get to boogie on down with ballet stars like Yuan Yuan Tan and Joan Boada.
The San Francisco Ballet presents Sensorium on Wednesday, Mar. 23 at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. Head here for more information.