Modern dance
‘Mere Mortals’ changed how I see and experience ballet
Part nightclub show, part contortion act. The provocative spectacle by San Francisco Ballet puts both feet firmly in the modern era.
I wonder what aspiring dancers consider before pursuing a career onstage. In the world of ballet, I bet it is not: “One day I want to zip into a black latex onesie and do the twist for three minutes straight.”
“Mere Mortals” at San Francisco Ballet gave so much sensory input that it feels impossible to convey in words, but I think that’s part of the point. Here is a show I could easily see at Coachella, the Super Bowl, or an OG Lady Gaga music video. It is so much, from provocative costumes to never-ending beats, visuals, and of course very synchronous, bending dance; Not mind-bending per se, but the actual sort of contortion I’ve come to expect from Cirque du Soleil.
Is that praise? I think so. But let me add just in case: The San Francisco Ballet ate. They ate up that stage and left no crumbs. This show was everything, and I’ve punched my culture card so hard the past six months that I almost missed this one. I’m glad everyone insisted I go. Saying “I loved it” feels reductive; This was hands-down the most interesting and provocative night I’ve had at the ballet.
Thursday night marked the return of Mere Mortals, an original work choreographed by Aszure Barton that features costumes by Michelle Jank, composition by Floating Points, and flashy visuals by Hamill Industries — emphasis on flashy. I personally enjoyed the light show, but this production is not for the sensitive consumer. Save for brief pauses, the swirling starscapes, hypnotic flames and morphing rainclouds were pumped into our eyeballs for a straight 66 minutes with no intermission.
The spectacle brings the myth of Pandora into the age of AI, or so the prompt goes. My boyfriend and I arrived once again blissfully ignorant of what lay ahead, except for the broad strokes we read about interpreting technology through dance. Left to our imaginations, we both concluded the 40-person ensemble could have represented electrons or subroutines, moving in unison or in response to a line of code or set of instructions. The relentless techno that set the tone for the opening 30 minutes made me think of the phone tucked under my leg: Was this the silent disco going on inside the circuitry of my AI-enabled device?
Pandora was the first woman on Earth created by the gods. She was given a jar and told not to open it, but she did so anyway and released all the evils into the world. Three characters join her in the ballet’s telling, including Prometheus, who in original mythology steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans. Epimetheus is his brother who acts as a sort of instigator, and Hope, the common moral of the story as the remaining good thing left in the jar after all the miseries escape.
Wei Wang as Hope stood out for me, arriving first onstage from a cloud of smoke with a sort of mercurial movement that set the tone for gender-fluidity we’d see throughout the show. Then Pandora raised the bar on bending in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. But much like Swan Lake earlier this year, many of my favorite parts focused on the ensemble. In Mere Mortals, they raved, they did the twist, and they collapsed into piles of molten black and gold.
Predictably, several critics hated it. The show is so laden with visual and sound elements that distract from dance; It felt inevitable that some would come away feeling like Mere Mortals was just a shiny marketing extravaganza.
Frankly though, I wish those people would stay home with their Werther’s Original candy and Golden Girls reruns. Ballet rose to prominence alongside symphony and opera as innovative means of entertainment for their time. To me it’s absurd that we do not incorporate even more aspects of human development into these time-honored art forms, and my hat’s off to San Francisco Ballet for being so risk-taking and creative. I think if Mere Mortals startled you or made you uncomfortable, that was absolutely its intention.
I did scribble many unexpected notes during my Thursday viewing. When Pandora stood in front of a video of clouds that morph, skip, rewind, and fast forward, I said, “She’s staring at a faulty Betamax recording of creation.” When Wei Wang leapt around a veritable sea of gold bodysuits, I wrote, “Never thought I’d see a shiny dance formation of Oscars trophies.”
After parties are always a win, and I’ve said before that fine arts shine when they serve up not just a show but a whole experience. The lobby of War Memorial Opera House transformed with some simple but effective flashy elements after Mere Mortals, including dancers doing solo routines while holding up bright selfie lights, and a smoke hologram reminiscent of the show’s visuals that spelled out its title.
The lobby felt more alive with young energy than perhaps I’ve ever seen it, reminding me of a very real, trendy arts nightlife crowd we do have in San Francisco despite all the doom-loop naysayers. That so many stuck around just to dance was pure joy to witness and experience.
See Mere Mortals now through April 24th.
Saul Sugarman is editor in chief of The Bold Italic.
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