Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
—Dorothea Lange
”I want the dancers to pop off the page!” says Erik Tomasson in a determined manner. The photographer for the San Francisco Ballet, Erik is the thirty-eight-year-old son of the ballet’s artistic director Helgi Tomasson and wife, Marlene, a former dancer with the Joffrey Ballet. At home in an art that celebrates movement, he stills it (and distills it) with his Canon EOS-IDs Mark 2, rather like a painter capturing a swan in full soar. (Not incidentally, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake will open the company’s 2010 season on Saturday, January 23.)
Helgi Tomasson’s Swan Lake
With a background in film study and cinematography, Erik might appear an anomaly as a still photographer. Yet, as will be evident this month in a retrospective of the artist’s work at San Francisco’s Museum of Performance and Design (from January 12), it’s motion and emotion he intends to record. “For awhile I concentrated on architecture,” he says. “It was like watching paint dry. I sought the dynamic: movement and mood telling a story.”
A study of Erik’s still prints reveals that dynamism. Catch Yuan Yuan Tan’s intensity as she stretches toward poignant youthful memories in Diving Into the Lilacs (Tchaikovsky). Sense the sadness in Juliet’s soul as she grasps Romeo in Prokofiev’s recreation of Shakespeare’s unequaled romance. Erik has arrested Sarah Van Patten in full despair. A moment of wide-eyed wonder and anticipation in Jerome Robbins’s staging of Chopin’s The Concert (or The Perils of Everybody) inspires giggles.
How does a photographer do that?
“First, I never ask anybody to pose anything,” he says. “I don’t move around. I let dancers work. They’re more comfortable, more relaxed, and I get what I want, the more natural stuff.
Yuan Yuan Tan in John Neumeier’s The Little Mermaid (U.S. Premiere)
“I see both the dancer and the environment: the lighting, the background, the shadows. I see it as a product. The dancer should look right and good as the focal point. The ‘look’ of my photographs, my signature, comes from the idea of ‘crushing the blacks’; of achieving the truest black background with no gradations, making the dancers really jump out.”
Erik attends technical and orchestral rehearsals at the Opera House to prepare for the pace and direction of the performance. To avoid surprises, all his shots are manual and require constant decisions. “I tend to make things more difficult for myself,” he admits. “I leave no controls up to the camera as I go dancing around with my fingers.”
The versatility of the company’s dancers delights Erik. “They move right from Swan Lake to Forsythe,” he says (referring to choreographer William Forsythe’s in the middle, somewhat elevated). “They enjoy the challenge. All the dancers are amazing. They develop broader senses and instincts because the choreographies are so different. The younger people are surprised by that.”
Talk about versatility. The oldest professional ballet company in America, founded as the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1933, displays more youthful energy than any group half its age in this country.
Any Bay Area balletomane, looking back, shudders at the stumbles of the mid-1970s, when it seemed the company might go tutu up, fiscally speaking. But a new hero, Dr. Richard E. LeBlond, Jr., rode to the rescue, snatching the fading beauty back from the brink.
In July of 1985, the ballet took a great sauté forward as Helgi Tomasson swept in from the wings of Iceland and the New York City Ballet, bearing the hallowed banners of George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.
By 1991, the little-ballet-that-could had climbed up to the crest again, appearing in New York City for the first time in twenty-six years. The Times was appreciative: “Mr. Tomasson has accomplished the unprecedented. He has pulled a so-called regional company into the national ranks, and he has done so by honing the dancers into a classical style of astonishing verve and purity. San Francisco Ballet under Helgi Tomasson’s leadership is one of the spectacular success stories of the arts in America.”
Look at the old girl now. In her 77th season, she is finer and fitter than ever.
Last year, Helgi Tomasson’s Swan Lake debuted to sold-out houses, enthralling audiences both sophisticated and naïve. In 2010, it receives an encore presentation. The opening night gala, christened Silver Celebration, will laud the choreographer’s 25th anniversary as artistic director. From the first adagio to the final arabesque, this season offers passion, pulchritude, mellow merry-making and even exhilaration. Swan Lake will be followed by seven other stunners: two other full-length ballets (including the U.S. premiere of The Little Mermaid from Hans Christian Andersen’s tale), and five new, shorter works.
Erik will be there, quick to record every rond-de-jambe and capture each croisé.
“I am very happy,” he smiles rather shyly. “I do not feel like it’s work. They pay me to photograph dancers! I love being here.”
He’s made his pointe.
Georgia I. Hesse was the founding travel editor of the Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, a job she enjoyed for many years. She is now freelancing.
