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School Report

One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere. Last year, Grace Maduell Holmes, finishing her first year at the helm of the San Francisco Ballet School, decided to move the program’s annual student showcase from a much smaller venue to the War Memorial, with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra playing live, to boot. These luxurious new conditions proved salutary again this spring: San Francisco Ballet’s current crop of a dozen trainees all met the challenge to dance with a command of space that only a hall that vast could inspire. At the same time, this year’s showcase left an imbalanced after-image. There was the mass of student dancers, each distinct in promise yet collectively unfinished, no doubt about to undergo further metamorphosis as they sign apprentice and corps contracts. And then there was Crystal Huang.

Performance

San Francisco Ballet School Spring Festival

Place

War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA, May 9, 2026

Words

Rachel Howard

San Francisco Ballet School students in an excerpt from George Balanchine's “Serenade.” Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

Small-boned but not fragile, with the feet, the epaulement, and crisp musicality of a budding soloist, Huang has a lively stage presence—and, of course, she has the turns. For the school showcase’s opening demonstration, Huang supplied the final fouettés: singles alternating with copious triples, all executed with calm shoulders and an unshakeable plumb-line, barely travelling. Given her abilities, the school faculty seemed to exercise commendable restraint otherwise in her casting. Following the demonstration, Huang danced the main “Russian girl” role in the first half of the first movement of “Serenade,” with a forward energy that promised a strong future in the Balanchine rep. (Her only weak spot was a dead-stopped arabesque, a touch too preening, for her final exit.) 

In the showcase closer, excerpts from “Paquita,” Huang was relegated to one of the six demi-soloists. This gave the compact-yet-powerful Nicole Kosasih Widjaja a chance to shine, and she seized it, bourréeing in front of that phalanx of backup ballerinas in high style, arms flung to the air with that snap of strong character this role demands. Since Tamara Rojo took the helm as SF Ballet artistic director four years ago, the former National Ballet of Cuba dancer Loipa Araujo has become the company’s primary coach, and how lucky we audiences are to have her working with the next generation of dancers for this staging. In addition to Widjaja’s fearless spirit, Luna Mae Pao stood out for her delicate-yet-dignified quality. Donghui Kim was a terrific partner to Widjaja, and he has beautifully harmonious proportions, sparkling clean double assemblés, and impressive height on his turning grand jetés. 

Crystal Huang and Donghui Kim with San Francisco Ballet Schools students performing a demonstration at the Spring Festival. Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

Crystal Huang and Donghui Kim with San Francisco Ballet Schools students performing a demonstration at the Spring Festival. Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

And yet I must admit the young dancer who remains most vividly in memory for me is Raúl Noyola Morales, who was entrusted with the solemn solo role in the “Winter” section of Helgi Tomasson’s “The Four Seasons,” to the Vivaldi. I’ve been watching Morales for three years now in student showcases. A mid-size dancer, he has a bit of a large head which he carries with confidence to create an impression of easy charisma; in “Winter,” he also showed dramatic maturity, exploding defiantly in the face of death as eleven other dancers—including his tremendously talented younger brother, Sergio Noyola Morales—crouched around him. 

Choreographically, the marquee offering of this year’s showcase was Myles Thatcher’s premiere, created on the 12 trainees and announced to the press with great fanfare. (In the past, every year a few of SF Ballet’s dancers were given a chance to choreograph on the school. This year Thatcher, a company soloist with a few works already in the main company’s rep, did so as the “associate choreographer” of SFB’s Creation House initiative.) Dressed in earth tones with loose shirts for the men and short dresses for the women, “Mayfly” was a decidedly ensemble work, evidencing Thatcher’s great skill at moving lines of dancers through kaleidoscopic yet organic swirls of movement in a lyrical fashion suffused with just enough movement invention. 

San Francisco Ballet School students in Myles Thatcher’s “Mayfly.” Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

San Francisco Ballet School students in Myles Thatcher’s “Mayfly.” Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

The music selections, by Peter Gregson, Hania Rani, and Dobrawa Czocher, felt like the kind of minimalist or minimalist-adjacent music Thatcher usually works with. The lighting, uncredited, was an important element, often casting the dancers as dark silhouettes. There was a repeated motif of a single whirling hand, jumps onto flat-footed arabesques that melted on bent knees as the arms reached in fifth above, and permeating it all, a sense of gentle wonder. I hope it’s not carping to say that “Mayfly” felt like it finished too suddenly, mid-stream. Perhaps it’s because I so respect Thatcher’s gifts and formal mastery at this point that I expected more—and it may be that Thatcher is putting his work into projects outside of SF Ballet, such as the “recital” of solos he presented last February as part of San Francisco Performances’ “Pivot” festival, reviewed so evocatively for Fjord by Garth Grimball.

If “Mayfly” felt a bit like, well, a school showcase piece, it was a challenging one that all 12 dancers rose to in fluency. Among those trainees, SF Ballet has announced that Morales, Kim, Pao, Julieta Castro, Carly Graham, and Sawyer Jordan have all been hired as apprentices for next season. Meanwhile, Huang is moving up to trainee. We can follow along on Instagram, no doubt.

Rachel Howard

Rachel Howard is the former lead dance critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. Her dance writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Hudson Review, Ballet Review, San Francisco Magazine and Dance Magazine.

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