A Feminist Raymonda

Tamara Rojo’s ambitious “Raymonda” was the last thing she did at English National Ballet before assuming the directorship in San Francisco three years ago, so it was natural that she would want to bring it here early in her tenure. As the mid-point of an annual season that, due to a mysteriously unchangeable opera house sharing arrangement, is crammed into just four months, this “Raymonda” proved good medicine for the company’s classical chops. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many briseés and entrechats for the ensemble men in a single show—and everyone on stage looked adrenalized by the collective energy. The dancers at the top of the roster were shining, too, especially Sasha De Sola, who summited a new career peak in the outrageously demanding title role. Whether this “Raymonda” was a success with California audiences, though, remained a mixed question. For all the appreciation of the ballerinas overheard at intermission, more than a few viewers could be caught nodding off during the dream sequence that ends the hour-long first act.

Performance

San Francisco Ballet: “Raymonda” by Tamara Rojo

Place

War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA, March 1 and 7, 2025

Words

Rachel Howard

Sasha De Sola and Joseph Caley in Tamara Rojo's “Raymonda.” Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

Time doesn’t seem likely to change the critical consensus that met this new “Raymonda” three years ago at its ENB premiere: impressive dancing, hokey storyline. The important context is that although “Raymonda” is laced with some of Petipa’s most memorable choreography, it’s been hokey since its 1898 premiere. “Hokey” was the word the late critic Tobi Tobias reached for, too, when she reviewed American Ballet Theatre’s 2004 production—and let us not forget the racism. In the original libretto by the Russian countess and author Lydia Pashkova, young and beautiful Raymonda is betrothed to a Crusader knight, but pursued by a lusty Muslim warrior who tries to abduct her; her confused sexual attraction plays out in dream sequences worthy of Freud. The Islamophobia is hardly subtle (oh, those brown-skinned Muslim heathens), but as in Tobias’s time two decades ago, the dance world still isn’t content with excising the famous variations for their pure dance value. Boston Ballet recently premiered a one-act version; the Dutch National Ballet unveiled a new “Raymonda” not long after Rojo’s, and Houston Ballet is premiering its full-length revamp next month. Rojo’s strategy might take the gold medal for boldness: She has made “Raymonda” feminist.

In this history-inspired revision, Raymonda is a nurse (think: Florence Nightingale) who goes to Sevastopol to tend the wounded in the Crimean War. There, nudged by the camp’s resident nun, she accepts a marriage proposal from a British soldier whose fumbling pas de deux skills suggest future disappointment in the sack. Ah, but just then in struts a sexy commander from the Ottoman Empire to ignite Raymonda’s loins.

Schematically, this plot update is smarter than most Hollywood remakes. Dramatically, it’s about as dynamic as a “Leave It to Beaver” episode, and over the course of two viewings I became curious why. Unlike the flat characters of Petipa’s original “Raymonda,” each member of this love triangle has potential for dimension—that’s to Rojo’s great credit. The problem—and it stood out more sharply because San Francisco Ballet danced MacMillan’s dramatically masterful “Manon” the month before—is that Rojo hasn’t yet found a way to replace classical mime with theatrically legible interactions.

San Francisco Ballet in Tamara Rojo's “Raymonda.” Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

Take the opening scene. War headlines are flashing in the newspapers (the opening animation by Alexander Gunnarsson sets the scene nicely), and Raymonda’s sisters are manically sewing supplies for the soldiers, but Raymonda can’t sit still (the unison needlework choreography for the sisters is decidedly contemporary and reminds me of Christopher Wheeldon’s story ballet work). Enter John de Bryan, all vigorous sauts de basque. (Wei Wang, dancing second cast alongside Wona Park, made an immediately clean and lofty impression per his usual crystalline form.) A photographer takes a group photo before de Bryan heads off to the battlefields; Raymonda grabs a coat and leaves too. Huh?

This is the man who’s going to propose to her in the next scene, but whether he’s taken any notice of Raymonda in the ballet’s opening is indecipherable; Rojo hasn’t worked this into the choreography. The timing of their departures could not be more confounding: immediately after he leaves, Raymonda seems to be fleeing after him, rather than going “to serve her country,” as the program synopsis informs us. There are dozens of possible ways the baseline for a legible dramatic arc could have been established: Maybe de Bryan could show some kind of interest but lack the confidence to make a move? Maybe after he leaves, Raymonda could return to shaking the newspaper in her sister’s faces, so we understand the drive behind her departure? But we’re left with no understanding of the leads’ motivations or first impressions of each other.

If mime in nineteenth-century ballets is like reading speech bubbles acted out in coded gestures—“I you love. I you marry!”—Rojo’s scenes give us speech bubbles with no content at all. Such is especially the case with the ballet’s ending. We’re back in England, where Raymonda is marrying John de Bryan amongst singing and dancing Hungarian farm workers. (Evidently, Hungarians did immigrate en masse to England at that time to work the fields.) After the well-known opening of the Grand Pas Classique with a phalanx of bridesmaids balanced on their partner’s shoulders, Raymonda dances her famous Hungarian variation, the one full of deliciously wafting bourrées, feisty passés, and that spirited hand slap. Except here Rojo tries to make this usually pure-dance moment a pas de action, the peak moment of Raymonda’s agonized soul-searching—which means that instead of slapping her hands with thrilling decisiveness, she flaps her palms tepidly.

Katherine Barkman and Cavan Conley in Tamara Rojo's “Raymonda.” Photograph by Lindsay Thomas

It’s a matter of personal taste whether the radical re-interpretation of Petipa’s choreography works (I didn’t envy the ballerinas in having to dance it this way), but dramatically the action that follows is indecipherable, and a missed opportunity. Raymonda finishes the solo and walks off arm-in-arm with her new husband, John de Bryan. Nothing seems changed in their body language towards each other; Raymonda socializes among the party guests and all seems well. John de Bryan takes his variation. (It’s the toughest one of the ballet, and both Wang and first cast guest artist Joseph Caley struggled but fought through.) Raymonda sits some more with her groom and greets people as the happy farm workers resume dancing; de Bryan and Raymonda move among the ensemble as though Rojo didn’t know what to do with them, then drift off stage, for no discernible reason. Finally the whole cast gathers around the couple, and Raymonda steps outside the circle, pausing in front of the sexy man-that-got-away, Abdur Rahman, before grabbing her coat and lantern. In a flash, with the sunniest of smiles, she’s opting out of this romantic business altogether and heading back to the front. Huh? Why not have Raymonda interacting with or avoiding Rahman earlier in the scene? There has to be something more telling she could do to link her variation with this final decision?

The middle act, in which Raymonda and her two friends attend Abdur Rahman’s wild Turkish party, is much better and certainly the high point. Rojo gives Rahman’s character a fabulous solo with revoltades that land with a slap of the ground, followed by strutting jigs. Fernando Carratalá Coloma danced this role in England before joining San Francisco Ballet as a soloist last year; he’s principal caliber in every way, and smolderingly ideal for the part. But it was a thrill, too, to see longtime principal Esteban Hernández, usually so puppyish, take on Rahman in the second cast: He found his inner seducer! And yet Hernández’s innate sweetness made the chemistry all the more poignant; with an impressively bold Park opposite him as Raymonda, their relationship seemed viable, and I found myself irritated with Raymonda’s nun-friend Clemence (a busily chastising Jennifer Stahl) for preventing the hook-up. This scene also has the most high-drama passages of the rearranged Glazunov score, and one of Raymonda’s most exciting variations, with a marathon run of changement hops on pointe, during which Park threw in at least five entrechats. Plus, it featured the luscious rubato quality of Katherine Barkman as the flirty friend Henriette; Isabella De Vivo took on this role in the second cast and was also delightfully strong.

If I’m harping on the wooden quality of the character interactions throughout Acts One and Two, it’s because I’d be interested to see Rojo choreograph again. (She also created a “Cinderella” for the Royal Swedish Ballet, which premiered three months after this “Raymonda” in 2022.) Her ensemble movement for the male dancers is especially strong, full of rhythmic interest; she seems more interested in choreographing for them than the group women, whose phrases are too banal in the aforementioned long dream sequence. At the moment Rojo has no plans for re-imagining another classic—rather, San Francisco Ballet recently announced that Yuri Possokhov will choreograph a new “Eugene Onegin,” co-produced with the Joffrey, for 2026. But making scenes legible in character actions is a hard-won skill developed over time, and as Balanchine warned us, far more challenging to pull off in ballet than the other arts. In fiction writing, it’s a practice that forces a writer’s empathy and humility to grow exponentially. And those are qualities that serve an artistic director worth working for.

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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