The arc of the ballet is simple: In MacMillan’s own description, “A man and a woman; death takes the man; they both return to her and at the end of the ballet, we find that in death there is the promise of renewal.” The costumes are white, black, and brown practice clothes. The steps are exposed in their unexpected ballet logic and have to be executed with utmost clarity: turning jumps for the men that land in fourth, pirouettes with a low side extension for the women that land in a deep second plié, arms reaching in overhead fifth. Développés push through with flexed feet at times, the sharpness in contrast to a lovely ports de bra with the elbows crossed and the hands draped like delicate flowers. In one passage, a large ensemble of women spins in crazy fast pencil turns, their lifted feet just skimming the ground. And at the highest point of feeling, when the Woman finally gives herself over to accepting the Man’s death, she scurries backward in a turned-in bourrée, with stunning speed. (Wona Park, a former Wunderkind who has been developing impressive depth, delivered this unforgettably.) What I’m trying to say is that every phrase has great formal complexity and interest, and the movement at this “sentence level,” if you will, builds to a bigger picture akin to a perfectly constructed gem of a novel.

Like any great novel, “Song of the Earth” has a strong and complex antagonist. The figure of Death here is far more nuanced than a cliché grim reaper. He wears a simple half-mask, and he’s a drunken frolicker right alongside the dancers as well as the Messenger who sometimes whispers, sometimes shouts in the woman’s ear, with the action frozen in the style of Asian theater. 

Wei Wang was tremendous in the marathon Messenger role, while Isaac Hernandez was painfully powerful in the final pas de deux, when the Man has to grip the Woman’s upper arms rather roughly, as though to force her to accept reality. Leading up to this, there are equally lighthearted passages that give other soloists star turns. The audience particularly loved Jasmine Jimison in the section when she got to romp with the group of men, turned upside down and then cartwheeled in the air over their shoulders. Katherine Barkman delivered some of the most exquisite dancing of the evening, so fast and precise with her feet, free in her shoulders, and soulful without pretense in her face. Former Royal Ballet repetiteur Grant Coyle set the ballet on the company, and former Royal Ballet star Edward Watson coached it. What a gift they gave to San Francisco.