In addition to financial battles, another war shapes the dance scene in San Diego: that for the soul of ballet. On the one hand is the philosophy of pure dance, the melding of music and movement that stands on its own. On the other hand is the school of “relevance,” as Roger Scruton might put it. In its approach to dance presentation, San Diego Ballet seems to wish to make ballet “matter” to its audiences, to marry it to a “so what.” This approach often ends up watering down the artistic product to cater to the cult of “accessibility” but can sometimes be tastefully executed. Throughout this past season, San Diego Ballet has created programs, such as “Art of the Americas,” that highlight exhibits at the San Diego Museum of Art. Even as San Diego’s city budget calls for drastic cuts to arts funding, San Diego Ballet evangelizes the importance of art through its own crash course in impressionist painters. 

Taking inspiration from impressionistic paintings and celebrating a Toulouse Lautrec exhibit that runs through September 20, Impressionism includes short dances like “Le Petite Danseuse,” inspired by Edgar Degas’s statue, “Afternoon of a Faun,” inspired by Henri Matisse, and “I Love Paris,” inspired by Lautrec. Thematically, Velasco married the theme of impressionistic painting to impressionism in music, especially in his romantic pas de deux “Claire de Lune.” Conjoining fine art and dance happens usually at the subsurface level when choreographers are inspired by specific works of art. From George Balanchine to Martha Graham, the fine arts have long influenced ballet. A more visible marriage can render the choreography a kind of token whereby the dance exists not for its own sake, but rather as a tribute to a prior, superior work of art. Still, the concept of Impressionism, along with San Diego Ballet’s collaboration with the museum, presents an admirable instance of two arts organizations working together, even if the execution reveals a lack of polish. 

Velasco relies on a musical theatre quality, especially the jazzy finale, “I Love Paris,” with swing adaptations of standards such as “La Vie en Rose,” complete with narration from an old CD apparently called A Bachelor in Paris. There is no pretension that this is serious ballet, but an unspoken expectation that this be received as serious art, designed to make dance relevant to the non-balletomane. It’s not “pure dance,” but many in the crowd audibly enjoyed it, and it was at times charming.

Through this Parisian reverie, Velasco perhaps missed an opportunity to explore what impressionism might mean for ballet, instead opting for a more literal, subject-bound exploration. Impressionism as a school of art rejects classical realism to capture in rough brushstrokes light and color in its fleeting immediacy. For instance, “Le Petite Danseuse,” was just that, Degas’ little dancer girl came to life and no more. It’s a tribute to impressionism in all its manners without any of its inherent radicalism of form and medium.  

The ballets paid tribute to particular impressionist artists, yet the corresponding art works projected behind the dancers were somehow of a lower resolution than the videos of Velasco himself. The largest nuisance was that, seated in the middle of the “house,” a converted auditorium with unraked seating, I found myself struggling inexorably to see the dancer’s feet throughout the entire performance. 

While the technical aspects need polishing, there were moments where dances reached a stillness and contemplativeness that channeled Monet’s outdoor scenes, including “Water Lillies” by Jean Isaacs, a noted San Diego choreographer. This piece saw the company take up modern dance with bare feet and a pas de deux by the principal male, Marshall Whiteley, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre, and guest artist and stager Blythe Barton, moving together in drapery surrounded by Monet’s water lilies. 

Velasco himself has a clear choreographic voice, informed by all manner of art. His choreography is balletically theatrical and theatrically accessible. Full of this sensibility was his take on the sensual and idiosyncratic “Afternoon of a Faun,” danced by Sierra Crocker and James La Rose, whom Crocker stands a full foot taller than en pointe. Like Isaacs, Velasco utilized themes of tableaux-like stillness in the males' slow undressing, recalling in some faint degree how Jerome Robbins, in works like “The Concert,” understood that the absence of movement is often more dramatically loaded than overly choreographed steps. But whether it was really necessary to have the “faun,” his back to the audience, pleasure himself in an otherwise family friendly program, I have my doubts. However, it's a direct nod to the original Nijinsky ballet for the Ballets Russes. 

If the production looked a little bit rough around the edges, it’s only fair to conjecture that San Diego Ballet too may be struggling in light of the city’s battles over arts funding. This year, as part of an effort to decrease the city’s considerable deficit, Mayor Todd Gloria proposed nearly $12 million in arts funding cuts. While, after much protest, he eventually restored some $4.8 million in library funding, the arts grants remain on the chopping block. Sitting in the converted auditorium at the San Diego Museum of Art, I took note that the museum as well may be hit, already seemingly unable to afford to convert the auditorium into a professional performance space suitable for dance.  

San Diego’s neglect of the arts is nothing new, as shown by the current fate of the city’s most historic dance performance venue. Since 2020, Spreckels Theatre, a nationally designated historical landmark, has remained shuttered, its last message to the world remaining on its marquee: “Our Curtain Will Rise Again Soon. Until Then Stay Safe – Social Distance – Stay Well.” But the curtain hasn’t risen, even after the New York-based hedge fund that bought it promised a full restoration to its former glory. The former silent movie palace, built in 1912 by philanthropist John D. Spreckels, once hosted numerous performances, from dance companies to David Bowie. Locals tell me that the faded interior is likely still intact and somewhere in the building lies a historic film projector and one of the biggest stages in the country, perfect for dance. It once hosted many of the city’s major arts events, including City Ballet of San Diego’s “The Nutcracker.” Since the theatre’s shuttering, because of the sparsity of performance space suitable for large ballet productions, City Ballet of San Diego has moved their Nutcracker to Escondido, away from San Diego proper. The city remains disinterested in investing in cultural infrastructure and honoring its past. It’s no wonder that upon seeing San Diego Ballet’s production, I sat on a cheap seat that could have been used at last month's AA meeting. 

In the future, since city funding is unlikely to pay for an enhancement of the performance space, the company may consider more avant-garde stagings in the galleries themselves, immersive performances in which the true art works are the actual background. Wherever this falls in the battle for the soul of ballet itself, we won’t have to worry about pixelated Monet Water Lilies.