San Francisco Ballet, Sadler's Wells

Confident style pulls off a triumph

San Francisco Ballet opened their Sadler's Wells season on buoyant form. This is an outgoing company, crisp and characterful. They dance a varied repertory with confident style.

San Francisco Ballet opened their Sadler's Wells season on buoyant form. This is an outgoing company, crisp and characterful. They dance a varied repertory with confident style.

Balanchine's Square Dance really is a square dance - early performances even had a traditional caller to shout out the steps. That detail is long gone, and the rest of the piece is classical. The music, played by the English Chamber Orchestra under Andrew Mogrelia, is by Vivaldi. The women wear pointe shoes. Yet the traditional American quality is still there. It's built into the floor patterns, the bows and curtseys, the companionable warmth of the whole piece.

The dancers skip, turn, sparkle. Couples hop face to face, legs swinging boldly as they go. It's springy dancing, each hop catching the music's lively repetitions. As the dancers sweep across the stage, they also catch its larger patterns, its classical shape.

Christopher Wheeldon's Continuum is a series of dance studies to Ligeti piano music. It's less austere than it sounds. The eight dancers walk on in single file, striding with flexed feet. As the piano rhythm changes, those metronome legs speed up, determined to keep up - a feline duet, the dancers arch and stretch their backs, put out a paw and snatch it back before winding into a series of sinuous lifts.