An American in Paris by Stephanie Saad Thompson

After Three Decades, City Ballet of San Diego is Still Premiering Exciting New Works

IT’S FITTING THAT IN ITS 30TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON, City Ballet of San Diego is bringing no fewer than three premieres to its audiences in a program this month: An American in Paris including world premieres by its Resident Choreographers, Elizabeth Wistrich and Geoffrey Gonzalez. The award-winning company has made a name for itself in San Diego’s dance scene for performing the great classical ballets, but also modern works and new works, at a high artistic level since it was formed by Steven and Elizabeth Wistrich in 1993.

“We are always trying to incorporate new ballets into our repertoire. It’s very important for our dancers to learn new works as well as for our audiences,” says Elizabeth Wistrich. She has shown her commitment to creating new work many times over, creating to date 64 new ballets, including Boléro – The Awakening, which will receive its world premiere March 16 at the Balboa Theatre. Described as “exploring the ways the heart reacts to different emotions,” the new ballet is set to one of the most famous pieces of classical music, Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, composed in 1928. The piece, already a favorite of dance companies for its intense buildup to a dramatic climax, became a household name when English ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean skated to it and won a gold medal with a spectacular routine at the Sarajevo 1984 Olympics.

“Boléro was always one of my mother’s favorite pieces of music, and she actually choreographed a ballet to it, which I was in when I was 10 years old,” says Wistrich. “I guess the fact that it’s so well-known could be both an asset and a challenge.” Wistrich says she was recently in Barcelona and was able to see a flamenco performance, which flavored some of her Boléro choreography. “The beats and tempos of the dancers’ footwork was incredible. I had already made the decision to add to the already strong timbre of the piece, using heartbeats. The rhythm of the dancers’ feet along with the heartbeats makes for a powerful score. And I am adhering to the climactic ending.”

Wistrich, the codirector of City Ballet School, trained at the Boston Conservatory of Music and first danced professionally as a member of the Boston Ballet Company—going on to perform with the Netherlands Dance Theatre and Stuttgart Ballet. Her ballets have been performed throughout the U.S.; and she won the San Diego Dance Alliance’s Tommy Award for “Best Choreography” for Aubade in 1999 and Enigma in 2000.

“I’ve always loved to choreograph from a very early age,” she says. “My mother ran a ballet studio in her basement, and I used to go down to the basement and would choreograph for hours. I have always had many ideas in my head for ballets that I really wanted to do, whether classical or contemporary.”

That’s also the case for City Ballet’s other Resident Choreographer, Geoffrey Gonzalez, who joined the company in 2008 and performed lead roles in many productions. But like Wistrich, he has always wanted to choreograph. “I took my very first dance class at age 16, and also created my first full-length ballet, Cinderella, at 16,” he says. At his Phoenix high school, he was the only boy taking dance, and there was added difficulty because he was starting late compared to fellow students.

“It wasn’t easy at first to feel confident in what I was able to do with my own body movement,” Gonzalez says. “But sitting in rehearsals, I was blown away by the creative aspect of putting a ballet together. It was so interesting that everyone seemed to be using steps that were already created, like picking words from a vocabulary list. I was learning the language of ballet and wanted to create my own.”

City Ballet gave Gonzalez the opportunity to create new works, and he was selected as one of only 10 choreographers to be a part of the prestigious New York Choreographic Institute, supported by the New York City Ballet. His work was shown in NYC in March 2016. In 2018, he choreographed a new Carmina Burana, which received critical acclaim; that year he was named the “Best Contemporary Choreographer” for the regional Youth America Grand Prix. To date, he has created 14 new works for City Ballet.

Gonzalez says it was when he set Rhapsody in Blue during the 2020–21 season that Jo Anne Emery, City Ballet’s Managing Director, suggested he consider another George Gershwin composition, An American in Paris. Like Boléro, this piece of music, composed by Gershwin in 1928, has name recognition, mainly from the 1951 film of the same name starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. But Gonzalez makes it clear his new ballet is not connected to the film. In fact, the ballet is inspired by the story of American fashion designer Claire McCardell—who traveled to Paris alone as a young woman with a dream to design fashion for American women, influenced by the Chanel luxury fashion house of the mid-1950s.

“It’s a totally new story,” Gonzalez says. “I was researching fashion designers in Paris when I came across Claire McCardell, and her story of going to Paris and being inspired and then coming back and starting a wonderful new type of fashion trend for women in America.” Called “the creator of women’s sportswear,” McCardell is widely recognized as the woman who pioneered casual, comfortable American sportswear for women.

As a dancer, Gonzalez is used to noticing clothing trends. “Everything we know about American sportswear was inspired by what this woman did with French fashion, making it more accessible and liberating for women. Fashion is always influenced from Paris—even American fashion today.”

Researching the era for the ballet, Gonzalez made a trip to Paris to study the fashions of the 1950s and 1960s. It included a visit to the Palais Galliera (the City of Paris’ fashion museum), which preserves a collection of fashion—from historical and vintage haute couture

to modern. “This museum holds pieces that are the pinnacle of design from the top French designers,” Gonzalez says. “I was able to take photos, get close and really study some of their designs. Some of my looks in the ballet are inspired by these major fashion designers.”

Like Wistrich, Gonzalez says it’s important for City Ballet to present new works as well as the beloved classics. “Some of the classics will live forever, but you can’t keep pumping out the same thing over and over again,” he says. “The business of ballet requires that we create new things, to make people feel they are seeing something they have never seen before anywhere else. There is a special feeling with audiences for a new work— the hope of witnessing something new for the very first time.”

An American in Paris will be performed March 16 and 17 at the Balboa Theatre; and March 27 at California Center for the Arts, Escondido. In addition to the world premieres of An American in Paris and Boléro The Awakening, the program includes the City Ballet premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s 2002 work, Morphoses tickets and more info, visit cityballet.org