Designer I Love: Ken Fulk

Exclusive View: Bold Color, Vivid Impressions, Vibrant Lives 

In conversation with San Francisco designer, Ken Fulk

Designer Ken Fulk Embraces Elegance, Wit, and a Jolt of Color
With a glance at Napoleon, English country houses, Thomas Jefferson and Palladio, designer Ken Fulk takes a fresh approach to interiors.

Overly reverent?

Not at all. Too, too serious? Never.

Witty and fresh? Always.

San Francisco interior designer Ken Fulk, originally from Jefferson country in Virginia, moved to San Francisco ten years ago. He kept a low profile in the design arena, worked hard for an escalating roster of ultra-private clients, stayed focused, and now finds himself the darling of the design world.

“Design should inspire you and make you smile, and it should never be a bore,” Fulk told me. 

“Décor has an essential practical purpose, but it should also lift our spirits, and make us feel happy to walk into a room.”
           

He founded Ken Fulk Design, after testing the waters by designing for handpicked clients.  New clients have found him through referral.
           

Fulk by-passed design school and a classic apprenticeship with a design firm. He traveled, stayed in all the best hotels, observed, studied important and significant historic interiors, traveled more and often, and worked closely with leading antique dealers, furniture designers, style stores, vintage collectors and art dealers. He has kept a love profile. Fulk and his teams now work with ultra-private handpicked clients for whom he creates interiors of great joyfulness and verve, within a very fast turnaround time. His 35-person firm is currently working on projects from Aspen to Provincetown and Manhattan, and from Silicon Valley to Sonoma Valley and the Napa Valley, and from Pacific Heights to the Dordogne.

Diane Dorrans Saeks recently sat down with Ken Fulk at the classic favorite haunt, Zuni Café in San Francisco.
           

Between bites of piccolo frito of vegetables, and blood orange, sliced fennel and frisee salad, Fulk expounded on design, and the subjects of modern living, books, travel and paint were dissected.

DDS: You are such an inventive, creative, and visionary designer and your clients love you (they tell me you changed their life). What was the moment you decided to become a designer?
KF:  Like many things in my life I believe it wasn’t a choice but somehow pre-ordained or unavoidable. It’s the lyric from that Leonard Cohen song? I am not the one who loves — it’s love that seizes me. I feel seized by design. It’s part of who I am and not simply some vocation I chose. I always say I’d be doing this regardless if I was getting paid for it or not — though thank goodness I am paid!


DDS: You are confident in many styles—and have avoided a ‘signature’ style.
KF:  I have not intentionally avoided a “signature” style. It’s simply a factor of the way we approach projects for every client. Each residence is always deeply personal and expressly oriented to the client who is going to inhabit a space. I don’t impose my ideas.  I’ve never been a ‘one-size-fits-all’ designer. We are creating an individualized environment not looking to put our stamp on it. And it is true that we come to the table with a strong point of view.


DDS:  Who has been an inspiration and mentor to you?
KF: The strongest inspirations in my life have perhaps been geographical. I’m a southerner by birth, and have been strongly imprinted with its since of place, far beyond the clichés of southern life. Day to day life in the South I carry with me, and it is truly ingrained as the importance of a life well lived. The south is a very matriarchal society and my early years were shaped by my Mother and her four sisters. As a young lad, everything I learned of manners, decorum, taste and style came from them.
          

The other locale that has inspired me greatly is Paris. I recognize a strong correlation between my southern roots and the City of Light. Apart from the sheer miraculous beauty of Paris there is the same inherent approach to living well. There is a graciousness that occupies even the simplest gestures. Whether it is the morning coffee and a croissant, standing at the bar with your compatriots, or the simple joy of sitting on a bench in the Tuileries, life is always relished and not rushed.


DDS: Who are your favorite designers?

KF:  I don’t really pay enough attention to other designers’ work. We are, thankfully, so busy doing our own thing that there isn’t time to study and appreciate the great design being done by others. I did have quite a crush on Christian Liaigre’s designs for the longest time. I think of all contemporary designers his work is amongst the most timeless and his furniture the most likely to be collected in the future.
           

The majority of good design I’m surrounded by is in other fields.  I have had an obsession for the past several years with the men’s wear designer Thom Browne. His clothes are a thoroughly modern interpretation of the traditional gentlemen’s wardrobe with impeccable attention to detail. His suits are a ridiculously expensive addiction. I think I’m so attracted to his work because while classically tailored they can be fearlessly modern. That is something I strive for in our own work.


DDS:   Which architect has inspired you the most?
KF: I grew up near Charlottesville, Virginia, where Mr. Jefferson loomed large. To me, he was the first and greatest of American designers among a few other accomplishments! He took a traditional European sensibility and created something uniquely American. To this day I can stand at the top of the lawn of Jefferson’s University (U.V.A) and simply be full of awe.


DDS:  Favorite rooms?
KF:  My bedroom at our ranch in St. Helena is all white. It’s perfectly serene and simple. The windows look out onto a majestic oak and across to a wild meadow. It has a ridiculously high bed with a deep feather top. It is the perfect place to while away my weekend.
           

Room 107 at the Chateau Marmont feels glamorous but understated. It’s old Hollywood glamour at its best. Originally a one-bedroom apartment, it has a terrace that overlooks the lush courtyard, and LA is spread out beyond. The spaces are furnished with a simple assortment of mid century pieces.
           

The Fishing Cabin at Manka’s Inverness Lodge in Inverness, Point Ryes is an idyllic rustic retreat. The main lodge burned a few years back, but this jewel thankfully survived. Old French leather club chairs, an enormous ocean rock fireplace, a deep soaking tub, and an outdoor rain shower make this one of the most special, romantic, and memorable places I’ve had the luxury to enjoy.
           

The Apartment at L’Hotel in Paris. This is famously where Oscar Wilde died. It was restored several years ago by Jacques Garcia and is opulent Left Bank Paris at it’s best. Filled with luxurious fabrics and antiques, it has a terrace overlooking the church of St. Germain-des-Pres.



DDS:  Which design books do you treasure the most?
KF: A House Is Not A Home, by Bruce Weber (Bullfinch Press 1996). It is a wonderful collection of photo essays exploring the meaning of a home. For the longest time I gave it to clients as a house warming gift. Unfortunately I am down to my last copy.
            

Bunny Williams’ An Affair With A House. It’s a great tribute to a treasured home. It spoke to me because I often think of myself as having a love affair with a given house. Right now I’m madly in love with our house in Provincetown.  I covet the Greco-Roman temple/pool cabana she built from raw timber. It is jaw dropping.
           

I am still enraptured by the interiors captured in The Private World of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge, Vendome Press ( 2009). It explores a genuinely magnificent collection and an incredible collaboration.


DDS:  You are a skilled host.  Who would be your four dream dinner guests?
KF: Oscar Wilde for witty conversation, Julia Child to help prepare the meal, Chet Baker to serenade us, and a young Paul Newman just to look at.

 

DDS: Your favorite architecture?
KF The short list is anything still standing by Palladio, Jefferson’s Monticello, a Lake Shore Drive apartment by David Adler, and Aero Saarinen’s main terminal at Dulles Airport. The last one may seem a bit unusual, but when I was a child my uncle worked at the Airport. I used to get to visit him and go up into the tower and watch the planes land. To me that swooping wing-like edifice at night was one the most glamorous places I had ever seen. Modern and lyrical, it remains one of the most impressive of public structures. Sadly over the years it has been burdened with surrounding uninspired bunker-like terminals.


DDS:  Some of your favorite resources for antiques?
KF: I could simply move into my friend Stephane Olivier’s shop on rue de l'Universite, on the Left Bank in Paris. Everything he collects is based on one guiding principal — it must be a thing of beauty. He has an incredible and unwavering eye for finding or creating just the right pieces. In Europe, I always visit Axel and Boris Vervoordt at their castle and the Kanaal  headquarters nearAntwerp. They are undoubtedly the finest collectors in the world, and they inhabit some of the most inspiring residences and headquarters anywhere.


DDS: Favorite pieces of furniture.
KF: The pair of ten-foot custom Edward Wormley sofas that anchor my living room in San Francisco. I purchased them from my good friend John Meaney of 20th Century gallery in San Francisco. I had them restored and then covered in glorious sapphire blue silk Bergamo velvet. I smile every time I see them.


DDS: The five most versatile paint colors?
KF:  

Picket Fence white by Ralph Lauren is a true classic white. Not cold, but not too cream either. I painted every surface at my ranch with it, inside and out.
           

Fairview Taupe by Benjamin Moore is a wonderful “non” color. It is the perfect warm brown/grey/green. I love it in a dining room or bedroom.
           

Everyone seems to always be searching for the perfect chocolate brown. I found it in Ralph Lauren’s Mahogany. It is magnificent with crisp white trim in an entry.
           

Perhaps an unusual choice — but one of the most versatile of colors is Pumpkin Pie by Phillip’s Perfect Colors. It can look smashing (pun intended) in a traditional setting and equally good in a modern space.
           

Stout by C2. I am crazy about this color. I especially like to use it on trim and doors. It is indeed the color of good Irish Stout!


DDS. Favorite fabric?
KF: Salt, a super-heavy, beautiful linen by Christian Liaigre for Great Plans. It is literally the color of salt — and like salt, it’s pure and simple and is good on just about everything.


DDS: What do you love most about being a designer?
KF: Nearly everything (except perhaps the billing!) I always say it’s as if god made a job for me.


DDS: What advice would you give to aspiring designers?
KF: Be fearless and listen to those voices in your head (the good ones at least).

DDS: Best advice you ever received regarding design.
KF: Lighten up! You’re not performing brain surgery, for goodness sake.



The house in Sonoma:

Where: A new family house near the Square in Old Town Sonoma.

Who: A  couple with two young children. This is their primary residence.

What: A modern take on the classic historically inspired American house.

Details: 

Designed and built from the ground up. The house has no formal living room and everything is somewhat casual. Each room opens to the outdoors. Though minutes from the town square, it looks out to expansive views of the vineyards and has a tennis court and pool.

Ken Fulk reports: “This house has the perfect combination of open-air and indoor/outdoor California living and has great classic bones. The interior décor and completion of the interiors were a complete surprise (they saw nothing) for the clients. We worked off a relatively small budget, and I revealed it to them one evening after an insane three day install. They had been living next door in the one-bedroom guesthouse for a year. We took them over to their new home and popped corks. The night of the reveal we stayed up until 4am dancing on the kitchen counters! Never have their been more thrilled clients.”


A shingled house in California:

Where: A Mid-Century residence perched above the bay in San Francisco.

Who: A first home for a newly married couple and their soon to be baby girl.

What:  A sexy refreshment of a mid-century shingled home in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Details:
Ken Fulk reports:  “The house had sadly been 80's-ized. We took it back to its simple clean origin and then added a big dose of sex appeal. The wife is a major fashionista and wanted the house to have a little runway inspiration. So this was our jumping-off point. We chose furniture, fabrics, and colors that fit the bill.”


A Residence overlooking San Francisco Bay, with views of the Golden Gate Bridge:

Where: The top of San Francisco's gilded Pacific Heights neighborhood.

Who: A young couple with two children and a third on the way.


What: Originally the site of a very bland and boxy fifties house on stilts, recently converted into an elegant limestone manse.

Design comments:
Ken Fulk said:  Certainly a rare opportunity. I was referred to the couple and after a short meeting I explained the various ways we worked — ranging from clients who are intimately involved in the process to ones who simply want to be surprised. They chose surprised. The only request for the entire house was a proper English pub (he's a young Brit) — so we imported an authentic old pub from England. Outside of that request, they saw/knew nothing. We provided everything from art to silverware — from Guinness to shampoo.

How long? We moved them in immediately for just a couple of months. They lived on a mix of items from our inventory, and a few pieces from their former house.  After the holidays they were off on an extended trip for six weeks. So the real completion began.
           

We worked around the clock. Literally an army of artisans. We labored furiously to create a sense of history and place for the home — erasing the newness. Every corner of the house was touched.
           

Walls, floors, baths, kitchen — everything was reinvented. Even an outdoor theater was added. It was like a show house on steroids. In the few months prior to the installation we had been searching the globe for all things under the sun. Daily, cranes arrived to hoist everything from massive French ironwork tables, antique limestone planters, the original English pub, and a pair of 18th century stone lions. I fear a documentary opportunity was indeed missed.

Ken Fulk recalls:  We delivered the house, ready to inhabit and enjoy, in seven weeks - start to finish.
           

On the night of the "reveal" Beefeaters (costumed doorman on loan from the Sir Frances Drake hotel in downtown San Francisco) guarded the door to their new castle. An acoustic guitarist played the Beatle's catalog in the pub, and a DJ spun records in the kitchen. The following afternoon the best possible compliment arrived... "Ken we had huge expectations for the house — and we have to say you exceeded them. Thank you.”


Photography of interiors by Matthew Millman, San Francisco. Used with express permission.

Portrait of Ken Fulk by Philip Harvey, San Francisco, used with permission.

Artist I Love: Meeting M. Matisse

Henri Matisse at Villa le Reve


Last summer, when I was chasing Picasso in Aix-en-Provence and Antibes, in the South of France, I also went in search of Henri Matisse in Nice and Vence.

Follow me on a rare trip—as I walk in Matisse’s footsteps, find the house where he painted so joyfully, and find insights into the artist’s sensual and richly detailed paintings of interiors and costumed models.




Henri Matisse is the supreme painter and stylist of interiors. I’ve always loved his vivid, sensual and superbly constructed paintings that conjure sunny Riviera rooms in languid eternal summer.

Most memorable are the gloriously seductive canvases he created in Vence in the forties, in a house called Villa le Reve. Come with me on a visit.


This past summer, I was most fortunate to spend time in the South of France. I followed Pablo Picasso, seeking his haunts and his paintings (check in THE STYLE SALONISTE archive for a feature on Picasso’s Chateau de Vauvenargues)—but I was also devotedly sleuthing the residences, studios and locations that inspired Henri Matisse.

I’ve always been drawn to the thrumming colors, the theatrically styled vignettes, the props and blooming flowers, open windows and palm trees shimmering in the sunlight, of Henri Matisse’s intensely personal paintings. These are canvases of sheer sensation, a vibration of the optic fibers, where the season is forever summer, the Mediterranean always glinting, and flowers radiant. It’s all emotion. You feel it immediately.

Matisse brought together his textiles, antiques, rugs, Moroccan pottery, plants, goldfish in bowls, flowers, fruit—and of course his seductive models—to create interior paintings of singular beauty. I wanted to be there. I wanted to look out the windows of these rooms. I wanted to experience the exuberant joy of these sunny and intensely romantic houses.





I conducted hours of research on Matisse in the south of France, and planned to follow his life around Nice and Cimiez, paying respects at the Matisse Museum, and especially trying to find his magical Villa le Reve on a hillside in Vence, where he lived and painted.

In 1943, with the war raging, seventy-four-year-old Matisse escaped from Nice to the relative safety of Vence, a hill town in a verdant and blossoming region a few miles above the Cote d’Azur. Hidden from the sunbathers and revelers, Vence had been a refuge for other famous painters, including Bonnard, Renoir, Dufy, Soutine, and Dubuffet, who had created some of their best art, inspired by the lush setting, the happiness-inducing limpid weather.



Matisse drove up to Vence from Nice, took one look at Villa Le Reve with its palm trees, orange blossom fragrance, and the chalky mountains rising protectively beyond the oleanders. The house had a certain air of privacy and detachment, and Matisse decided it would be his perfect refuge.

“Beautiful villa, and I don’t mean gingerbread or pretentious,” he wrote to his friend, the poet Louis Aragon in 1943. “Thick walls and glass doors reaching up to the ceiling. In other words, nice light.”

“The beautiful terrace had a large balustrade overflowing with variegated Roman ivy and lovely geraniums of hot colors that I did not know. The many lovely colors of the palm trees that filled the windows were enthralling” said Matisse, quoted by his son, Pierre.

Matisse shipped his props up from his former atelier, including Moroccan rugs, pewter vases, block-printed cottons and elaborate embroidered textiles, Chinese porcelains, shells, a small round wrought-iron table, tarnished silver pitchers, shells, slip-covered armchairs, a grand antique marble-topped table with baroque iron legs, Fez pottery and antique French pottery. These would all later appear in paintings of the interiors of Villa le Reve, in this period. Just outside his open windows he would be surrounded sun-struck oleanders and visions of the shimmering sea in the distance.

“When I realized I would see that light every morning, I could not believe my good fortune,” Henri Matisse wrote in a letter to the Surrealist poet Louis Aragon, who collected his work.



At Villa le Reve, Matisse devoted his life to art, and painted every day. This is the artist at his most joyful, intense and expressive. After a day of painting he practiced the violin for an hour, dined lightly, and then early to bed.

I had always loved the scrumptious paintings Matisse created at Villa le Reve, with almost nude models in Moroccan ensembles draped on chaises, reclining models in North African robes, tables laden with kinetic garlands of flowers, and ravishing bowls of lemons and pomegranates in bright patches of sunshine. And always there were the open shutters, streaming light, and flickering palm trees looming at the windows.

“Sometimes when I pause over a motif, a corner of my studio that I find expressive, even if it is beyond me and my strength, I wait for the coup de foudre,” commented Matisse to his son, Pierre.




Among the artists who visited Matisse when he was living in Vence was Pablo Picasso, with his lover, Francoise Gilot.

“Of all the artists Pablo knew and visited during the years I spent with him, no-one meant quite as much to him as Matisse. At the time we made our first visit to Matisse, in February 1946, he was living in a villa called Le Reve, in Vence. Pablo had at least eight paintings by Matisse. The paintings are very successful in their color harmonies and very free and spontaneous. Matisse told me, “My thought in doing a painting is often a continuous non sequitur, a series of jumps from one mountain peak to another. It’s what you might call a somnambulist’s thought”– Francoise Gilot in ‘Life with Picasso’ (McGraw-Hill, 1964).

Soon after I arrived in Nice (and had spent the morning at the Villa Kerylos), I was able to arrange at least to see the Villa le Reve, but I was told that it would most likely not be possible to go onto the property or enter the house.

I would be happy glancing through the wrought iron gates, I thought. Well, not really. I wanted to linger in the garden, smell the lavender and orange blossoms in Matisse’s garden, and look out of his windows, see his studio.

I drove into the hills, up winding roads framed with flourishing olive trees and jacarandas. I turned into the avenue where the house stands behind a high hedge. I could see it through the leaves as I pressed the buzzer on the gate. To my surprise, a woman walked out of the front door of the terra cotta stucco residence. It was the manager of the house, Joelle Audry.

“I am not sure if you can come in,” she said. “There is a group of Norwegian artists studying here. I’ll have to ask their instructor if it is OK.”

I could see several woman wearing straw hats working on oil paintings , their easels set out in the garden. I could see the teacher critiquing their work. Audrey spoke to her. The instructor nodded her head.

Audrey opened the tall iron gate. I walked into the garden. It was like entering the secret garden. The mingled fragrance of lavender, roses and oleander vibrated in the warm afternoon air. Palm trees glimmered in the sun. I felt uplifted, light-headed, a little giddy. Perhaps it was the heat. I think not.




Matisse’s house, painted the original terra cotta with faded turquoise shutters, stood two stories, overlooking the garden. Typical of these hill town houses, it has balconies from which to view the blue coast.

I imagined Matisse working there every day, diligently taking up his brushes and focusing on the light, the intense colors, creating beauty.

I walked across the lawn, and quietly asked the Norwegian art instructor, very delicately, if it might be possible to enter the house to see Matisse’s studio, holy ground. She nodded, smiling.

I walked into the house and felt Matisse’s presence. All of his paintings were in my head. I knew the placement of the windows, the way sun slanted across his mis-en-scene in the afternoon.


The reality is that the house today is managed by the local municipality, and may be rented by art groups. It has sleeping accommodations downstairs for art students.

Still, I could I see Matisse and his lissome models there among his antiques, brilliant flowers in every vase and Moroccan rugs strewn around.

A joyful Matisse painting I had seen recently of a woman sitting at a table, ‘The Silence Living in Houses’ offers a magical sense of the peace and power of this setting for the artist.

I walked upstairs. Books were jumbled into an old bookcase. I walked toward the two upstairs rooms where Matisse has painted. Both were now bare-bones studios with white walls and tall windows. But still, precisely as in Matisse’s paintings, palm trees loom at the window and Provencal sunlight streams inside.


Looking at the spare white rooms—and yet seeing Matisse’s vibrant ‘rooms’ created with theatrical style—I felt overwhelming admiration for this artist. Matisse imagined and entirely created worlds superbly brought to life in his paintings.

He hung ornate backdrops of Moroccan textiles and laid hand-woven carpets on the floor. He set forged iron tables with goldfish in glass bowls, and dressed his serene and outrageously exotic models in gold- embroidered jackets and gauzy sequined skirts to depict a carefree harem or a super-charged and sensual hot-weather afternoon of delight.

From bare rooms, small rooms, plain interiors, he created a dreamy world and lavish paintings of great opulence. His health was faltering at the time, his years as a painter were fading, and yet these canvases were full of life, full of life force and sensuality.

This was my coup de foudre, a vision of Henri Matisse’s genius, and a true insight into a great artist’s daily life and six years of stunning creativity. These paintings are his legacy and heritage.

Matisse lived and painted at Villa le Reve from 1943 to 1949 when he moved back to Nice. He died in 1954.

"Nature accompanies me, exalts me.”–Pierre Matisse

“I would not get rid of my feelings by copying a tree exactly nor by drawing the leaves one by one in the current idiom. Only after I have identified myself with it, I have created an object that resembles the tree. The symbol of the tree.”–Henri Matisse

Matisse’s Villa le Reve, 261, Avenue Henri Matisse, Vence, Provence, is available for rent for artists, paintings groups and study groups, by the week or for the weekend. for details, contact Joëlle Audry : [email protected], or the Vence Tourist Office, [email protected].

The Matisse Museum, 164 Avenue des Arenes de Cimiez, Nice, www.musee-matisse-nice.org.

“The object is not so interesting in itself,” said Matisse. “It is the surroundings that bring the object alive. This is how I have worked my whole life, with the same objects that involve my spirit.”

PHOTO CREDITS:
Color photographs of Villa le Reve by Diane Dorrans Saeks, July 2009.

Black and white portrait of Matisse, and interiors by Helene Adant.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
‘Matisse at Villa le Reve’ by Marie-France Boyer, photography by Helene Adant (Thames & Hudson 2004.)

'Matisse, His Art and His Textiles', (Royal Academy of Arts, London 2004).

For further information: www.franceguide.com, and email [email protected]

CULTURAL ICONS: San Francisco Ballet’s Triumph of Beauty

Ballet Bliss: San Francisco Ballet’s current season is dance at its best


Hurtling Onward Into the Constant Now
Recently, I went with my friend Jean to see a matinee performance of extraordinary perfection by the San Francisco Ballet at the gilded San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.

We sat in the front row, orchestra, just millimeters from the first violin, centimeters from the gray-haired conductor, and mere inches, it seemed, from the dancers and their whirling tutus.

I’ve attended programs of the San Francisco Ballet for many years, and always adore the opening gala followed by seasons of innovation and reinvention of classic dance. But this afternoon’s program—an all-Balanchine trio that included ‘Serenade’, ‘Stravinsky Violin Concerto’ and ‘Theme and Variations—was imbued with captivating lyricism.

Every dancer on stage expressed such exquisite control and creativity, utter lissome beauty and heightened degree of emotional intelligence and Jean and I had to dash out into the sunlight for a quick breath of fresh air at each intermission. Perfection is rare in any art form, and we both felt inspired, giddy and thrilled. The gates of perception were thrown open.


The all-Balanchine program consisted of three ballets choreographed in America between 1934 and 1972. Each was simply staged, and each complex and elegant presentation was in a classical, romantic and pared-down modernist style, with simple monochromatic costumes and rigorously refined choreography.

I scribbled a few notes in the dark—‘noble and complex choreography’, ‘the choreographer designs complex patterns and structures across the stage’. And onward I wrote, ‘vortices of delight’, and ‘highly trained dancers, superbly disciplined, are at once tensile and powerful and exquisitely lithe and intuitive’. Clouds of blue tulle hovered in the air. It was at once order and chaos, ever-changing beauty and lasting moments. Exuberant and controlled, bravely leaping into the air, grouping and re-grouping, the dancers turned abstraction and musical inspiration into powerful order and inevitable logic.

It was ballet at its best.



The Importance of Feeding the Eye and Heart
I’ve been attending ballet performances since I was six, when my parents took me to see the Royal Ballet perform ‘Swan Lake’. Breath-taking. This highly trained and superb company at various times included Margot Fonteyn and Rudi Nureyev.

I later studied ballet for some years, along with immersing my growing brain in piano lessons from the great and divine Miss Maisie Kilkelly, and art instruction by the charismatic Robert Brett.

This same inspiration and structure, wild creativity balanced with discipline, still frame my life. “Be orderly in your life so that you can be creative and free in your creation,” said Gustav Flaubert.

Today more than ever, wherever in the world we are, it’s essential to continue to inspire the eye, deconstruct and reconstruct the brain with flashes of perfection and pattern, and creation of the highest level wherever they exist and whenever they appear.

The brain, the eye, the body, the skin, the ears all love and respond to beauty and perfection, strange movements forward, a glance back, and experimental as well as classical artistry and creativity. I attend the season of the San Francisco Opera, and dash to performances in Paris and London and where-ever I travel. Art is as essential as air.

Writers must be alert to all other arts. Designers can be inspired by ballet. Constant exposure to the arts, to classic and avant-garde culture, to opera and art and music of all kinds is essential to designers and artists, architects and antique dealers, creators, writers, composers and style-setters in every field. There’s the performance, but also the interplay of all the disciplines that create an opera or ballet or design or sculpture. So much to learn, to be inspired by.

“The company delivers performances where nothing is more engrossing than the choreography. The sense of selflessness is a crucial characteristic of good Balanchine style,” wrote New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay, on Feb 14’s edition. “The San Francisco dancers are a remarkably unmannered, elegant and grown-up company. The adult quality is impressive. Ballet elsewhere so often looks to be a matter for girls and boys.”

Watching and immersing myself in a ballet performance, I’m at once observing and experiencing the emotion of the virtuoso dancers, but also attuned to the ever-changing structure of a dance, the deft geometry of steps and movement across the stage, and the ensemble of costume design, set, lighting, and the mood created. My ear is following the violin or cello or cymbal, my eye is feasting on color and movement and abstract pattern. My brain follows the composition and structure, and my skin tingles with the evanescent beauty.

Doubtless the dry scent of the stage, and frissons of moving air from tutus and ballet slippers and whirling tulle stir memories of dancing class, the Paris Opera ballet, Margot Fonteyn’s lyricism, the Lyon ballet’s clashes, and the wildly erotic male dancers of the innovative Les Ballets de Monte Carlo.
In the profound creative terrain of Balanchine, for example I see the history of ballet re-invented, just as modern architecture re-evaluates classical architecture.


“Vanessa Zahorian has a rivetingly elegant physique, sparklingly precise legs and feet, a beautiful face offset by raven-black hair, and apparently complete technical accomplishment,” said Alastair Macaulay in the New York Times, Feb 14. “She switches effortlessly from sustained adagio to scintillating presto, and the fluent conception of legato behind everything she does helps to give her the pose of a rare artist.” – Critic Alastair Macaulay, New York Times, Feb 14 2010




San Francisco Ballet, the oldest professional ballet company in America, has emerged as a world-class arts organization since it was founded as the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1933. Initially, its primary purpose was to train dancers to appear in lavish, full-length opera productions. The company now performs it repertoire from January to May each year in San Francisco, and then presents programs around the world, including, recently, in Paris and in Beijing, to great acclaim.

San Francisco Ballet
Highlights of the season:

Program 4: through March 7, includes the poignant and emotional ‘Diving into the Lilacs’ with music by Tchaikovsky, and choreography by the great and expressive Yuri Possokhov.

Also, the rather abstract but captivating and entrancing ‘Into the Middle, Somewhat Elevated’ explores the vocabulary of ballet, with music by Thom Williams and choreography by William Forsythe.
Program 4 San Francisco Ballet premiere offers the exciting and sometimes jarring and tragic ‘Petrouchka’, music by Stravinsky, and choreography by Michel Fokine. This Ballets Russes classic dance fuses the history of ballet with the classical Russian puppet tale. This will be memorable.

Program 5: through March 28. ‘The Little Mermaid’ is a dramatic reinterpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1836 story. Music by Auerbach. United States premiere. This is not the cartoon-related concept, but rather more like ‘Swan Lake’ with fins instead of wings. Torment and haunting! Danish feminists detest this story. Let’s see if this Hamburg Ballet choreography can make the mermaid heroic and purposeful rather than merely mad and tragic.)

Program 6: through April 21, is a superb trio that includes the ‘Haffner’ Symphony, with dance by Helgi Tomasson, music by Mozart. It’s an abstract portrait of Mozartian refinement, through choreography. This program also offers the world premiere of Italian choreographer Renato Zanella’s new ballet. I can’t wait to see it.

Finally in this program, ‘Russian Seasons’, the profoundly classical choreography by Alexei Tatmansky, with composition by Desyatnikov. Lovely, reflective.

Program 7: through April 20, includes ‘Rush’ by Christopher Wheeldon to music by Martinu. This program features the world premiere of a new dance by San Francisco Ballet choreographer in residence, the great Yuri Possokhov (one of my favorite dancers).

I don’t always find humor in ballet very convincing (it’s often forced and feels astonishingly awkward and kitschy on stage)…there is ‘The Concert (Or, The Perils of Everybody’). I detest the name. Choreographer is Robbins, music by Chopin. I might love it. I might leave early.

Program 8: through May 9, is the full-length ‘Romeo & Juliet’, choreographed by Tomasson to Prokofiev’s music. I saw a preview at the opening night gala, and it was tender, classic, artful and exquisite. I adore the emotive and engaging music, and the stage sets for this presentation are poetic and redolent of romance and time. Doubtless I will also be thinking of Margot and Rudi, the most exquisite and profoundly touching duo in these roles. Blessings to them both, wherever they are (dancing in heaven?).


ARTISTS OF THE COMPANY: 2010 REPERTORY SEASON

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & PRINCIPAL CHOREOGRAPHER
Helgi Tomasson

PRINCIPAL DANCERS
Joan Boada, Frances Chung, Taras Domitro, Lorena Feijoo, Jaime Garcia Castilla, Tiit Helimets, Davit Karapetyan, Maria Kochetkova, Kristin Long, Vitor Luiz Rubén Martín Cintas, Pascal Molat, Gennadi Nedvigin, Damian Smith, Sofiane Sylve, Yuan Yuan Tan, Sarah Van Patten, Pierre-François Vilanoba, Katita Waldo, and Vanessa Zahorian.


All performances take place at the War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. For more information and to book tickets, www.sfballet.org.


Photography above includes images of:
San Francisco Ballet in Balanchine's Serenade (blue gowns); Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith in Balanchine's Stravinsky Violin Concerto (black leotard); Yuan Yuan Tan and Anthony Spaulding in Possokhov's Diving Into The Lilacs (black leotard, pink skirt); Sofiane Sylve in Ratmansky's Russian Seasons (red emsemble, in air); Katita Waldo and Damian Smith in Wheeldon's Rush (red hair, black tights): Sarah Van Patten and Pierre-François Vilanoba in Tomasson's Romeo & Juliet.

Photo credits:
All photography here courtesy the San Francisco Ballet. Photography by Chris Hardy and Erik Tomasson.