What Am I Seeing? Mark Morris, a McArthur Foundation fellow and one of the world’s most influential living choreographers, has made more works for SF Ballet than for any other ballet company in the world. Sandpaper Ballet, created here in 1999, is a cleverly tongue-in-cheek ballet exemplary of his signature musical sensibility, with bodies on stage articulating different parts of the score. Its bright green Isaac Mizrahi costumes add a surrealist element to this quirky ballet.
What am I hearing? A selection of songs by composer Leroy Anderson. If the name isn’t familiar, the music will be, as Anderson was the composer of light orchestral works like Fiddle Faddle, The Typewriter Song, and, most famously, Sleigh Ride, which have made their way out of the concert hall and on to radios and TV screens around the world.
What should I look for? Notice the formation the dancers are in at the very beginning, when the curtain opens. They’ll return to this grid over and over—it serves as a kind of home base or structural reset as the music changes. Also, the overture is distinctive (and I don’t want to give it away!). But think about how it impacts your experience of the dance to hear this particular song right before the curtain goes up.