San Francisco Ballet drew a sold-out crowd Friday to its “Nite Out” festivities, which combined a Q&A with a queer-identifying dancer and an after party with fashion, cocktails, and mingling with the LGBTQIA+ community. A $99 ticket kicked off the evening with a pre-performance talk featuring Nicolas Blanc, once a principal dancer with SF Ballet who now returns as a choreographer for his work “Gateway to the Sun.”
As a gay man who spent many years working in Castro nightlife, I felt all at once refreshed and disappointed that a queer-themed event didn’t include Jell-O shots and throwing dollar bills at drag queens while shouting “slay gurl!” This was one of those rare sophisticated evenings with people who aren’t necessarily ballet aficionados, but fine arts tourists like me who enjoy a fancy night out.
The gist of Blanc’s talk emphasized more of the work itself — go figure — while lightly touching on same-gender partnering in “Gateway to the Sun” and its future in ballet generally: “I think we need to keep going with it,” Blanc said. “I think there are many, many [same-gender] stories that could be translated into dance. And current stories, not necessarily 19th-century stories.”
“Nite Out” is an ongoing series by the SF Ballet that’s been on pause since 2019, and it incorporates the LGBTQIA+ community into regularly-scheduled ballet shows, highlighting queer voices in dance and staging post-show soirees. The performances themselves aren’t altogether connected to the event — from what I can see anyway — but the nights they pick have some logic; The next one on April 7 promises a Cinderella-themed drag ball following Christopher Wheeldon’s work of the same name.
A promotional clip of “Nite Out” by SF Ballet in 2019.
The three dances we saw Friday were all choreographed by people alive today, an aspect some attendees told me they loved. As part of SF Ballet’s next@90 festival, the evening’s programming also gave us world premieres of Claudia Schreier’s “Kin” and Yuri Possokhov’s “Violin Concerto.” Several said they really vibed with Schreier’s work, but naturally, I couldn’t tear my eyes off that dress in “Violin Concerto.”
I loved Friday’s show overall, but I wish it took queer elements further than some same-gendered dancing. There’s more exciting boundary pushing with Ballet22, an Oakland-based dance corps whose founding mission in 2020 was to correct “a lack of representation and opportunities in the ballet field for men, mxn, transgender, and non binary artists to perform professionally ‘en pointe’,” referring to pointy shoes that keep dancers — traditionally women — twirling on their tippy toes.
Likewise, my favorite human in this genre is James B. Whiteside, a principal dancer with New York-based American Ballet Theatre who loves to don a pair of heels, tutu or party dress when the occasion calls for it. (Some relevant excerpts from his saucy “almost-memoir” can be read here.)
Friday’s activities still had plenty of gayness, albeit mostly in a fabulously-dressed audience and after-party goers. Sheer shirts, wedding vests, and body harnesses abound, albeit no outfit stood out more than attendee J’aime Castro in a head-to-toe Ramses costume. At intermission, I poked my friend and asked if she could flag Castro down like a mascot posing for photos at an AT&T Park ballgame. This turned out pretty close to the mark: Castro solicited donations when I asked for a picture, accepting cash or Zelle.
For me, the night hit its stride at The Madrigal, an upscale bar that served cocktails and bougie after-party vibes as part of the ballet ticket price. It’s probably trite to say the phrase “getting back to normal” but this still rings true for me: the pandemic gutted my social network and along with it a desire for ephemeral, casual conversation in bars. In some sense, these habits simply need relearning, and I felt gratified mingling with people in the same boat who just wanted to connect with familiar faces and meet new ones. Likeminded conversation and laughs was the theme of the night, and I enjoyed doing it outside the traditional confines of Castro and SoMa.
The next “Nite Out” Cinderella-themed event on April 7 has details TBA: more information can be found in a press release here, and we expect the SF Ballet’s event page details will expand when ticket sales open March 1, 2023.
Tickets are $99 when you enter code “NITEOUT” when checking out on a designated event night.
Saul Sugarman is editor in chief of The Bold Italic.
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