With ‘On the Move,’ City Ballet keeps on forging ahead

The “On the Move” dance production launches City Ballet of San Diego’s 29th anniversary season and the promise of four stage productions, including the full-length “Don Quixote” and “The Nutcracker.”

The show will be staged at the 240-seat Horton Grand Theatre, a venue in which the company has never before performed, at a time when the ballet season typically breaks for the summer.

But this year, pausing is not an option. In fact, “On the Move” could also serve as the company’s mission statement.

City Ballet has forged ahead with performances, offering digital and live shows despite the challenges imposed by the pandemic.

There also was the recent news that the historic Spreckels Theatre, where the company has performed its major works to a devoted audience for more than a decade, has been sold to new owners and will undergo renovations through 2021.

City Ballet is unique in that it’s a family operated organization, founded in 1993 by married dance professionals Steven and Elizabeth Wistrich, who work together with daughter and principal ballerina Ariana Gonzalez and her husband, choreographer-dancer Geoff Gonzalez.

On a recent July weekend, in an industrial, Kearny Mesa dance studio, City Ballet rehearsed for its upcoming “On the Move” performance.

“It’s the first time Geoff and I are in charge of something and the example we have is a lot to live up to,” Ariana Gonzalez says. “We want to do right by the dancers and continue the legacy that has been set before us for all these years.”

The dance studio is warm, so the door leading to a parking lot is left open, and the dancers, dressed casually in shorts and T-shirts, rehearse alone and in groups, lifting up on satin pointe shoes and watching themselves and each other reflected against floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

Geoff Gonzalez has choreographed two works for “On the Move,” both performed to music by composer Philip Glass.

The theme of the dance he has titled “Unbroken” is inspired by the idea of a mosaic shattering and then being pieced together to create a work of art “more beautiful than before.”

The second work, “Within the Hourglass Desert,” is a tribute to the short window of time that career dancers have to perform their craft.

It’s an ambitious effort that includes a poignant pas de deux, or duet, danced by Ariana Gonzalez and Brazilian principal dancer Iago Breschi.

In the studio, Geoff Gonzalez hits the play button on a black boombox and as a sensual, melancholy strain of music plays, he demonstrates lifting Ariana into the air, turning her completely upside down and then cradling her in his arms. Ariana, graceful and unflustered, appears capable of floating in space.

“We can make it look light and control the timing,” Geoff Gonzalez says encouragingly to Breschi, a tall, technically proficient dancer who effortlessly repeats the movement phrase and lifts Ariana above his head.

“High, as high as you can go,” urges Geoff Gonzalez. “Now, let her slip through your fingers. That’s wonderful, that’s excellent.”

“I used the elements of an hourglass to create a dramatic story,” he explains. “Imagine living inside an hourglass and what it would be like to experience turmoil, you would be flipped over and displaced, then flipped and relocated back.”

At times, Geoff Gonzalez stops in his tracks and stares briefly at the floor before continuing.

“I watch it all in my head and construct it before I transform it into physical space,” he says. “I like to dance it, too, so I can fully feel it.”

“On the Move” is meant to maintain the momentum that City Ballet has generated, at a time when arts organizations consider a future that depends upon the survival of the fittest.

Geoff Gonzalez wants every dancer to exhibit “fist power.”

“It’s like when you watch a boxer walk into a ring and they look all tough,” he says. “It all comes down to their punching power. These dancers all have a specific fist power that I want to highlight, so you see the variety, the potential and the growth of the company. What I appreciate most is that we do this as a family and whatever life we can continue to have in the arts is still my focus.”

City Ballet presents “On the Move”

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Where: Horton Grand Theatre, 444 Fourth Ave., San Diego

Tickets: $29-$49

Online: cityballet.org