Yuan Yuan Tan’s 20 stellar years at S.F. Ballet

“I am happy to still dance a lot,” says Yuan Yuan Tan, here outside the Opera House. “My body is still responsive.” “I am happy to still dance a lot,” says Yuan Yuan Tan, here outside the Opera House. “My body is still responsive.” Photo: Scott Strazzante / Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Scott Strazzante / Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Yuan Yuan Tan’s 20 stellar years at S.F. Ballet 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

On an autumn afternoon 20 years ago, Yuan Yuan Tan arrived in town speaking no English, bearing a single suitcase and alarmingly little poundage on her 5-foot-4 frame. Only a few weeks later, she made her San Francisco Ballet debut as Sugar Plum in a midweek “Nutcracker” matinee, and those of us who were present rubbed our critical eyes in disbelief. Tan soon confirmed her talents with a dazzling “Esmeralda” pas de deux in the season opening gala.

She came here as a guest artist. But those two performances sufficed: Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson offered her a soloist contract on the condition that she put on some weight. When she asked him, “How much,” he replied, “I will tell you when it is enough.”

Two decades later, Tan remains the only Chinese-born ballerina to achieve international stature. The years have treated her kindly, and when not in San Francisco, you might find her guesting in Hamburg or Beijing, or posing for a glossy magazine spread. The camera adores her as much as the audience.

In the midst of rehearsals for the San Francisco Ballet’s revival of Jerome Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering,” Tan sits for an interview in a small office in the Chris Hellman Center for Dance. She is infinitely affable, and her English gets right to the point. What kind of wisdom accrues to a dancer at the peak of her profession?

“I have learned,” the Shanghai native says in a singing tone that precludes irony, “to be patient. Things don’t always happen the way one wishes they would. A career takes time, the same as in real life. But I am happy to still dance a lot. My body is still responsive. I have been careful not to push too much.”

Thus, Tan’s omnipresence on the season schedule. Her current workload, framed by performances of “Giselle” and “Romeo and Juliet,” includes ballets by Tomasson, Robbins, George Balanchine, Marius Petipa, Liam Scarlett, Alexei Ratmansky and resident choreographer Yuri Possokhov, who she feels has peered closely into her soul.

She danced Juliet in his farewell performance. He cast her in his first San Francisco Ballet commission, “Magrittomania.” She deeply stirred audiences in his “RAkU” earlier this season. And she will participate in the premiere of Possokhov’s upcoming “Swimmer.”

A summary of Tan’s rise for the past two decades suggests that she has been blessed. Talent, of course, had everything to do with it. And so did Tomasson, always eager to recruit dancers with promise, wherever he found them.

Tipped off by a friend about this extraordinary teenager, he caught Tan at the Fifth International Ballet Competition in Paris in 1992, when she took the gold medal, junior division. A late starter, despite parental reservations she had entered the Shanghai Dancing School at 12 and had begun a scholarship at Stuttgart’s John Cranko School when she accepted the bedazzled Tomasson’s offer to dance here.

Early challenges

That first season, he threw several repertory challenges at Tan, not least Balanchine’s “Violin Concerto” and “Bugaku.” She giggles as she recalls the experience. “I had never heard Stravinsky’s music or seen Balanchine. I wondered what was going on. Counting the phrases in Chinese was not easy.”

Tomasson promoted Tan to principal in 1997, and the following year, a new “Swan Lake” represented her first experience with a Romantic classic. It was, as Tan will admit, a first stab at what has become a more rounded characterization.

Tan might have coasted on her gorgeous proportions, remarkable buoyancy, superb powers of articulation and extremities that seem to reach for the ideal. But this career has been a constant learning process.

In a company rehearsal of “Dances at a Gathering,” while other dancers seemed to relax a bit, Tan spent the time polishing a duet with partner Carlos Quenedit. The palms at the end of their stretched arms touched like passing feathers before she fell into his arms. It’s one of those obsessive Robbins details that make the ballet a wonder.

Tan is still refining her repertory. This year, she finally felt satisfied with her interpretation of Giselle. “This happy little bumblebee flits around and forgets she has heart trouble until she goes mad. I must be careful with the transition. Then in the second act, when Giselle returns from the dead, she must defy gravity.”

As Tan looks back on the last two decades, she cites a few individuals who have meant something special in her evolution. In addition to Tomasson’s vision of what she could be, the dancer mentions now-retired Damian Smith.

“For 19 years, he was a great friend and a fantastic partner,” said Tan. “We would review the steps and just do them. We were comfortable together from day one. With Damian, it was always the steps that tell the story.”

'Mermaid’ a highlight

She also praises Christopher Wheeldon, who has made eight ballets for her. But Tan reserves a special place in her personal pantheon for John Neumeier, the artistic director of Germany’s Hamburg Ballet. His “Little Mermaid” here in 2010 afforded the dancer an artistic satisfaction she had not experienced previously and generated a performance that marked a career high. Neumeier used Tan’s ethereal beauty and willowy technique in the service of a profound expression of intense spiritual longing.

“John gets into your head,” Tan says. “He makes you want to do more, to dedicate yourself to being onstage. His ballet made me feel inspired.”

Tan hasn’t yet done it all. She still covets Neumeier’s “Lady of the Camellias,” Kenneth Macmillan’s “Manon” and a complete “Bayadère.” But at least she finally danced in Cranko’s “Onegin,” a video clip of which had obsessed her since her school days.

Tan has not forgotten her roots. She had much to do with facilitating the San Francisco Ballet’s historic tour to China in 2009, and she has pledged “to serve as a bridge for dance between China and the United States.” She performs several times a year in her native land and frequently participates in ballet competition juries.

“There is great talent now in China and good training,” Tan says. “The problem is that they have little repertoire to dance and little access to international stages. You have to be very focused to believe in yourself and you can do it.”

Despite all that magazine exposure, Tan has imposed a limit in an area of her career that has attracted other dancers. “I just don’t do much social media. No, it is more important,” she says, “to strike a balance between ballet and real life.”

That, truly, is wisdom.

Allan Ulrich is The San Francisco Chronicle’s dance correspondent.

San Francisco Ballet: Through May 10. $62-$302. War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave., S.F. (415) 865-2000. www.sfballet.org.