S.F. Ballet Program 6 review: New territory

I could have used a road map to view Ashley Page's "Guide to Strange Places," which San Francisco Ballet premiered Friday night at the War Memorial Opera House, but unfortunately it wasn't until much later that I realized that there actually was a map in front of us nearly the whole time, a guide to parts unknown and unfathomable.

Urged on by the thumping, pulsing score of the same name by John Adams, the 18 dancers ricocheted off each other in quartets and pairs, showing off finely tuned musculature in Jon Morrell's body-hugging tops and shorts in various midnight shades of ruby, sapphire and emerald.

At the start, Frances Chung and Pascal Molat buzzed through complex machinations against a scrim painted like a vast road leading into darkness. That quickly gave way to scattered clusters of bodies pulsating with limb-cracking speed yet dwarfed by Morrell's burning weblike backdrop (lit by David Finn), which looked both ambiguously spidery and geometrically manmade. It is in fact a road map, though Page has said he prefers not to say to which strange place (suffice it to say that it is a highly recognizable location for many Bay Area audience members).

S.F. Ballet Program 6 review: New territory