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Pointe follows San Francisco Ballet principal Yuan Yuan Tan through a demanding day.
March 20 is not a typical day in the life of Yuan Yuan Tan. Tonight she will dance Kitri in Don Quixote, but instead of taking morning class, she attends the opening ceremonies of the Asian Art Museum at City Hall in San Francisco. Tan is no stranger to being in the spotlight; on the contrary, she joined San Francisco Ballet as a soloist in 1995 and has been performing as principal dancer since 1997. At 27, she's already danced the lead roles in Giselle, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and Othello (which will air on PBS this summer; see page 20).
Tan is a seasoned professional and seems to take this more-than-14-hour-long day in stride.
Normally, Tan's day would begin with company class at 11 am, but today she opts to join Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson at the museum's opening reception. Tan is happy to represent the People's Republic of China, her native country, at public events when she can. In fact, she considers it quite an honor. In the past, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and President Bill Clinton have both invited her to other events in honor of guests from China.
At 1 pm, back at the ballet studio, Tan makes a quick phone call before a rehearsal of Nanna's Lied, a ballet originally created byTomasson in 1993. Tan has performed the role of Nanna before and now revisits the choreography with fellow company members Julie Diana and Sarah Van Patten, who have arrived early to stretch and review a taped version of the piece, as performed by Tina LeBlanc in 2000.
Ashley Wheater, ballet master and assistant to the artistic director, explains that all three dancers will work on the ending solo. Tan relishes the challenge of performing multilayered roles. "[When performing] you have to think about how you...