{"id":239364,"date":"2026-03-27T15:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T15:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/239364\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T15:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T15:35:07","slug":"val-caniparoli-on-leaving-san-francisco-ballet-to-focus-on-choreography-after-more-than-five-decades-onstage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/239364\/","title":{"rendered":"Val Caniparoli on Leaving San Francisco Ballet to Focus on Choreography\u2014After More Than Five Decades Onstage"},"content":{"rendered":"

For 53 years, San Francisco Ballet audiences have watched\u00a0Val Caniparoli<\/a>\u00a0disappear into a character, whether the eccentric Drosselmeyer in\u00a0The Nutcracker, the titular errant knight in\u00a0Don Quixote, or the menacing Herod in Arthur Pita\u2019s\u00a0Salome. A dancer with the company since 1973 and a principal character dancer since 1985, he\u2019s also a prolific choreographer. Caniparoli has created more than 20 works for SFB\u2014notably\u00a0Lambarena\u00a0in 1995 and\u00a0Ibsen\u2019s House\u00a0in 2008\u2014and has been resident choreographer not only there but also at Tulsa Ballet and Ballet West. His more than 150 works for companies around the world include\u00a0five different productions of\u00a0The Nutcracker.<\/a><\/p>\n

Caniparoli will give his final performance with SFB in\u00a0Don Quixote, on March 28. Even after five decades, he\u2019s not retiring. Instead, he\u2019ll shift his entire focus to choreography.<\/p>\n

Why are you leaving SFB now?
I could go on forever, but I\u2019ve got so many other things I need to do. I wasn\u2019t forced out, I just decided it was the right time. I told [SFB artistic director] Tamara [Rojo] it\u2019s not like I\u2019m leaving the world. I\u2019m still in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

What was your first impression of SFB?
I didn\u2019t have enough of an idea what ballet was to have a real impression. I started really late\u2014I think I was 20. I was studying music and theater at Washington University, and a ballet company came through and gave us all a class. I had never taken ballet, but the teacher pushed me to think about it. I drove to San Francisco and auditioned for the school. I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise.<\/p>\n

How long were you in the school, then, before joining the company?
Oh, a year, maybe less. It was really quick. Because I had a theater background, I got all the character roles right away. So I\u2019m doing the same roles now that I did when I was in my 20s.<\/p>\n

Looking back, are there moments as a dancer that stand out to you?
Absolutely. Being chosen for major dancing roles. A lot of choreographers or stagers pick from class, and I was not a classroom dancer. But Jerome Robbins gave me a leading role in\u00a0Moves,\u00a0and I was picked for a major role in\u00a0Sunset, by Paul Taylor. Francia Russell cast me in Melancholic in\u00a0Four Temperaments. And I danced with Paula Tracy in Michael Smuin\u2019s ballets.<\/p>\n

\"ValVal Caniparoli in the studio. Photo by Erik Tomasson, courtesy San Francisco Ballet.<\/p>\n

Why did you start choreographing?
[Maurice] B\u00e9jart had come and done some works, and I was intrigued by the process. I realized I had been trained for this by studying theater, music, directing, and writing. So I experimented on schools in the area. My big break came from [former Pacific Northwest Ballet co-artistic director] Francia Russell. She said, \u201cPacific Northwest Ballet has this program\u2014it\u2019s low-tech and the choreographers are new. Are you interested?\u201d That ballet was\u00a0Street Songs, in 1980, and it\u2019s still done to this day.<\/p>\n

When did you start choreographing for SFB?
Helgi [T\u00f3masson] and Michael [Smuin] asked me to choreograph for San Francisco Ballet\u2019s Stravinsky Festival in 1982.\u00a0Love-Lies-Bleeding\u00a0was my first work for the company. It went well, but some of the reviews weren\u2019t kind. I had breakfast downtown with my parents, who had come to town to see it, and we ran into Erik Bruhn. He said, \u201cDon\u2019t listen to them. You\u2019ve got talent. Learn your craft and keep going.\u201d That encouragement\u2014I\u2019ll never forget it.<\/p>\n

Has your experience as a principal character dancer impacted how you create roles in your choreography?
I always say that I can only do what I know. Whatever I do has storytelling or character development in it. Because that\u2019s what I know: action, reaction. Speaking in sentences, even though you\u2019re not talking. I can\u2019t duplicate what Balanchine did, or even Helgi, because I have a different background, so I use that in my favor.<\/p>\n

How did your choreography career expand beyond SFB?
I mailed out videos\u2014because we didn\u2019t have computers\u2014to companies. It didn\u2019t have an effect right away, but I kept sending them out. Eventually, sometimes 10 years later, I\u2019d get an offer. It just kept building, even until now, when I\u2019m getting more offers than I\u2019ve ever gotten.<\/p>\n

What are your future plans?
The major one is a new full-length for National Ballet of Canada. It\u2019s a retelling of\u00a0Copp\u00e9lia\u00a0in my own way, with my own synopsis. Right after my last performance here, I\u2019m going to work with Richmond Ballet on a brand-new work with the Goat Rodeo recordings of Yo-Yo Ma. And there are a lot of revivals:\u00a0Jekyll & Hyde, Lady of the Camellias, Lambarena, The Lottery\u00a0are all being asked about. Having more freedom to focus on that was important to me.<\/p>\n

Do you think about your legacy?
I don\u2019t. I just want to keep working. Like I always say, youth has no patent on relevancy. I\u2019ve got a lot of things that I still need to say in choreography. That drives me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 53 years, San Francisco Ballet audiences have watched\u00a0Val Caniparoli\u00a0disappear into a character, whether the eccentric Drosselmeyer in\u00a0The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,26971,103,102,104,106,105,107758],"class_list":["post-239364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-ballet","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-val-caniparoli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}