Fusion of Myth and Machine: Mere Mortals Closes the Season at the Edge of Invention
As Artistic Director Tamara Rojo took the reins, Aszure Barton became the first female choreographer commissioned in San Francisco Ballet’s history to create a full-length ballet. Mere Mortals opened Rojo’s inaugural season and made its world premiere on January 26, 2024. I sat in the audience that night, completely blown away.
On April 24, 2026, Mere Mortals returned for a second season—just as stunning, unsettling, and mesmerizing as memory had promised. Once again, my senses were provoked by this groundbreaking production: choreography, music, staging, lighting, costume—every element working in concert, visually striking and intellectually stirring in an awe-inspiring display.
The storyline draws from the Greek mythology of Pandora and Prometheus. When Pandora opened the jar, it released evils and miseries into the world, leaving only Elpis—Hope—trapped inside. Here, the ancient figures of Pandora, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Hope are reborn, their myth reframed in an era shadowed by artificial intelligence and advancing technology—where curiosity is no longer solely human, and consequences may no longer be containable. Pandora’s Box feels less like distant legend and more like a question placed directly into our own hands: What happens when creation outruns its creator?
It is a sensory explosion. Floating Points (Sam Shepherd)’s electronic sound pulses like circuitry layered over the classic acoustic chamber orchestra under the baton of Martin West; the score unfolds in richly textured strata, where themes of mystic figures, fragile humans, and awakening machines emerge, evolve, and ultimately collide—like worlds learning to speak the same language, turbulently.
Hamil Industries’ visuals cascade like data streams, cycling through repeated motifs of light, movement and sound—starry galaxies, blazing sunlight, atomic bursts, red smoke permeating, blue clouds rolling, mountains and sea, tectonic plates shifting. It becomes a whirlwind of colors, textures, and colliding images, punctuated by sudden returns to a blackened stage marked only by a simple light frame or a quiet beam cutting through the dark.
Michelle Jank’s sculptural overcoats and black-and-gold latex like unitards clad bodies that stretch beyond classical vocabulary into forms that feel feral, mechanical, yet startlingly human—like living sculptures in motion. Many of the fabrics were sourced from Bay Area thrift stores, a quiet nod to sustainability and to the human community threaded through the ballet’s themes.
Nikisha Fogo’s Pandora, Joseph Walsh’s Prometheus, Parker Garrison’s Epimetheus, and Wei Wang’s Hope were extraordinary presences on stage. There were moments when Nikisha’s feral movements felt almost instinctual, her limbs seeming born to move with the lightness and agility of an untamed creature. Joseph and Parker marched in striking synchrony—broad shoulders framed by long, sweeping coats—yet their personalities remained unmistakably distinct: Prometheus carried defiance, Epimetheus recklessness and curiosity, with even flashes of playful brotherhood between them. Wei Wang, as Hope, embodied raw emotion—pure, primitive, and vulnerable—shifting seamlessly from the fragile energy of a newborn to the resilient spirit of youth and the quiet strength of a fully formed human hope.
Hand movements return as a repeating motif throughout the performance—from dancers’ hands waving, flashing, and reaching, to projected images of hands crossing and rising upward. Stunning yet alarming, the imagery becomes language, and that language carries warning. Hands are instruments of creation, yet equally capable of destruction. Watching it feels like standing at the edge of invention—awed by possibility, yet aware that these same hands now build the codes, machines, and artificial minds that may one day move beyond us. In the age of AI, the gesture of a hand is no longer just human—it is the origin of what we create, and the question of what we may no longer control.
Mere Mortals stands as a fitting masterpiece to close the season—an unforgettable fusion of myth and machine—running through May 2 at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco.