SF Ballet’s ‘Mere Mortals,’ bold reimagining of ancient parable, returns in April

With poignant storytelling, exploring Pandora’s myth with raw emotion and breathtaking artistry, the ballet puts a modern twist on Pandora’s ancient story.

Instead of Pandora letting loose the evil and misery of the world when she opens the infamous jar — a 16th-century mistranslation changed the jar to the box most often associated with Pandora — she releases artificial intelligence.

The production, which launched the 2024 repertory season and is the first fully curated by artistic director Tamara Rojo, is an immersive sensory experience and the first full-length work by a female choreographer that the company has commissioned.

Barton, who is known for ballets that showcase high-powered human motion laced with expressive power, has, in “Mere Mortals,” taken those elements to a fresh, thought-provoking level that keeps the audience guessing about matters such as good and evil, gender identity and what the future holds.

Flashing strobe lights, a thick ground-based mist and floating particles meant to represent the character “Hope” — the only thing left in the jar after Pandora opens it — are the first palpable forces the senses experience when the curtain rises.

Accompanying those forces is an ominous yet relatively relaxed rhythm that Shepherd, who is also known as Floating Points, blends into the atmosphere.

Soon, a propulsive beat resounds, and the mythical god Prometheus — on opening night, the commanding principal dancer Isaac Hernández — appears to zestfully twist, turn and jump for joy over his theft of fire, which he playfully gives to humans.

The fire that Prometheus stole from the gods flares from multiple projection screens, as does the displeasure of an unseen, metaphorically depicted Zeus. The latter seemingly stirs the corps de ballet — dressed in uniformly black gender-neutral costumes designed by Barton’s frequent collaborator Michelle Jank — into a marching frenzy that’s matched by a distinctly martial part of the score.

A score infused with electronic instruments works well for such lively passages, which also memorably included when the ensemble lifts the principal characters, who have assumed crucifix-like postures, and swirls them around the stage in a swarm of humanity.

But Shepherd’s first-ever ballet score, appealingly interpreted by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra — led by music director Martin West — also weaves in more traditional instrumentation, especially strings, for the less animated scenes in the production.

Pandora, who is a new, savvy human species, is often at the center of the more moving passages of “Mere Mortals,” and principal dancer Jennifer Stahl offers a lithe, winning performance in that role. Pandora represents progress and learning, and Stahl celebrates the possibilities of AI with stylish exuberance.

In one scene, Stahl glides across the stage, a movement that a white screen projects as her silhouette, one of the many nice touches that the visual communication firm Hamill Industries created for this work.

Stahl also joins Parker Garrison, who portrayed Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus — upon whom Zeus has bestowed Pandora — in a sublime pas de deux that unfurls about 50 minutes into the hourlong-plus production. The blissful pas de deux offers no hint that the pair has also disobeyed Zeus’ command and opened the jar.

Hope reappears as an androgynous human figure compellingly occupied by principal dancer Wei Wang. His most spectacular reintroduction is near the end of the ballet when, in a form-fitting, shimmering gold outfit, Wang’s fluid movements point the way forward from the uncertainties of an unleashed, rapidly developing technology.

And that spectacle seems to encourage the ensemble to miraculously shed its attire of darkness for golden garb identical to Hope’s new look and suggests a bright future — a fate this bold opus is also bound to enjoy.