Swimmer (ballet) Swimmer (ballet) Swimmer is a 42-minute ballet made by Yuri Possokhov set to music he commissioned from Shinji Eshima, plus existing music by Kathleen Brennan, Gavin Bryars and Tom Waits, for the San Francisco Ballet. The première took place on Friday, 10 April 2015 at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco and it was revived by the company in 2016. Based on the 1964 short story by John Cheever called "The Swimmer," it incorporates the choreographer's vision of the United States while growing up in the Soviet Union. Other sources of inspiration included Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, J.D. Salinger’s The
San Francisco Ballet the space of a single week in the UNited We Dance Festival. The 49-member orchestra accompanies SF Ballet throughout its winter and spring repertory seasons. It also performs apart from the Company; it debuted solely as an orchestra in 1979 at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco's War Memorial Veterans Building, playing a program that included works by Haydn, Ives, and Vivaldi. The SFBO is composed of 49 members and headed by Martin West, music director and conductor. As of October 2013, the musicians and staff included: The orchestra was led by Denis de Coteau from 1975 until 1998, when