Twyla Tharp Dance

Twyla Tharp Dance
Photo Mark Seliger

Cal Performances presents
Twyla Tharp Dance
Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley
February 7th, 2025

It is always special when viewers get to experience a beloved artist or arts institution’s major milestone. And it becomes even more significant when the occasion is as giant as a sixty-year anniversary. This past Friday evening, Cal Performances patrons bore witness to such an event, the Diamond Jubilee of Twyla Tharp Dance! The evening was all about beautiful movement, performed beautifully. The company brought two physical wonders to the Zellerbach stage – 1998’s Diabelli and the West Coast premiere of 2025’s SLACKTIDE. A brilliant double bill, each with live music, to commemorate six decades of intoxicating, boundary-pushing dance.

With Diabelli, Tharp created a comprehensive statement of physicality. Think of any kind of human movement, and in some form, it’s likely present in this dance. Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, a collection of thirty-three short piano works inspired by composer Anton Diabelli, served as the tour de force’s score. And with each of those thirty-three compositions, it was impossible to predict what might be coming next. 

Dancers, clad in tuxedo jumpsuits, cycled through classical vocabulary and old-school jazz. There was partnered ballroom waltzes and the brush, hop, brush, hop of Broadway tap. Contact-improvisation fueled duets imbued the scene, as did acrobatics, square dance, jitterbug and jive. A dramatization of fisticuffs unfolded along with kid’s games of leapfrog and ring around the rosie. Modern sautés, jazzy pas de boureés, effacé, and more. It was a thorough dissertation on movement, and such fun to watch!

Diabelli is a true ensemble work - no lead dancers - allowing the star of the show to be the physical syntax. Speed fluctuations, crescendo and dynamic change (musically and choreographically) provided additional variety, though at close to one-hour, the piece is a tad long. Of course, using existing music in its entirety means the length of a piece is pre-determined. But even so, Diabelli does lag a bit in the middle. And the shorter variations can give a ‘stop/start’ vibe that affects overall fluidity. Having said that, there is no denying that Tharp’s Diabelli is a modern masterwork where the audience can revel in gorgeous phrase material, incomparably danced by breathtaking performers.

Even more beauty and sumptuousness awaited with Tharp’s new work SLACKTIDE, a conversation with Philip Glass’ composition Aguas da Amazonia. With both titles, water and water-themes seemed close at hand. Looking up the official definition of the term slack tide, words describing water as ‘still’ or ‘unstressed’ are common findings. The company emerged from the wings with that exact intention, moving in slow and stop motion. And as the tempo steadily increased, so too did curvy, swirly positions. Another example of deep, physical rigor, SLACKTIDE referenced percussive dance traditions and tactile footwork. Whirling, serpentine circuits were everywhere, including the atypical route of traveling backwards in space. A journey into the unknown, the uncertain. 

Many of SLACKTIDE’s positions and formations were familiar from Diabelli, though much distinguished it as a very different piece. Certainly Glass’ music, but also the changeable lighting design (by Justin Townsend) projected on the back cyclorama. Every so often, the screen would transform from one lush set of colors to another. A bright canary yellow morphed into a vibrant blue. Ombre purples led to a rich indigo that soon became light pink. The dramatic color shifts provided frames and containers that, like Tharp’s choreography, were alive with texture and different atmospheric tones. What an amazing night of contemporary dance!

 

San Francisco Ballet - "Manon"

San Francisco Ballet in MacMillan's Manon
Photo Lindsay Thomas

San Francisco Ballet
Manon
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
February 1st, 2025

I’ve never seen the full-length Manon before, and because of its difficult narrative themes, I was unsure about San Francisco Ballet’s first program of the 2025 season. As I expected, there were plenty of the scenes and interactions that were tough to watch. Inequitable class and gender dynamics, violence, abuses of power, passing women around like property – moments of shock, dismay and disbelief. But if ballet fans are being honest, most narrative ballets are full of these injustices. Romeo & Juliet, Swan Lake, Giselle - if you think about each story arc, rough themes are everywhere. Maybe with those ballets being so much more common, audiences have become somewhat anesthetized to the plotpoints. Make no mistake, they are ever present.

I could just leave it there, and maybe should leave it there. But on Saturday night, I also saw something happening with an institution I’ve written about for fifteen years: a clear and welcome expansion of SFB’s choreographic lineage. Not with the addition of Manon to their repertoire, but because the company is clearly taking a deeper dive into the choreography of Sir Kenneth MacMillan (who premiered Manon in 1974): steps, phrases, partnering and style. MacMillan’s movement and physicality very much suit this company, and I hope they continue to cultivate a richer relationship with it. So what follows doesn’t comment any further on Manon’s fraught narrative, nor highlight particular portrayals from closing night’s cast; and instead focuses solely on ballet vocabulary and physical syntax. 

As the ballet’s dance variations got underway, it was undeniable that footwork and foot placement are critical to any MacMillan repertory. Hops were buoyant yet taken from a flat position, or from demi-pointe; coupé positioning of the foot (in front and in back) was prevalent. Foot percussion abounded as well, again with the sole of the foot and with the top of the pointe shoe. At times, the petit allegro had a very Bournonville flair to it. 

High extensions and bravado jumps definitely occurred (hello Italian changement), but it was leg extensions that were much lower – in arabesque and in attitude – that were the norm. Positions weren’t meant to be showy; the movement and postures were all about elegance and grace. Directional changes were sharp, whether it be an arm, the head or the entire body in détourné or fouetté. Unison phrases impressed, though the men tended to be a little more together than the women. 

An overarching throughline from phrase to phrase, principal solos to corps ensembles, was how clean everything was. The choreography was clear and precise, and it was performed with the same exactitude. Sequences weren’t filled with extraneous stuff or fussy embellishments. And the movement demanded a special sustained control and attention to legato – the company was more than up to the task.

One last thought about production value. For some reason, the set changes on closing night (maybe throughout the run as well?) lacked a sense of urgency, to be sure. In fact, one scene change near the end of Act III went on so long that it almost seemed like the orchestra had run out of interlude music. Not sure what might have been happening but generally speaking, SFB excels in that arena. Perhaps an anomaly.

 

San Francisco Ballet - Opening Night Gala

San Francisco Ballet
2025 Opening Night Gala
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
January 22, 2025

It was not lost on San Francisco Ballet patrons that this year’s opening night gala fell on an auspicious date – January two, two. An ideal frame to launch the company’s 2025 season, under the Artistic Direction of Tamara Rojo. Gala performances often take a ‘sampler’ style format, allowing the audience to preview upcoming programs as well as experience works that won’t appear in the coming months. This latter set allows the viewer to see the breadth of style, genre and tone that comprises any group’s repertoire. We saw both camps on Wednesday night, and just like most seasons, there were noteworthy and less bright moments.

Jasmine Jimison and Max Cauthorn in MacMillan's Manon
Photo Lindsey Rallo

The opener, the pas de deux from Act I of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, danced by Jasmine Jimison and Max Cauthorn was a highlight. MacMillan’s choreography has an understated elegance – clean, tidy lines, not an ostentatious or fussy motion in sight. Yet, it still manages to be undeniably charged with passion; certainly not an easy task to balance. The Hungarian Dance from Act III of Raymonda gave the corps de ballet their chance to shine, led by Kamryn Baldwin and Nathaniel Remez. Featuring ample body percussion, batterie, dramatic extensions and parallel positioning, the ensemble character work was delightful and fun. A great reminder for the viewer that ballet doesn’t have to be heady or heavy. 

Frances Chung and Harrison James absolutely charmed in Ben Stevenson’s Three Preludes, a duet that tells of a relationship based on shared experience and shared vocabulary. It’s a beautiful ballet and Chung and James were sublime. Both dancers were back on the War Memorial Opera House in later duets, Chung teaming up with Joseph Walsh in Liam Scarlett’s No Man’s Land and Harrison partnering WanTing Zhao in Christopher Wheeldon’s After The Rain. No Man’s Land was cinematic, epic, and sweepingly romantic. Yes, it was a tale of love, passion and desire, but it was deeper than that – a comment on total, resolute adoration. 

WanTing Zhao and Harrison James in Wheeldon's After the Rain©
Photo Lindsey Rallo

I have to confess that I haven’t been the biggest fan of the pas de deux from Wheeldon’s After the Rain. I couldn’t ever put my finger on why because everyone else seemed to love it. But whenever I saw the dance, I thought it to be pretty, but not transformational. Not exquisite. Turns out it just took the right combination of dancers, and it was Zhao and James. They were stunning, full stop. And their performance allowed the narrative tones and qualities of After the Rain to emerge. It read as a true personification of grace – sometimes small, sometimes vast; sometimes planned, sometimes by accident. Grounded or in flight. Beautifully ordinary and expansively extraordinary. 

Three of the offerings, while impeccably danced, were less successful programmatically. Esteban Hernández’ solo from Hans van Manen’s 5 Tango’s paired fierce technical precision with quiet pedestrianism. The pas de deux from Akram Khan’s Dust was full of contorted, tortured movements and pained contractions. Almost primal in nature, a tone of despair and disbelief soared, as did the magnetic pull between Dores André and Victor Prigent. A highly contemporary work, the robotic and angular choreography from Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, danced by Nikisha Fogo and Cavan Conley, took viewers toward the future. But all three needed a larger container. Without the whole of each piece, they were difficult to read. Not all excerpts work in isolation, and these three definitely needed more context. 

SFB’s Gala closed with a bang, the final sections of George Balanchine’s Symphony in C. Here was the epitome of neo-classical choreography. Virtuosic speeds alongside the marriage of movement and music. A truly ‘ta-da’ ballet. Symphony in C is a huge ensemble piece, and new entrances kept coming and coming and coming. Principals, soloists, corps, eventually totaling over fifty dancers on the stage. It did feel a little crowded, but at the same time, it’s hard to ignore the phenomenal attention to patterning and dance architecture when constructing a piece with such an enormous cast.