San Francisco Ballet - van Manen: Dutch Grandmaster

San Francisco Ballet
“van Manen: Dutch Grandmaster”
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
April 19th, 2025 (matinee)

This past weekend, San Francisco Ballet danced the final show of their “van Manen: Dutch Grandmaster” program, a quadruple bill tribute to choreographer Hans van Manen. And though I had my favorites amongst the four works, overall, I think it was one of the strongest programs that the company has presented this season. All of the pieces exist within SFB’s present repertory. But they’ve never been programmed together to showcase and celebrate this dancemaker, who while prolific, might be a little less familiar to West Coast audiences. What an afternoon at the ballet!

San Francisco Ballet in van Manen's Grosse Fuge
Photo Chris Hardy

First up was van Manen’s 1971 octet, Grosse Fuge. The curtain rose to reveal a stark, white background. Four women, clad in off-white leotards stood completely still upstage right, their angsty, somber faces (coupled with Beethoven’s foreboding score) suggesting something ominous was about to unfold. As Grosse Fuge continued, that serious tone was indeed present. But as four bare-chested men with flowing, full-length black skirts joined the scene, the work exploded into full-throttle, uninhibited and deliciously unexpected movement. Everywhere you looked, turned-in positions evolved. Arms and hands (particularly sculpted fists) were detailed, sharp and precise. A piston-like jump sequence brought equal parts strength and whimsy to the table. The cast burst out of turns into extension. And a throughline emerged that would inform the entire day: a deep love and choreographic exploration of second position. Grosse Fuge’s latter moments were erotically charged, yet at the same time, entirely egalitarian. Control was a shared experience, embodied by every single cast member. And you couldn’t help taking away that message from the thirty-minute dance: shared power, certainly, but also confidence in one’s own power. Such an amazing opener!   

San Francisco Ballet in van Manen's 
Variations for Two Couples
Photo Chris Hardy

2012’s Variation for Two Couples followed with another dramatic first look. The War Memorial stage’s surface was awash in cool blue; the dark black scrim marked with a giant aqua arc. Contrasting against that backdrop, the audience was treated to two angular pas de deux. Exaggerated flexed hands, sharp tango influences and long, piercing jazz runs. Again, the fifteen-minute work is a choreographic love letter to the openness of second position – in plié, in extension, in split jumps and in devant/derriere ecarté. And impeccably performed on Saturday afternoon by Nikisha Fogo, Max Cauthorn (who had also both just danced in Grosse Fuge), Wanting Zhao and Adrian Zeisel.

Alexis Francisco Valdes in van Manen's Solo
Photo Chris Hardy

Right before the day’s second intermission came the shortest ballet on the “van Manen: Dutch Grandmaster” program. Set to a Baroque Bach score, 1997’s Solo is only eight minutes long, and a truly grand eight minutes at that. I’ve seen it many times at SFB, and I always come away thinking that I had just seen the cast who were made to dance this piece. Without a doubt, every single time, and I felt that way on Saturday too. A trio for three men (Cavan Conley, Victor Prigent and Alexis Francisco Valdes), Solo is a constant physical stream of consciousness. One at a time, each enters the space and solos. Then, exiting in the wings, they invite the next dancer to take over center stage. It’s entertaining and energetic with a hearty dose of healthy competition. Over its short duration, Solo accelerates in tempo, dynamics and spiciness, making this viewer wish it would never end. And it features such unique communication between the three cast members: winks, fun-loving facial cues and winning head tilts. Easily my favorite composition of the afternoon, with Grosse Fuge coming in second and Variations, a strong third.

That brings me to the last ballet on the bill. I really want to like 5 Tango’s (1977). The tango vocabulary is excellent, and the opening group sequence is engaging. There is a lengthy male pas de deux and the company’s interpretation of van Manen’s syntax is exquisite. Yet still, it’s not my cup of tea. Tango is such a bold, dramatic movement tradition, and 5 Tango’s stays at a very similar, casual pace for most of its thirty minutes. There is one solo midway through, danced Saturday by Joshua Jack Price, that does have dynamism to spare. But otherwise, 5 Tango’s is just too slow for too long. Programmatically, it reads more of a first piece than a finale. 

 

San Francisco Ballet - "Frankenstein"

San Francisco Ballet in Scarlett's Frankenstein
Photo Lindsay Thomas

San Francisco Ballet
Frankenstein
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco
March 22, 2025

The pelting rainstorm sent chills through the air. The anatomical diagrams on the main curtain felt undeniably foreboding. The score’s opening passages haunted. Such were the first few minutes of San Francisco Ballet in Liam Scarlett’s Frankenstein, a co-production with The Royal Ballet. That chilly, ominous sensation emanated and persisted throughout the entire three-Act story. 

SFB premiered Frankenstein back in 2017, with an encore during the following 2018 season. At that time, I wrote about the in-depth narrative (inspired by Mary Shelley’s original novel) as well as the celebration/tragedy arc of the ballet’s three main pas de deux. Rather than repeating that commentary, I opted to think about some other aspects of the work at this viewing some seven years later.

First - the thematic essence. The throughline underpinning the whole world of Frankenstein. The fragile nature of the human condition. Every character is touched by this, beginning right in Act I, no one seems spared. Speaking of Act I, it goes full throttle for a full fifty-minutes. The viewer needs to buckle up for this circuitous ride. There’s an adoption, a birth, a profession of love, a proposal, a death, a journey to university, a grisly operating theater and finally, the creation of The Creature, portrayed at Saturday’s matinee by Cavan Conley. Throughout all this action, mortality’s darkness is revealed to many – Victor Frankenstein (Esteban Hernández), his mother (Gabriela Gonzalez), Elizabeth (Jasmine Jimison) and Justine (Elizabeth Powell).

A second revelation became readily apparent as the Act continued. While the main roles in Frankenstein are formidable (and crafted for dancers who are also extremely good actors, like those on SFB’s current roster), this full-length work is equally built for the corps de ballet. Here, the corps never fades into the background. From servants to students to tavern dwellers to nurses to party guests to wedding attendees, the corps’ sections are inventive, thoughtful and complex, without looking fussy or busy. An abundance of demi-pointework danced in pointe shoes pointed to the juicy ‘in between’ spaces in the narrative. It was a nod to how things were rarely black and white; Frankenstein, instead abiding in grayish zones.

Mortality would come again for many souls in Act II, but the highlight of the middle chapter was the duet between Victor and Elizabeth. Hernández and Jimison were marvelous at conveying the distance and uncertainty that had crept into their relationship. Meeting for brief moments, Victor continually turned and walked away from his intended, unable to come to terms with what he had done. Conley excelled as The Creature, though I still find some of the monster character’s choreography to be a little too pretty. 

Frankenstein is packed with significant scene changes, lighting spectacle, pyrotechnics, props and costumes, and every time a change was due to occur, moves were swift, rapid and appropriately urgent. Something that had been missing earlier in the company’s season. 

Act III’s wedding celebration is packed with stellar dance architecture, as The Creature weaves his way in and out of the scene, playing with Victor’s emotions and sanity. It’s pure genius! Once you spot The Creature and attempt to track and anticipate his movements in the space, inevitably, you lose sight of him. He has transformed into an elusive chameleon. In Frankenstein’s final moments, mortality arrives, plaguing the cast one last time. It comes to Victor’s father (Daniel Deivison-Oliveira), his beloved friend Henry (Dylan Pierzina), his true love, and finally to Victor himself. Mortality had touched everyone, and even The Creature did not truly escape unscathed.

Batsheva Dance Company

Cal Performances presents
Batsheva Dance Company
MOMO
Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley
Feb 23rd, 2025

A frequent comment I make at monthly book club is that a novel is ‘overwritten.’ I’ve said it on countless occasions, whether I love the story or if it’s just not for me. I feel like twenty percent of material could often be edited out and the larger whole would still work and work well. Still convey the same message. I had a similar sense as I watched Sunday’s matinee of Batsheva Dance Company’s MOMO, presented by Cal Performances. I found MOMO captivating, haunting, eerie and impeccably danced by its eleven cast members. But at seventy minutes, it was too long with similar physical syntax and extended sequences of repetition. And yet, from beginning to end, I was completely taken with the dance’s compositional structure.

Choreographed in 2022 by Ohad Naharin (with collaboration from the company and Ariel Cohen), MOMO reads like a physical fugue, a formal space where different movement lines emerge as concurrently interdependent and independent. There was the central male quartet who mapped the stage’s perimeter, first entering from stage right. With palms on sacrums, they immediately established that their every movement phrase would be deliberate, unhurried, measured. Next a serpentine body arrived, cycling through lay-outs, old-school jazz extensions, vogueing and runway choreography. Other figures entered the scene – a woman frantically boureé-ing on demi-pointe, a sprightly pixie skipping through the space, and more. All these different movement lines were in dialog with each other throughout, and yet, they could have easily stood on their own as solo experiences. That is textbook fugue – a form that allows an exchange between entities as well as celebrating singularity of each specific moment.

Batsheva Dance Company in MOMO
Photo Ascaf

Mid-way through MOMO, the back wall transformed into a climbing/bouldering surface. The original quartet were the first to scale the topography, methodically ascending until they were seated high in space, ready to survey the action that was to come. And what a sequence it was! Perhaps the standout of the entire piece. The boureé-ing dancer from early on began a variation at a portable ballet barre, complete with contemporary and traditional vocabulary. Pencheé and petit battement infused the phrase as did brilliantly suspended lifts, where the barre acted as her partner. The rest of the cast joined, each with their own individual barres, and the movement continued to toggle and oscillate. Calm and frenzied; angry and soothing; upright and upside down; classical and Gaga languages. Such stunning design, choreography and performances, and the scene was another example of MOMO’s beautiful fugal state. Commentary and conversations between unique tones, qualities and techniques. It just could have been twenty percent shorter.