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.

 

San Francisco Ballet - "Cool Brittania"

San Francisco Ballet
“Cool Brittania”
February 13th, 2025
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco

San Francisco Ballet’s second program of the season, “Cool Brittania”, could have easily been named “Contemporary Brittania.” The triple bill, which opened Thursday evening, was a dynamic mix of forward-thinking ballet and dance performance. All three pieces were choreographed within the last two decades, each with a uniquely current choreographic lens. Wayne McGregor’s Chroma (2006) kicked off the night, followed by Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour (2008), and finally, an SFB premiere, 2013’s Dust by Akram Khan.

Frances Chung and Max Cauthorn in 
McGregor's Chroma
Photo © Reneff-Olson Productions

True to its title, McGregor’s Chroma is intense. It reveals the energetic space between extremes and asks the viewer to hold tight over a high-throttle thirty-minute ride. An ensemble work for ten, Chroma is very contemporary, not a pointe shoe in sight. It’s sumptuous, attention-grabbing and futuristic, all at the same time. 

The rising curtain gives way to striking minimalism – a bright white square, with an even brighter rectangular light. Right from the start, 2nd position over splits were everywhere, a signature McGregor move. Extreme positions continued, as did a frenzied, aggressive, urgent atmosphere. And yet, the juxtaposition of opposites is undeniable. Flexion and contortion paired with clean, placed, precise motions. Serpentine curves interacted with straight lines - classic arabesques would suddenly fold and drip towards the ground. Intensely effortful phrases would end with hands and legs collapsing mid-air. Opening night’s cast handled the complexities with vigor and grace, save for some awkward partnering.

San Francisco Ballet in
Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour
Photo © Reneff-Olson Productions

The pointe shoes came out for Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour, a statement of contemporary elegance and sweeping romance. Designer Zac Posen’s new costuming had been well-reported over the past weeks and months, and they did not disappoint. Flowy skirts with accordion pleats for the dance’s seven women, unitards for the seven men. Balayage, ombré hues of oranges, purples, pinks and reds evoked the sunset, but also made a perfect palette for Valentine’s Day. Like McGregor, Wheeldon also has favorite postures that tend to make an appearance in his work, like how one dancer supports the lower leg of another as they inhale forward into space. 

Long jazz runs flew through the air; a concentric circle vignette offered a sense of community. Plenty of parallel positions and flexed feet met with off-center balances. Sasha De Sola and Harrison James introduced a rhythmic tango-esque social dance sequence that pleasantly recurred throughout. And then there was the duet by Luca Ferrò and Dylan Pierzina! By far the most phenomenal minutes of the piece, the pair exuded joy, playfulness and technical perfection. So much so that I couldn’t take my eyes off the stage, and I think many audience members held their breath. Within the Golden Hour makes you feel happy, at least that’s the way I felt as the curtain fell. 

San Francisco Ballet in Khan's Dust
Photo © Reneff-Olson Productions

After seeing the main pas de deux from Khan’s Dust last month at SFB’s gala, I remarked that it needed context. And seeing the entire dance certainly provides it. The burning horizon and piles of scorched earth (lighting by Fabiana Piccioli, scenes by Sander Loonen) provided a cinematic visual of disaster and destruction. Kimie Nakano’s costumes placed the action in a rural, agricultural time of long ago. With every step and motion, leads Benjamin Davidoff and Katherine Barkman conveyed pain, anguish and hardship. But it was the corps, particularly the women, who made all the difference in Dust. Their presence added a sense of shared struggle, and their featured moments really made the piece work. 

Connecting arms and elbows together, the ensemble created ropes on each side of Davidoff’s back, pulling his soul and being in different directions. Next, eleven women took centerstage in a primal movement experience. With every staccato and angular step, their groundedness and connection to the earth was resolute. The variation was full of contorted, tortured movements – hearts and collarbones reaching heavenward; palms splayed open – both gestures pleading desperately for help.

San Francisco Ballet in Khan's Dust
Photo © Reneff-Olson Productions

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.