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.