Review: VAN MANEN: DUTCH GRANDMASTER at San Francisco Ballet

San Francisco Ballet’s latest offering gives local audiences the welcome opportunity to encounter several works by Hans van Manen, considered one of the great European ballet choreographers of the past 50-plus years and whose ballets have been only sparingly performed by SFB in recent seasons. This is definitely a program for those who prefer their ballet stripped down and ready for action, devoid of fairytale narratives and lavish sets and costumes.

Van Manen: Dutch Grandmaster is comprised of four small to mid-sized ballets choreographed between 1971 and 2012, and there’s a lot to enjoy here. Even if nothing rises to the level of unqualified masterpiece, Van Manen’s musicality, attunement to interpersonal relationships and gift for making “plotless” ballets emotionally compelling shine throughout.

The program kicks off with Grosse Fuge, probably van Manen’s best-known ballet and easily the strongest one on the bill. Set to Beethoven’s peerless composition of the same name, which is scored entirely for strings, the ballet is thoroughly engrossing and carries undercurrents of psychological motivation that are open to interpretation. With its stark design of an all-white stage, women in white leotards and bare-chested men in black culottes, plus the angularity of the movement, Grosse Fuge could be read as the missing link between Balanchine’s classic black and white ballets (e.g. Agon) and Wayne McGregor’s Chroma (seen earlier this season).

As Grosse Fuge begins, the dancers are segregated by sex and the two groups appear to be showing off for each other. When they finally intersperse, the subtle forward lean of their bodies indicates some kind of magnetic force drawing them inexorably together. By the end they’ve formed a cohesive community of couples and just before curtain there is a touching moment when one woman rises to leave, only to reconsider and return to her tribe, beautifully in synch with the tender music. The only fly in the ointment is some choreography in the latter movements that uncomfortably calls to mind early 1970s notions of sexual liberation. These sections have not dated particularly well, coming across icky rather than erotic.

The opening cast rose to the intriguing challenge of requiring principal dancers prized for their individuality to dance largely in unison. Among the four couples, Wona Park and Wei Wang were absolutely breathtaking in their airborne pas de deux, almost eerily ethereal in how well-tuned they were to each other in energy and body position. Nikisha Fogo and Aaron Robison were also marvelous in the fearless attack they brought to their variations.

The middle part of the program is given over to two shorter pieces that are decidedly less consequential and unfortunately suffer a bit from a case of “the cutes.” They’re the kind of lighter showpieces that companies tend to program for galas, which in fact SFB itself has done with both ballets. Variations for Two Couples, set to the music of several different composers, was a joy largely because of its perfect cast of four. Frances Chung and Joseph Walsh were sublime as the more mature couple. Chung can make the simple realignment of her torso seem startling and fresh and full of meaning, while Walsh proves brilliantly that understated can also be beguiling. Just as wonderful were the fizzier duo of Aaron Robison (the man was having a terrific afternoon) and Sasha Mukhamedov, so beautifully detailed in their movement that I wish their choreography had been more incisive and that the piece had ultimately gone somewhere. I did love Keso Dekker’s costume and scenic design, with the electric colors of the leotards popping against an abstracted, deco-ish nightscape. And the score was beautifully played by the SFB orchestra under Martin West’s sure hand, but alas that was to be the last live music in the program.

Next up was Solo, an 8-minute applause machine that never fails to do its job and only requires three dancers, which is likely why it’s van Manen’s most often performed work. Set to a lightning-fast recording of Johan Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B minor for Solo Violin, it’s actually not a solo at all but rather a romp for three rambunctious men who jump and spin and mug with alacrity until the music practically does them in. Cavan Conley, Victor Prigent and Alexis Francisco Valdes gave it their considerable all without succeeding in making the ballet come across as anything more than a well-executed party stunt.

The closing ballet, 5 Tango’s [sic], is the one I was most looking forward to as it had never before been performed in San Francisco, and it has a particularly interesting provenance. Back in the late 1970’s, van Manen was the first ballet choreographer to make a dance to the music of modern composer Astor Piazzolla, long before his name virtually became shorthand for “tango.” Since that time, countless ballets have been set to Piazzolla’s zestily astringent music.

I found 5 Tango’s quite pleasing even if it feels somewhat caught between two worlds – a bit too balletic to capture the true essence of tango and too tangofied to capitalize on the excitement of what classical ballet can do. I kept wanting the dancers to relax their bodies a little, lower their centers of gravity and loosen their hips. The ballet features a lead couple backed by four demi-soloists and a corps of eight. While the central pair are given the flashier moves, the highlight was the fourth movement which featured a captivating duet for two men (friends, lovers, competitors?) who were then joined by two women interlopers and that’s when the implied relationships got really interesting. The quartet of Fernando Carratalá Coloma, Victor Prigent, Kamryn Baldwin and Thamires Chuvas could not have been better, dancing with the right balance of panache and nuance to keep us reevaluating the dynamics at play.

This was van Manen’s choreography at its best – clean, surprising, enigmatic, letting the movement speak for itself and leaving it to us to work out any underlying story, keeping the focus on nothing more than fabulous dancers dancing to fabulous music. And about that music, Piazzolla’s tangos are so arresting - angular and quixotic and romantic and sexy – that I really, really wish the ballet had been danced to live music. The unidentified recording sounded tinny and over-amplified as it blared throughout the opera house, serving as a vibe kill for the action onstage.

(all photos by Chris Hardy)

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