by Susan Kepecs
I’ve always loved repertory programs
for the way they show dance, stripped to its basic elements, without the
distracting noise of extravagant production. Madison Ballet’s “Exposed,”
last weekend (April 19-20) at the Bartell, is the best such program the
fast-rising company’s done to date.
I attended the opening night performance. As the
audience filed into the bohemian, urban Bartell – just the right venue for this
kind of concert, and it’s the first time Madison Ballet’s used it – dancers
onstage in sweatshirts and tutus walked through their steps, broke in new
pointe shoes, fiddled with their costumes or just chatted, exposing exactly
what dancers do between class and rehearsal or backstage before a show.
The opening work was the Madison premiere of George
Balanchine’s “Valse-Fantaisie,” the first-ever Balanchine ballet in the
company’s repertory. Balanchine’s works were revolutionary for their modernist
sense of musicality – his penchant, subtly tied to mid-twentieth century
American jazz, for choreographing on the beat, against the beat, behind the
beat, with unexpected accents and syncopations that break from the Russian
classicism of his youth.
“Valse-Fantaisie,” a pure, storyless ballet set
within the parameters of a classic corps and principals work, featured
Marguerite Luksik and Brian Roethlisberger in the principal roles. The
20-minute piece is remarkable for its exuberant flow. The corps – Rachelle
Butler, Katy Fredrick, Jessica Mackinson and Shannon Quirk, in coral-colored
tutus – waltzed across the stage, criss-crossing, in twos, or swept the
diagonal all together, springing into pas de chats in perfect unison.
Even "Valse"'s pas de deux is more about dancing than partnering; the
lifts are brief, the variations substantial. Roethlisberger wore a look
of sheer joy crossing the stage in bounding saut de chats; Luksik sparkled,
zipping through a series of pique turns and grand jetes. The only fly in this
delicious ointment was the lighting, a touch too harsh, a smidge too bright.
Madison Ballet artistic director W. Earle Smith’s style,
of course, is deeply rooted in Balanchine technique. His own pure dance
works on this program, both premieres, have clear rhythmic and choreographic
similarities to “Valse,” though they’re tempered with his own substantially
different sensibilities.
Smith set the bar high in “Adagio de Quatres” – four
generous neoclassical solos, each set to an opulent, slow score. The
dancers wore short dresses in different pastel colors, which gave the work a
dreamy, soft look, but sustaining adagio movement is grueling. Fredrick, who
danced to Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise No. 14 for Cello and Piano,” often holds
back, but this work proved she’s an absolutely lovely dancer.
Her full-out, heartfelt performance revealed clean lines, crisp turns,
expressive arms and a spot-on sense of timing.
Smith gave Luksik, who favors fast, firey steps, a bigger
challenge – Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings, Opus 11,” which is long and
exquisitely slow. On a penché arabesque, and again on a snail’s-pace
turn, Luksik’s standing leg wobbled. Not that it mattered – as always her
pointework was precise, her extensions luxurious, her transitions chewy and
elegant, and after each tricky sequence her adoring audience cheered.
Butler’s flawlessly executed dance to Spanish composer
Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” was, like the music, somewhat quicker
and spicier. Slinky, hip-driven turns, snake arms that reminded me of
Smith’s Nutcracker Arabian pas, escuela bolera foot flicks and
exaggerated contrapposto positions meshed happily with juicily unhurried grand
allegro steps. Smith once told me he’s never choreographed a Spanish
dance he likes, but this one’s a keeper.
At the end of her first full season with the company,
Quirk’s making a name for herself in this town. Her solo to Tomaso
Albinoni’s “Oboe Concerto in D Minor” was light and playful, with abundant
direction changes and long strings of turns. I wouldn’t expect to
describe a tall, long-limbed dancer like Quirk as feathery, but her sailing
attitude and arabesque turns, and the way she bourréed, floating her arms, were
just that.
Smith’s bright finale for the whole company, “Street,” to
a violin score that mixed Bach and Beethoven with contemporary urban street
playing, was, on one level, part straight-up neoclassical ballet, part
contemporary / hip hop – but even the hip-switching lunges, stomps and
shimmies, and Beyoncé-esque booty rolls offered lengthened lines that looked
utterly balletic. A variation for Roethlisberger to an excerpt from
“Für Elise” was strong, fast and fun, very dancey. A sexy, syncopated pas
by Butler and Quirk slipped seamlessly back and forth between the dual dance
vocabularies that were the premise of this piece. A stellar pas de trois for
Luksik, Roethlisberger, and company apprentice Cody Olsen was a marvel of tight
unison work punctuated by Luksik’s sassy attitude turns. At one point
Roethlisberger and Olsen passed Luksik through the air – more subtly than in
the company’s March production of Dracula, where she’s really tossed,
but daring nonetheless.
In the sense that “Valse” and Smith’s works bore relation
to one another, the sole piece on the program by guest choreographer and
UW-Madison dance prof Marlene Skog, “Swans” (2010), stood out. The work
is set to Madison composer / violinist Carol Carlson’s adept deconstruction of
Saint-Saen’s “Dying Swan,” played live onstage. As a choreographer Skog
owes as much to modern dance technique as to ballet, and in contrast to pure
dance her piece makes a specific point. I knew in advance that “Swans”
was Skog’s reaction to the 2010 BP oil spill on the Gulf Coast, but even though
there were no program notes the piece is moving and vivid; you couldn't fail to
grasp the imagery.
Quirk and Olsen turned in a superb rendering of this
work, which is decidedly different from anything I’ve seen them do before.
Olsen was elastic, moving as though through tar; from a deep second position plie
he straightened one leg, then the other, arms overhead, circling his
torso. Quirk, a white feather painted on the back of her black unitard,
absolutely nailed the sensation of a big bird exerting its will against a
rubbery, imprisoning substance; she flailed in second position on pointe like a mired stork, achieving the long,
angular leg and wing extensions of herons or pelicans by generating arm and leg movements
from deep in the core, the way Alonzo King’s dancers work.
“Exposed” exposed
this: Dracula’s impressive success at its March premiere was no fluke. Madison
Ballet really has arrived.
No comments:
Post a Comment