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| Quirk and Ollenburg rehearsing "Zero Hour" © SKepecs 2016 |
by Susan Kepecs
Madison Ballet’s upcoming 2016 Repertory I
concert – Feb. 5-6, at the Bartell – offers the premiere of two new works by
artistic director W. Earle Smith, and expands on the company’s growing
relationships with outside choreographers General MacArthur Hambrick and
Jacqueline Stewart, both of whom were represented on the 2015 Repertory I
program.
Hambrick's worked with Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre,
Texas Ballet Theatre (where he danced with Smith), and on Broadway. Currently,
he teaches at West Virginia’s School of Theatre and Dance. Stewart is the
director of Jaxon Movement Arts, an urban, avant-garde company based in Chicago
and New York.
Hambrick’s and Stewart’s works on last year’s bill were opposites: Hambrick’s
piece, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper” – a mix of neoclasical ballet and Alvin
Aileyisms (with the women on pointe) – carried an abstract narrative of mystery
and otherworldliness. Stewart’s dance,
“Jiffy Pop,” was the anti-ballet – all angles and grotesque gesticulations, no
pointework. This year, the two
dancemakers offer works on more similar wavelengths – both are angular and
contemporary, yet balletic. Hambrick’s,
“Zero Hour,” is less otherworldly than “Brother’s Keeper;” Stewart’s “On the Surface”
– a premiere – is less hard-edged, much more balletic than “Jiffy Pop.” And for Stewart this time, the women dance on pointe;
for Hambrick, they do not.
In “On the Surface,” Stewart works with the abstract qualities of
tension, letting the idea take various forms.
And Hambrick’s big, active “Zero Hour” is about tension and release,
cast within a classic Hambrickian hidden narrative.
The rest of Rep I is pure Earle Smith – neoclassical to the core. Madison Ballet’s reigning empress, Shannon
Quirk, reprises the
feathery, playful adagio solo Smith made for her to Tomaso Albinoni’s “Oboe
Concerto in D Minor;” its 2013 premiere marked her as a rising star at the end
of her first season with the company.
“This time around,” she says, “it’s about finding a way to make [the
dance] different artistically – finding all the nuances in the piece and
exploring it to the fullest. Last time,
I focused so much on the physical aspect – now, I’m trying try to approach it
with the growth I’ve made over the past few years.”
And there are two Smith premieres – Jux I (for five
women), and Jux II, for all six of the company’s men. The women’s dance is shorter, running about
10 minutes. It’s a feast of flashy
neoclassical allegro, tinged with contemporary tone and predicated on a
challenge – the necessity of maintaining tight corps work despite the speedy,
layered rhythms of the contemporary chamber score Smith’s selected.
Jux
II (which runs 26 minutes) has tricky counts, too – it’s extremely rhythmic and
syncopated – but despite its big steps it’s softer, waltzier, jazzier than the
women’s piece. And no, it’s not a
gender-bender – Jux II absolutely requires the sustained, muscular strength of
men.
Unlike
Jux I, Jux II has solos, including a a long, fluid, dramatic variation Smith
choreographed on and for Phillip Ollenburg.
Since Madison Ballet technically doesn’t have principals, call him
Quirk’s counterpart – the company’s reigning emperor. And he gets enough leeway to make this dance
his own. “Learning Earle’s musicality is
like learning a language,” says Ollenburg, who’s in his sixth season with
Madison Ballet. “It’s as if Earle’s
taken me through a series of grammatical excursuses, and I’ve acquired
conversational fluidity after years of study. I’m using the musicality he’s
taught me more as an operating system than as a specific program when running the
Jux II solo. That allows for some choices, rather than a set regimen of timing.”
“It’s nice to see guys dancing,” Smith says. "Men don’t always have to just partner, or do
bravura.”
