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| Cohen rehearsing her don Q variation for Encore © SKepecs |
by Susan Kepecs
Lemons into lemonade. I know it sounds trite, but that’s what keeps
running through my head as I consider Encore, a ballet performance that’s
taking shape under extraordinary circumstances and enormous time
constraints. It runs March 4-5 at
Overture’s Promenade Hall.
Some of the most interesting professional
dance companies in the country give their dancers the opportunity to do
dancers’ choreography showcases, which are like little hotbeds of fresh talent
that gets to bubble up to the surface – Smuin Ballet of San Francisco does it;
Chicago’s now-defunct Luna Negra, under the direction of Eduardo Vilaro (now
artistic director of Ballet Hispanico in New York), used to do it. Encore is a professional ballet dancers’
choreography showcase, but organizationally it’s a little different than most –
it’s an independent production, put together by the dancers who were on 2015-15
contract with Madison Ballet until that company unexpectedly cancelled the rest
of its season in January. Encore’s a collaborative production, but – and this
is pretty much a law of human behavior – when you have more than six in the
mix, you need someone to lead.
In this case that leader is
Elizabeth Cohen, formerly of Ballet Latino San Antonio, who was in her second
season with Madison Ballet. “We’re not
working under the name Madison Ballet right now,” Cohen says. “This is us, creating a group, though Madison
Ballet has been very gracious, donating its studio space for rehearsal, giving
us access to costumes, and helping us get the venue for this performance. It’s totally heartwarming than I can feel
good about going back to the place where I was employed, after the layoff.”
I interviewed Cohen at the Madison
Ballet studio, where Encore was in rehearsal; I also got a sneak peak at the
program. Here’s what I came away with:
Cultural Oyster:
It’s exactly a month since the announcement that the season was cancelled, and
three weeks after the last performance (Repertory I, at the Bartell Feb.
5-6). And now you have one week to go
till showtime. How hard has it been to put Encore together under so much
pressure and so little time?”
Cohen: The dancers
had all these questions after the announcement.
We were all really upset – we were kind of in shock. But underneath it all we felt like it was
important to support each other, and out of that came the decision to be collaborative
and show people what we can do with our talents even without time and resources. Everyone is banding together to try to create
something great – the whole mentality has changed. We have something to do and everyone is happy
because they’re being productive and creative.
And in the process we’ve discovered that we can put together our own
show because we’re that passionate about dancing and performing.
The thing about Encore is that it’s
an opportunity to do another performance.
Although the rest of Madison Ballet’s season is over, Encore extends the
ballet season in town this year. And it’s
also an opportunity for some of the dancers, myself included, to choreograph
for the first time ever on professional dancers – our peers – and to have our
works performed in a great venue. So
it’s helping us all to be more well-rounded in our careers.
CulturalOyster: But
it’s a whole lot of effort for just one weekend!
Cohen: We took on
this challenge because we wanted to. We really didn’t want to see the ballet scene in
Madison just fall off and die. The
performing arts are important to me personally, and when I started organizing
this I found out that a lot of people here feel the same way. So many people in the community came up and
told me how disappointed they were when they learned that Madison Ballet’s
season was cut short. This is a capital
city, and it deserves a lively performing arts scene. There’s been so much support for this
show! And if people want to see ballet we’re
going to give it to them, because we’re a diverse group of professionally
trained dancers, and we can do that.”
CulturalOyster: Is
Encore one-shot deal?
Cohen: We were
going to do this anyway – it was going to be in May, after the season was over,
so it’s been an idea for a long time. It
just came about earlier in the spring than we originally thought it would. But we’re associated with Madison Ballet, we
want Madison Ballet to continue and thrive, and we hope Encore brings new
attention to the organization – we’re really working hard to get the word out. We’re all learning so much from doing this –
next season I hope we still get opportunities to do this kind of showcase,
along with everything else.”
CulturalOyster: What
have you learned, personally, from organizing this production?
Cohen: It’s
difficult and empowering to organize a group, and to create something from
nothing. I’ve learned that my fellow
dancers and the community agree with me – they don’t want to see professional
ballet disappear in Madison. People in
the community are very much into this, which I think is a big deal. So many people have reached out to us – way
more people than I ever thought we could draw in. They want to be involved in the project, in
all kinds of different ways. People we
didn’t even know before, and our friends outside ballet, and the parents of our
students at the School of Madison Ballet have all jumped in. And the stagehand crew! They were contracted out by Madison Ballet
and with the season cut short they didn’t have a ton of stuff to do either, so
they’re helping us – Encore wouldn’t exist without them. They have a great relationship with Earle
[Madison Ballet artistic director W. Earle Smith], and they keep telling me how
this is their favorite group to work with.
And they work with every performing arts group in the city! It’s really sweet.
Along with the stage crew I watched an
early, very partial rehearsal. The dancers
told us a little about their works and showed excerpts. There are 14 dances on the preliminary Encore
bill, ranging from very contemporary to very classical. Some are uniquely personal;
others are more formal. And most are
quite short, to accommodate the time constraints on this show.
Cohen and Cyrus Bridwell are
working on Marius Petipa’s don Quixote
pas de deux. “Before the season started
we were coming in for class and we were so gung ho about being in the company
and loving being a dancer, we were like ‘let’s take the time to learn this pas,’”
Cohen says. “So we were doing it in
September, but we let it go when we got busy with Dracula and Nutcracker. We picked it because it was something each of
us had always wanted to do. We thought
hey, we might as well teach it to ourselves!
Petipa’s been dead since 1910; his
works, of course, are in the public domain.
Cohen and Bridwell used YouTube videos to learn the pas, so this is
their take on the original as already filtered through various major companies
– it’s choreography “after Petipa.”
Bridwell wasn’t able to be at this rehearsal, but Cohen, who’s got a
natural flair for escuela bolera-style ballet, showed the female variation,
wearing a Spanish tutu from Madison Ballet’s Nutcracker kit.
Jessica Lin – technically not a
company member, though she’s a beautiful dancer and takes company class at
Madison Ballet – spent her pre-professional years at Edward Ellison Ballet in
New York; in her firey solo, “Carmen,” choreographed by Ellison and used with
his permission, she dances in a flamenco skirt, with a chair.
Cohen choreographed a solo for
herself, as yet untitled; the short excerpt she was ready to show was angular
and contemporary, with very precise pointework.
“I’ve always wanted to create a dance with someone playing live music,”
she says. “The piece is abstract, but for
me it’s about how you can try to make your life consistent, but there are always
things that throw you for a loop. In the
end it’s about perseverance, you know, forging ahead. Glenn Sparks is playing the piano; he’s a
composer, a pianist, and an artist, and it’s really cool to collaborate with
him.”
Kristen Hammer, just back from
seeing Nashville Ballet perform with musicians from that city’s
songwriters’ club Bluebird Café live onstage, has made a big, swinging, as yet untitled dancey dance to
songs by country music supergroup Pistol Annies and set it on Annika Reikersdorfer, Kelanie Murphy, and Abigail Henninger. Each dancer, she says, represents one of the Annies. “It’s serious fun to make a piece that just makes everybody want to dance,” Hammer says.
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| Reikersdorfer with Henninger and Murphy in Hammer's dance |
Jackson Warring’s dance, called “Optimism,”
is a love triangle piece set on Cohen with Joe LaChance and Cyrus
Bridwell. It’s stylistic kin to the
works General McArthur Hambrick has set on Madison Ballet. I see only a short segment, in which Warring
stands in for Bridwell; it features some Hambrick-style death-defying
lifts. “I wanted it to have a strong
narrative, like General’s pieces do,” Warring says. “When you see the whole
thing, you see the movement shift as the narrative changes.”
Abigail Henninger’s “One” is a
three-movement, eight-minute work with a score by The Piano Guys, for six
dancers. “It’s not a story line,” she
says, “but we went through a difficult situation here, and my thought process
is that we all have this one thing we run to in hard times, my boyfriend, or my
new career – for me it’s a spiritual outlet, so that’s my “one.”
In rehearsal she showed the second
movement, with half the cast – Hammer, Reikersdorfer, and Rachelle Butler. The dancers moved in and out of unison,
mostly in petite allegro; stylistically it’s very Henninger – there’s a lot of
the way she moves in it – but you can see the influence of both Earle Smith and
General Hambrick, too.
Kelanie
Murphy’s large ensemble piece (for eight dancers) is barefoot and contemporary,
and revolves around solos danced by Rachelle Butler.
And if it turns out to be OK to use tap shoes on the Marley floor the
dancers will use, Murphy will contribute a second piece – an uptempo little
1950s tap duet with Jackson Warring, to Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes.”
Butler’s contribution, “Jerry’s
Songs,” “is a tribute to my dad, with music from his childhood,” she says. “But the choreography’s about that
relationship everybody’s had – you’ve been in love and you pull away and then
it rekindles and then you split up.”
Butler’s dad obviously has great taste, since “Jerry’s Songs” has the
best score ever – you just can’t go wrong with Motown and Memphis soul. And Butler’s deep-rooted, Smith-influenced
Balanchine sensibilities came out in full force in the pas de deux I saw,
danced by Henninger and Warring. “I
always wanted to do a whole ballet to thank my dad for the support he’s given
me,” Butler says. “’Jerry’s Songs’” is
an excerpt from that work I have in my head, which hopefully I’ll finish some
day.”
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| Butler (right), rehearsing Henninger in "Jerry's Songs" © SKepecs |
There are other works listed on the
preliminary program that I didn’t see. Shannon Quirk and Joe LaChance are doing
the Sleeping Beauty wedding pas de
deux, following Petipa. The exceptionally
creative Phillip Ollenburg is choreographing a piece called “Seasonal Beasts”
on Quirk. Jason Gomez is doing an as yet
untitled pas de deux for himself and Henninger.
And Gomez and Butler – who are both
retiring from the stage after this performance – will dance Smith’s luxurious,
pure neoclassical Caccini pas de deux to the Italian composer’s “Ave Maria,”
which Smith choreographed on and for Butler in 2008. The Caccini pas, again featuring Butler, was
included as the centerpiece in Smith’s witty ensemble work “La Luce d’Amore,”
the opener for Madison Ballet’s 2014 Repertory II show. School of Madison
Ballet principal accompanist Marina Hegge will play the piece live at both of
the evening shows in Encore’s three-show, two-day run. .
In the end, Encore, despite its
unusual circumstances, is the Madison Ballet dancers’ season finale – and it’s
Gomez’ and Butler’s encore, too. There’s
more on both of them, below.
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You can help support Encore by visiting its GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/EncoreMadCity
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