Oregon Ballet Theatre's Swan Lake

Heading out into the lobby of the Keller Auditorium at first intermission of Swan Lake last night, Stephen said, "The corps de ballet is very... together, very..."

Looking for the right word and I anticipated it and jumped in with that tiny pride you have every time you one-up your partner in linguistic prowess.

"Tight?" I said.

"Yes, tight. That's the thing you often hear in reviews, that the principal dancers are good but the corps de ballet was sloppy. I was very impressed."

"So, corps de ballet...?"

"That means the members of the company who dance together in a group, as opposed to the soloists."

"Can I use that term in my blog post? I'm going to use that term in my blog post!"

So, there's my full disclosure: Linguistic excellence? Balletic knowledge? Not so much. But I love ballet, the skill, the beauty, the strange magic of learning a story almost completely through movement, and I particularly enjoyed Oregon Ballet Theatre's production of Swan Lake. The word I kept using to describe things last night as we were leaving the theater, a word that sprang easily to my tongue, was delightful.

It's an interesting production because it is not the classic Swan Lake based on the 1895 revival with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, and it's not the classic Tchaikovsky ballet updated with completely new choreography. Artistic Director Kevin Irving's adaptation is an amalgam including input by Petipa and Ivanov and modern choreographers Nicolo Fonte, Kevin Irving, Anthony Jones, and Lisa Kipp. Not only that, but the storyline has been changed to add a completely new element and that takes the story in a completely different direction and toward a different ending.

I'll only say that about the changes, because I hate spoilers, but what I can say is that I felt all the aspects of OBT's Swan Lake, the old choreography and the new, the classic story elements and the new, were assembled beautifully so that the whole production felt seamless and integrated.

And the orchestra under the direction of Niel DePonte was - I'll use my initial not-very-ballet-chic word again - tight. Beautiful. And the dancing, led last night by Xuan Cheng and Peter Franc, was quite good, with particularly lovely use of the corps de ballet. The white swans swirled and churned like a murmuration across the stage. At times, to me, they seemed to symbolize more than enchanted swans, becoming, here, a hint of storm, there a spread of fog as a night moved toward morning.

One of the most surprising things to me was the humor. The scene of the ball in Act 2 is rife with it, fashioned beautifully through the use of both choreography and storyline. I didn't know I could laugh so much in a ballet. And there was one particular moment I never thought I'd see in a ballet - and of course, that spoiler thing, again: I can't say what that moment was. I wish I could. All I can say is that between that moment and the burst of laughter that followed was a half second of silence in which I think the only sound in the auditorium was the surprised "Oh!" that jumped out of my mouth.

Here are three final words in my parade of words about OBT's world premier production of Swan Lake: go see it. It's a gorgeous and delightful evening and you don't need to know any fancy ballet terms in order to come out of the theater feeling smart and full of a little more joy.

More info and tickets here.

Photos of  Xuan Cheng and Peter Franc and the company members of Oregon Ballet Theatre courtesy of Randall Milstein.

beautiful

Back to back theater nights, back to back body. Friday night it was The Body of an American at Portland Center Stage, and last night it was Body Beautiful at the Keller Auditorium for the opening night of Oregon Ballet Theatre's 2012/2013 season. I have to say, the ballet was the perfect complement to the play. Complement's not the right word - I first thought antidote, but that would make it sound like I didn't enjoy The Body of an American, which I did. But after you fill your mind with human suffering and complex characters and conflicts and the whole art/death/respect conundrum [which I wrote about here], it's lovely to go to the ballet and let go, be transported.

Body Beautiful is being produced in conjunction with the Portland Art Museum's Body Beautiful exhibit, which takes a look at the influences of classical Greece. [The paintings I include below aren't in that exhibit - not that I know of - but I thought in keeping with the theme, I'd put a few in.] The ballet Body Beautiful consists of four different pieces, most of which also take their influences from classical Greece...

Apollo and Two Muses -
Batoni Pompeo - 1741

"Apollo"
Composer: Stravinsky
Choreographer: Balanchine

The story.

Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto, god of music, poetry, oracles, plague, etcetera, dances with three of the muses - Calliope [epic poetry], Polyhymnia [sacred poetry - although Stravinsky identified her as mime] and Terpsichore [dance]. The muses each try to garner Apollo's attentions, and he chooses the one you'd expect him to choose in a ballet.

The execution.

Balanchine, man. He's like the Busby Berkeley of ballet. At least that's the feel I got from his Apollo. Stephen says it's kind of heretical to compare Balanchine to Berkeley, but I mean it with full respect, knowing that in Balanchine's case, we're talking about real dancing. His Apollo was full of tableaux created of the human body, geometric and flowing. I enjoyed the story aspect when the muses were vying for Apollo's eye, but my favorite parts were when all four bodies were working at once, creating lovely patterns of body.

*

Le Nouvel Orphée -
Stephen O'Donnell - 2009

"Orpheus Portrait"
Composer: Liszt
Choreographer: 
Kent Stowell

The Story.

Eurydice dies and her love Orpheus descends into Hades to try to bring her back. The only way he can do this is by never looking her in the face. Eurydice, not understanding, is distraught and tries with everything she has to get him to look at her. When she succeeds, she dies, and he loses her forever.

The Execution.

Lovely presentation of two dancers alone on stage, particularly poignant when the two danced without looking at each other. I actually wished that portion of the ballet were longer - there were so many opportunities for interesting moments between the two as one moved toward and one moved away from the other. Nice stage effect at the end when Eurydice died and Orpheus laid her body in the rippling fabric waves of the River Styx and let her go.

*

Narcissus - Caravaggio - 1599

"Ekho"
Composers: 
Bach and Gluck
Choreographer: 
Christopher Stowell

The Story.

The nymph Echo falls in love with the beautiful hunter Narcissus. When he rejects her, she wastes away until all that's left of her is her voice. Then Narcissus, resting by a spring, falls in love with his own reflection in the water, and, unable to pull himself away from the image of his own beauty, wastes away, himself, until all that's left is a flower.

The Execution.

For this ballet, they changed the story up, folding the two parts in together so that as Narcissus dances with his own reflection, Echo fights to get between them, to break his obsession, and fails. As a fruit fly from way back, I couldn't help but love this sensual dance between two men. And the three dancing together, with the beauty of the two men mirroring each other offset by the woman's very different moves, made for lovely geometry. The dancing was very fluid, and the towering, at times hanging, at times moving, jellyfish-like shapes made of tyvek all around the stage made it feel like the story was taking place underwater or maybe trapped in the reflection across the water's surface.

*

"The Second Detail"
Composer: Thom Willems
Choreographer: William Forsythe

The Story.

There's no story for this one. It's the one piece of the evening not locked into a classical myth, a modern piece that had its world premier in Toronto in 1991 - but OBT concluding Body Beautiful with this ballet reminds us that even far flung dances have their roots ultimately in classical times.

The Execution.

Fascinating. When the music started - modern, synthesized, highly rhythmic and yet disrhythmic at the same time [I guess that's not a word, but I like it, so I'm keeping it] - I worried the piece would be too jarring. Sometimes I feel put off by modern dance, but I found myself grinning throughout this one. It was a large group, alternately dancing and sitting on chairs lined up at the back of the stage. The ballet was like fourteen different ballets shuffled together into one. [I could have the number of players wrong. I believe they said fourteen in the preview, but it looked like more.] The dancers executed different moves at the same time, all rhythmically lined up, often similar moves so that somehow instead of coming off as random, it all felt completely connected, completely dynamic.

One of the things Stephen noticed about this piece was the way the dancers, when not in motion, relaxed. They walked off stage, they sat in the chairs, they stood with a hand on a hip, waiting. Then in an instant, when it was time for each to dance, that relaxation sprang into lovely motion again. He found this really intriguing, although to be honest, I didn't even notice it. I was so riveted on the dancers in motion, trying to figure out just how the seeming randomness came together into something so cohesive. Like leaves in a wind - that's the image that kept coming to me. This flashing, trembling, beautiful thing.

Body Beautiful is playing at the Keller Auditorium until October 20th. Check out all sorts of other interesting stuff about the ballet on the OBT blog here.

giselle

Probably a pedestrian question, but is the ballet Giselle where we get the phrase gives me the willies? Or at least are the willis in Giselle the same willies we’re sometimes given? In last night’s production of Giselle, put on by Oregon Ballet Theatre, the willis [specifically the spirits of women jilted before their wedding day, who rise from their graves  to seek revenge upon men by dancing them to death] were something beautiful - ballerinas in white floating en pointe through the muted shadows of the graveyard. Like death is something soft and lovely. Delicate. As they made their first appearance as a group onstage, the willis were shrouded in white veils, which added a delicious creep effect to that lovely. Then Giselle herself appeared at the mouth of her crypt, and the moment that her own white veil was yanked away, I gave a little gasp of appreciation in my seat and embarrassed myself.

When we first arrived and found our seats, Stephen said it was so refreshing - surprising - to be seeing a completely classical production of ballet. "It's not a language people know anymore," he said. "Or at least that they expect." The expectation of the modern arts is innovation, reinvention. Taking Swan Lake and relocating it to the 1950s Jersey Turnpike. But classical ballet is a beautiful language, to me a perfect language, and forgive me for sounding overzealous, but it's sumptuous to be steeped in its particularness.

[our principals for the evening, haiyan wu and chauncey parsons. interestingly, in this production there will be different sets of principals throughout the run.]

Oregon Ballet Theater did right by that classical language. It was a lovely production, with beautiful sets and costumes shipped in from Italy, all soft colors. Beautiful choreography and dancing. I was interested to read that Giselle originated only about a decade after the technique of dancing en pointe was introduced, and there are moments in the ballet where the technique is used to quite a spectacular effect, both in group numbers and in solos. Some fantastic moments in solos. And of course you also get willis dancing in a graveyard and new love and death and madness. 

Giselle goes mad like a tiger in a circus ring. Or at least that was what came to my mind. The way she danced into madness in a wide loop around the stage took me to a moment during my lighting director days when I watched the rehearsal of a very new tiger act, and in a leap over the trainer, the tiger took off low and completely plowed into her. As the trainer collapsed on the floor, the panicked tiger did the only thing a panicked tiger can do in the big cage - run in circles and circles and circles. Giselle had tiger grace and tiger panic as she danced her circles, sometimes skirting the arc of dancers who stood watching like the bars of the big cage, sometimes slamming through and scattering them. I was so caught up in the beauty of the ballet that the fun fiendishness of this drama, which closed the first half, took me by surprise.

Lovely evening. Giselle is playing at the Keller Auditorium and runs through March 3rd.

song and dance

On Thursday night, Stephen and I went to the ballet. Very exciting. We see a lot of theater when we can, but I, at least, don't have a lot of experience seeing dance. Unless Fred Astaire movies count.

It made me think a lot about the discussions we had been having as Stephen prepared for his symposium at the Tacoma Art Museum, actually. Back then, the talk was about how the body on the canvas tells the story. Last night, it was about how the body in movement tells the story. My brain always wanting to find story--but story isn't always the most important aspect of an art. What's interesting to me about dance is how minimal the elements of story become. Or can become. And they hit you as viscerally as if you were given a narrator and a plot to follow. They go to the fundamental. The body moves, the body interacts with another body, and it gives you something to feel.

We saw Song and Dance, presented by Oregon Ballet Theater at the Newmark. Part one was a square dance set to Vivaldi and Corelli. With a square dance caller, even. Choreographed by Ballanchine and originally performed in 1957. Somehow, I never realized that dance choreography could live in the same way music lives. How it can be created and written down and used again and again. How if you saw Square Dance done by the New York City Ballet in 1957, you'd see the same dance as I saw last night.

I was pretty rapt when Julia Rowe and Chauncey Parsons danced alone. Everything was so exact. And of course so light. The only way you knew they were touching the floor was that little clunk of the toe shoes against the stage. During the first intermission, Stephen told me Ballanchine was known for his very exacting choreography. I found it fascinating to watch.

Part two was called Speak and took from hip hop. It was totally cool to see this on the heels of Ballanchine. Completely different body story, movement story. About the lovely way culture can create a dance that lives in the bodies of people in their everyday lives, a way bodies communicate through movement. I think when dance goes modern it can sometimes turn out hokey, but Speak was totally great. True. Different kinds of subtle from the Ballanchine. And pretty exhilarating.

Left Unsaid was something gorgeous. Something almost surreal about the way it played with the relationships of the people on the stage. As it started, I realized I didn't know what to expect of it. I'd remembered the first one was going to be a square dance, I'd remembered about the hop hop, but I went into this one with a blank slate. And what I got was like anonymous story being born. Because I didn't have any expectations of theme, I tried to let my eyes just watch the beauty of the dancing, but it was always hints of story in my head. During one of the dances, I actually found myself letting that story take the form of one of the novels I've been following as it takes shape in my Dangerous Writing workshop. And it was another revelation of what dance can do. And I'm pretty sure I know who's going to die at the end of that novel. Well, maybe not, but beauty of movement, well-choreographed use of dramatic tension, became complete story in my head.



Stephen noticed that the woman from Speak was the principal woman in Left Unsaid. I thought everyone danced beautifully, but he has the eye for singling people out, remembering faces, and he has a more studied eye when it comes to dance. And he said she was outstanding. Anne Mueller - who apparently has been a part of Oregon Ballet Theatre since 1996.

The music was Bach. And contrasting with that, another element in Left Unsaid was apparently yoga. Which I don't know, so I can't speak for it, but I'd love to have had the knowledge to be able to pick out the "asanas" (OK, I don't even know what that is) that I read were a part of the choreography.

Last up was Eyes on You, which was all Cole Porter music. Sometimes piped in, sometimes live with a vocalist and piano. It was really cool, getting these very different types of music and of dance in these four different segments. Really reminded you of all the many worlds you can get to with just bodies and music. Well, bodies and music and a simple bit of costume and stage set. The use of color and contrast, visually, worked really nicely in Eyes on You. I liked the costumes all in white against the changing color of the backdrop. It seemed like the costuming was a successful reference to the Thirties - didn't seem like a bad imitation, which most imitations of that time period seem to turn out to be. Stephen's the expert on time and costume, and if he says something is successfully period, I figure it must be.

Overall, a lovely evening. Here's another picture I found on OBT's Flickr site:



Anne Mueller from Speak. Can't you just tell how cool she is?

Song and Dance goes until May 1st. Here's a link to their site if you want to check it out!