OSBA presents Collage Dance Collective

The Ogden Symphony Ballet Association presented Collage Dance Collective, a decade-old company directed by Kevin Thomas that has, in their own words, “inspired the growth of ballet by showcasing a repertoire of relevant choreography and world-class dancers representative of our community.” Who is included in their community is perhaps hard to define, though one could carefully say that this company is challenging the Eurocentric elitism and lack of racial and economic diversity that has pervaded the art form for centuries. There have been many companies and individual artists that have pushed and continue to push who ballet is for, who can perform it, and whose stories it will tell: Alvin Ailey, Arthur Mitchell (Dance Theatre of Harlem), Alonzo King, Carlos Acosta, and Misty Copeland, to name only a select few.

Collage Dance Collective obviously takes its place among those who strive to usher ballet into an age of inclusivity, exposure, and diversity, and the executive director of OSBA, Emily Jayne Kunz, even encouraged us to read the bios in the program to notice “how far some of the performers have traveled to be with us.” This sentiment was further echoed when I overheard a fellow patron remark, “These dancers are not all trained in New York; that is where you usually come from if you ‘make it.’”

While I cringe to think of agreeing with that sentiment, I cannot entirely disagree, and even think back to my graduate studies when a New York-based performance artist came to the University of Utah and remarked, “All my friends thought I was falling off the face of the earth when I told them I was going to Utah.” Just as it brought me a level of satisfaction to have to drive forty miles from the bigger, “better” Salt Lake City to Ogden to see Collage Dance Collective, it also brought satisfaction to know that while the company was founded in New York, their home is in Memphis, and they are enriching that particular community with their outreach, virtuosic dancing, and quality programming.  

Ella Suite Ella opened the show with a triptych: a duet, a pared-down solo, and a culminating trio. The piece, choreographed by Arturo Fernandez, celebrated the life of Ella Fitzgerald and thus featured her music (with Joe Pass). Fernandez has worked as ballet master for Alonzo King LINES Ballet for the past 25 years, and there is a recognizable connection in approach and aesthetic between his work and King’s: partnering based in contemporary ballet, lines that hit, undulation and extension with equal attention and value, and a clarity and focus in compositional structure. This was a short piece and a great way to begin the evening: embodied, exact dancing to Fitzgerald crooning, “How could I know about love, I didn’t know about you...”  

The Rate in Which I Am, choreographed by Joshua Manculich, featured music by local artist and University of Utah faculty member Mike Wall (as well as Dustin O’Halloran) and was a choreographic highlight. The piece featured six dancers and an exploration of the spotlight, the overhead light revealing, concealing, and casting shadows. Just that morning, my three-year-old daughter had asked me, “Mommy, what comes first, the day or the night?” and the continuous play of light and dark left me wondering the same thing.

I was captivated by Manculich’s accessible yet refined sense of drama and tension, but I struggled to find footing in Nicolo Fonte’s Left Unsaid. This was the longest work of the evening and multiple sections were marked by the upstage curtain lifting gradually to reveal a white cyc. During one section, three women danced in the foreground while three men sat in chairs, fully clothed in black suits, watching the movement unfold. I tried to ignore swirling dialogues dissecting the power and implications of the male gaze and instead to appreciate the architecture of the space, the moving foreground cutting against stationary background, but I could not resist imagining an alternative version of this section: three women holding the space, watching, monitoring the movements of three partially dressed men.

Another section continued with a man and a woman and two chairs, initially set far apart on the diagonal. Throughout the duet, the chairs were moved together until the man and woman were reluctantly forced into proximity, their faces manipulated to confront one another as the ending image. True of other sections, the ending provided a clean resolution to what was previously established.

Left Unsaid was in many ways a multi-faceted theatrical work that perhaps deserves a second viewing to unwind theme, metaphor and image; regardless, I struggled to reconcile what was presented into a cohesive work. When the cyc was finally revealed, and then covered by a quick drop of the back curtain, it was like the boy who cried wolf; I failed to be convinced of the impact upon the wolf’s arrival.

The final two pieces, Lineage by Darrell Grand Moultrie and Wasteland by Christopher Huggins, were both large-cast numbers that showcased the technical virtuosity and absolute kinetic joy that Collage Dance Collective harnesses as an ensemble. At one point during Wasteland, I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. The driving music, the ever-changing formations, and entrances and exits: it was spectacle in every positive interpretation of the word, and performed flawlessly. After a prolonged standing ovation, I began my drive back to Salt Lake, happy that I had been able to experience this company.

Ogden Symphony Ballet Association will next present Parsons Dance on March 3 at 7:30pm, at Weber State’s Val A. Browning Center for the Performing Arts.  

Erica Womack is a choreographer based in Salt Lake, and an adjunct faculty member at SLCC.  

Ballet West: Carmina Burana, with Serenade

Ballet West’s fall offering is loaded with icons. The world premiere of Nicolo Fonte’s Carmina Burana, a co-production with the Cincinnati Ballet, draws inspiration from Carl Orff’s well-known score that set the poetry of medieval clergy to music. The opening song, “O Fortuna,” is shorthand for drama, as frequently heard in commercials as it is in theaters. Serenade, the other ballet of the double-bill, is the first work choreographed by George Balanchine in the United States and a masterwork of twentieth-century ballet. Its opening tableau of female dancers in sky blue, ankle-length tutus extending their hands as if shielding their eyes from the sun is central to the origins of American ballet. Ballet West danced both works with spirit and indulgence, the expert clarity of Serenade contrasting with Carmina Burana’s excessive flourish.

The familiar refrain of “O Fortuna” bellowed as cloisters housing the Cantorum Chamber Choir in an actual choir loft were unveiled. A bone-like light fixture recalling the raftered ceiling of a Catholic church floats over a writhing tangle of bodies. Wearing nude leotards and briefs, the dancers twist until broken shapes emerge. Featuring a full orchestra, full chorus, three vocal soloists, impressive scenery, pointe shoes as well as soft shoes, too many costume changes, and intricate choreography, Nicolo Fonte’s Carmina Burana is a true spectacle.

The poems Orff chose to include in his cantata examine themes of fortune, love, and lust. Like many versions of Carmina Burana, Fonte uses the sensual words as a muse and aesthetic choices reference the authors of the lyrics, though the costumes have a trendier bent with metallic leotards and hooded crop tops paired with bronze circle skirts that recall monk’s robes. With the men and women of the ensemble clothed in the same hooded costume, the emergence of the monks is a magnificently anonymous moment.  

The ensuing vignettes are visually impactful and only occasionally overwrought. The dancers clearly delight in the movement, giving a heightened energy to Fonte’s choreography. Demonstratively musical, the choreography charged the stage with tension and hinted at the idea of humanity’s dual nature. Even in calm moments, Fonte can skillfully craft drama. This intensity can get exhausting, but Arolyn Williams had a refreshingly joyous solo that interrupted the turmoil.

Though Carmina Burana’s movement was rigorously detailed and sinuously danced, I craved a through-line. There were hints of this in an elegantly ambiguous duet between Alexander MacFarlan and Oliver Oguma that lightly referenced an earlier embrace. The arc of Beckanne Sisk and Chase O’Connell’s roles also felt like a potential theme.

Principal Artists Beckanne Sisk and Chase O'Connell in Nicolo Fonte's Carmina Burana. Photo by Luke Isley.

At first dancing separately, O’Connell appeared in a solo that showcased his spaciously sophisticated movement and Sisk emerged as a broken bird with only one wing and one pointe shoe. Though I did not understand why she was only wearing one shoe, Sisk expertly navigated the challenge, embodying a character trapped by her halved nature.  The pair’s eventual union in a climactic pas de deux was the highlight of the ballet. Much of the partnering in the rest of Carmina Burana felt manipulative but O’Connell met Sisk as a peer, supporting rather than controlling her. They danced with abandon and trust. O’Connell’s elegance and seamless partnering skills perfectly matched Sisk’s technical consistency and emotional intensity.

Unlike the embellishment of Fonte’s Carmina Burana, Serenade is brilliant in its refined clarity. As the emotive chords of Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings in C Major” swelled, the corps de ballet extend their fingertips, floating their wrists down to rest on their foreheads, then their hearts, their arms finally arriving in low circles and feet opening to first position below the hems of their tutus. These first gestures of Serenade, choreographed in 1934, are emblematic of Balanchine and of American ballet. Despite being over eighty years old, Serenade feels vital.

Serenade exemplifies the idealized feminine qualities of Balanchine’s ballets, only turning problematic when one of the soloist men “awakens” the collapsed Waltz Girl. The distilled movement and calming yet innovative arrangement of the dancers are an ode to the foundations of the art form: the corps de ballet, the ritual of class, and the crystalline technique it fosters. Most of the ballet’s striking moments are simple and based in class exercises. The stage erupts in unified repetitions of pirouettes. Staccato port des bras illustrates the interplay between the orchestra’s instruments. Dozens of dancers extend their legs into tendus that perfectly slide into fifth positions, a movement that signifies the start of an exercise.

In Ballet West’s production of this classic, the corps de ballet artfully and effortlessly lays the ballet’s technical foundation without feeling cold or removed. I have admired the unity of Ballet West’s corps before, but I have never seen them as easily connected as they were on opening night. The balance between their singular openness and the meticulous choreography is enthralling. If I had the words to laud each individual corps member, I would.

At its heart Serenade is an ensemble work, but an abstract relationship between five soloists, three women and two men underpins the ballet. Weaving amongst the corps de ballet in the first movement, joyfully expansive leaps and pizzicato steps introduce the three female soloists. Katherine Lawrence’s calm warmth permeated her sparkling technique and Emily Adams brimmed with vitality and confidence. Adams was superb, playing with the music and enticing the audience with her fully enlivened physicality. The role of Waltz Girl magnified Beckanne Sisk’s unique and growing ability to convey emotional depth. Her performance was lush, exhilarating, and sincere in its gravity. While the ballet is renowned for being story-less, Sisk imbued Serenade with an emotional resonance often only found in narrative. She stretched her arms backwards and opened her chest to the heavens as the masthead of Serenade’s iconic final lift and I saw all the complexity of ballet, the torment, joy, sacrifice, and transcendence, embodied in her arch.

Ballet West's Carmina Burana with Serenade runs now through this Saturday, November 11. 

Mary Lyn Graves, a native of Tulsa, OK, studied dance at the University of Oklahoma. She currently dances with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.

Ballet West: National Choreographic Festival, Part II

Billed as the “Sundance Festival for dance,” Ballet West’s National Choreographic Festival spanned two weekends and received significant regional support for its presentation of works by five ballet companies and seven choreographers.

 Below, Liz Ivkovich considers works from the first weekend while Ashley Anderson responds to the second. The two conclude together in conversation about this new platform.  

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Trey McIntyre’s The Accidental featured three couples (male and female), in pas de deux to the crooning voice of Patrick Watson. The piece was four distinct segments to four different songs. The almost-mariachi beat drove the dancers, in leafy leotards and flat slippers, through a series of intricate lifts. The partnering was well-executed, yet I felt the Pennsylvania Ballet dancers seemed to miss each other in their focus on the audience.

As the lights rose on Sarasota Ballet performing In a State of Weightlessness, I thought I saw five floating Buddhas. This image resolved into women in light tan leotards suspended in the air above darkly-clad male partners. Throughout the work, composer Philip Glass drove the men as they lifted their female partners like Bunraku puppet masters. I challenged myself to actually see the men, which was difficult because the work seemed designed to draw focus solely to the women. I was struck by the beauty and nuance in Ricardo Graziano’s choreography, where a simple head movement could define the pas de deux.

I wish I could see Nicolo Fonte’s Fox on the Doorstep two more times before I had to write about it. It was perfectly ordinary and extraordinary, folding me into their world.

Fox began with a heavy stage left; a mass of dancers that resolved into duets and solos, to dissolve again into the group. Beckanne Sisk and Rex Tilton discovered the unseen edges of the music with sharp flicks and easy extensions as they danced together, alone, and with others.

A single light shone from upstage down at the audience. At times it became the moon, at others an interrogation. And when it struck the dancers so that we saw them - strength of movement, sweat lines on costumes - they could see us. Performers and observers, we were there together.

A woman contorted in the center of dancers arranged like a flock of geese, while they watched. At moments, they tried to join her, only to stop and watch again, with cold eyes.

The piece seemed to end when the group melted off stage. It began anew with falling snow, and a lone figure (Chase O’Connell) who was joined for a brief moment by a woman in a gray leotard and soft slippers.

I feel odd singling out these few artists whose faces I recognize. If each dancer had performed their own part alone, it would still be captivating, a mash up of the ease of release technique, the intense exploration of Gaga, and iconic ballet lines.  

Yet, it was the company’s commitment to really being together on stage that lingers in my memory. I had the feeling that one gets when seeing someone hold their baby - that they are actually touching another person, not performing what it looks like to touch someone.

This connection between the dancers was so lovely in its ordinary-ness that the performance became extraordinary.

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Terra is not the first work by Helen Pickett that Ballet West has presented, but it is one of the most lovely. Working from Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, Oregon Ballet Theatre performs both creation and opposition with dancers who appear at once Paleolithic and extraterrestrial. The choreographic structure measures up to several of Campbell’s functions of myth: to marvel at the universe, to show the scientific boundaries of these beliefs, to demonstrate sociological support for this ideas, and to live life within the aforementioned.

This last function, wildly living, falls short at times, perhaps because of the homogenous nature of the group (ballet-trained dancers of the same demographic) and perhaps because of a lack of practice in performing a visceral soundscape (grunts, shouts, etc.). Although vulnerable relationships are presented in a number of mythical contexts and formations from virtuosic masculine circles and romantic pairings to lone and longing women, the dance deals more with the structures and the outward marveling than it does the living.

Before/After by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa makes this concert happily equitable in terms of gender (a hot topic in ballet) and the brief duet presents a refreshing counterpoint to other festival offerings. A sparse text is repeated -- changes, the sound changes, changes, before, after, the light changes --  and each directive comes to pass over the 7 minute work. Light and sound cues progressively change before the “after” of departures from the stage by Angelica Generosa and James Moore.  Watching the duet I’m reminded about the powerful form of duets, especially in a regional dance fabric that so values an ensemble: the audience can focus deeply, marvel at intricacies, and also have the pressure of a “masterpiece,” lifted from their shoulders.  

The return of Oliver Oguma’s Tremor was exciting and curious. I reviewed the premiere at the Eccles in Park City and had such a remarkably different experience the second time around. I can’t pinpoint changes to the work beyond my own proximity (closer in Park City, from a distance in Salt Lake) that made the androgyny and ambiguity read and the performance by the dancers more keen and structurally refined. Perhaps this viewing was also seeking a hopeful precedent of truly new voices, outside the choreographic canon, to be included in future festivals.

The evening cycled back to explorations of ritual in Dances for Lou, by Val Caniparoli, a previous resident choreographer with Ballet West. The title refers to the accompanying composition by Lou Harrison, known for his use of Asian musical influences. With impeccable framing by visible stage lighting, brief vignettes revealed ideas similar to Terra although more formally framed. The vignettes carried largely the same implications -- wonder, boundaries, and questions about using specific cultural histories on specific, but non-representative casts.

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The National Choreographic Festival is certainly a relevant, ambitious pursuit resulting in exceptionally skilled performances presented in Salt Lake’s newest venue. The festival also  meets at least one Sundance measure in its vision of a gathering place for new works in ballet. Though ballet receives more public support compared to other dance forms it is also met with unique challenges, namely the expectations of ballet’s oldest patrons (read: Swan Lake).

Yet these accolades, the “broad, diverse, and ever-changing landscape of new choreography that exists today” promised in Artistic Director Adam Sklute’s program notes, are fraught, given that the public funding received by Ballet West is hardly comparable to either the early independent days of film festival metaphor or the payment that any regional choreographer outside of ballet is eligible to receive. Regional, independent choreographers are only eligible for $2,000 a year in public funding, or $4,500 if they are fiscally sponsored. Ballet West received $1.6 million in government grants in the 2014 fiscal year, and the festival garnered an additional $100,000 in support from the Utah State Legislature.

There are both valid and invalid reasons for these discrepancies but it does leave these two writers wondering what the cost of performance will be in an ever-tightened picture of funding. Is a reading of ballet as synonymous with choreography fair? Should models like the National Choreographic Festival promise a festival of new ballet rather than a festival of dance, a promise which Ballet West can unequivocally deliver? Or, could the National Choreographic Festival grow to become, like Sundance, a festival that “actively advances the work of independent storytellers” from a wider range of aesthetics, expertise, and identity?  

Ballet West: National Choreographic Festival, Part I

This abbreviated review from Liz Ivkovich is for Ballet West’s National Choreographic Festival, May 19 & 20, 26 & 27. The full review will be posted next week after the second weekend of performances. 

I wish I could see Nicolo Fonte’s Fox on the Doorstep two more times before I had to write about it. This is the moment I live for as a dance writer, when I know I cannot write this dance adequately. How can I translate Ballet West’s human connection and crisp technique to you? It was perfectly ordinary and extraordinary, folding me into their world.

Fox begins with a heavy stage left; a mass of dancers that resolved into duets and solos, to dissolve again into the group. Beckanne Sisk and Rex Tilton discovered the unseen edges of the music with sharp flicks and easy extensions as they dance together, alone, and with others.

 A single light shone from upstage down at the audience. At times it became the moon, at others an interrogation. And when it struck the dancers so that we saw them - strength of movement, sweat lines on leotards - they could see us. Performers and observers, we were there together. 

A woman contorted in the center of dancers arranged like a flock of geese, while they watched. At moments, they tried to join her, only to stop and watch again, with cold eyes.

The piece seems to end when the group melts off stage. It begins anew with falling snow, and a lone figure (Chase O’Connell) who is joined for a brief moment by a woman in a gray leotard and soft slippers. 

I feel odd singling out these few artists whose faces I recognize. If each dancer had performed their own part alone, it would still be captivating, a mash up of the ease of release technique, the intense exploration of Gaga, and iconic ballet lines.  

Yet, it was the company’s commitment to really being together on stage that lingers in my memory. I had the feeling that one gets when seeing someone hold their baby - that they are actually touching another person, not performing what it looks like to touch someone.

This connection between the dancers was so lovely in its ordinary-ness that the performance became extraordinary.

Liz Ivkovich moonlights as loveDANCEmore’s New Media Coordinator and daylights at the UU Sustainability Office and Global Change & Sustainability Center.