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?  

Innovations at the Rose

Ballet West’s annual Innovations series opened this past weekend, showcasing work by company artists alongside Jessica Lang. As always, the evening presents wide ranging approaches which will expand next year with a new National Choreographic Festival and a move of Innovations to Park City where it will be re-titled, Works from Within.

The evening opens with new work by Principal Artist Christopher Ruud. “In Memoriam” echoes Ruud’s strengths from previous commissions, namely an ability to highlight individuals within group structures. Throughout the dance an older woman (Barbara Barrington Jones) revisits herself as a girl, teen, college woman, and wife in an abusive relationship. In each vignette Jones opens a dresser drawer containing nostalgic objects (a graduation hood, a veil) and retreats to observe soloists representing each life-stage who are framed by groups of passing men. In some ways the male framing of a female narrative flips ballet’s expectations (mostly women surrounding heteronormative partnering) but in others, the story remains expected. For example, when Jacqueline Straughan’s character falls into a violent pas de deux it’s not her own self worth that drives the conclusion, it’s being rescued by a new partner.

Music commissioned by Jared Oaks adds sentimentality, particularly when Katlyn Addison appears to usher Jones into an afterlife, generously opening a final dresser drawer the audience never sees inside. Ruud’s comments on aging are more narratively dramatic than they are in some dance counterparts including the multigenerational repertory of Liz Lerman and relatively new documentaries featuring performances by aging bodies.

The second act presented works by three new contributors to Innovations, beginning with “Barre Spot” by Christopher Sellars. With live piano and saxophone, the work is a play on a jazz bar and explores musical theatre idioms within formalized ballet structures. Without a core narrative, the work shares passing duets and trios that cycle in and out of the attention of the audience. The dance is light-hearted and left me wanting to see more of Sellars’ point of view.

I’m also left wanting more of Oliver Oguma’s “Fragments of Simplicity,” a dance with three sections to Chinese violin. A duet between Alex MacFarlan and Jordan Veit is subtle and the dancers curiously explore twinning with slow movements and articulate backs changing slowly to reveal new perspectives. Latter sections with a female ensemble and a pas de deux are less explored and the strength of the work is in the early representation of a potential for male bodies to be virtuosic even in stillness and gentleness.

The final work in the act, Trevor Naumann’s “Homer: a study in phenomenological ontology,” represents a radically different point of view not only due to overt philosophical ideas but also, choreographic approach. A commissioned score by Boaz Roberts lends itself toward contemporary ballet’s frequent employ of atonal electronic ambience and the dancers move frantically in nude unitards reminiscent of Martha Clarke’s “Garden of Earthly Delights.” Later, becoming dressed, the pairings begin to isolate particular dancers as an effort to consider titular objectives: studies of experiences and studies of being.

What the title may overlook is that ballet can already be viewed as a quite literal embodiment of phenomenology and a way to study ourselves in relationship to our experiences. There are perhaps few performative wonders that compare to a traditional corps de ballet balancing en pointe in relatively immobile formations and there are equally few scenarios where an audience can experience themselves kinesthetically in relationship to externalized experiences. This notion of physicalized wonder has weaved its way into many phenomenological dialogues, including a beautiful book on the aesthetics of rare experiences.

The only way choreographer Trevor Naumann might further flip a phenomena-based dialogue within the form would be to more completely invert audience expectation in relationship to our identification of ballet as a form. In this case the only thing I can think of would be for one of the principal women to sit center stage casually consuming a bag of potato chips while the house lights are up.

“Lyric Pieces” by Jessica Lang closes the show on a more traditional but inventive note and thankfully shares the viewpoints of at least one female choreographer among an otherwise entirely male program.* The dance takes place among folding paper sculptures that generate scenic interest and create unique entrances and exits. A great victory of the dance is that I thought there was a cast of twenty. Instead, the curtain call revealed that it was only eight dancers who tricked me into seeing vastness as they created lengthy pathways, found hiding places and directed one another in alternating silly and poetic tasks.

Artistic Director Adam Sklute aptly described Lang’s choreography as straightforward  and suggested that her dances follow a logic making their conclusions inevitable. In my sense of delight and anticipation in “Lyric Pieces,” this was certainly true.

Ashley Anderson is the director of loveDANCEmore events as part of her non-profit ashley anderson dances.  loveDANCEmore reviews are co-published with 15 BYTES.

*Let me preempt common complaints about this variety of feminist critique in dance: yes this choreographic platform relies on women to opt in and if they don’t it can be said there is simply a lack of interest among the particular group, but mathematically it’s murkier. In a company of 40 dancers with 24 women (60%) and 16 men (40%) there is less than a 2.5% probability that all four choreographers would be male in a randomized selection. In recent iterations of Innovations there has never been more than one company woman on the bill and in that equation it’s still less than an 8% probability that only one woman would be selected in a randomized process. These percentages reveal that some systematic bias is present, however unintentional. It’s important to ask questions about where the remaining 97.5% likelihood shifts: is it women’s greater satisfaction with the roles they are given which creates a lack of desire to choreograph? Do women have greater challenges within that same repertory which diminish the time and energy it may take to engage in a choreographic process? Are there characteristics seen as valuable to ballerinas which are characteristics less likely to be present in a large cross-section of choreographers? Past works by Emily Adams and Katlyn Addison have been strong contributions to the Innovations platform and in writing, I wonder what conditions would it take for more women to rise within those same ranks?  

The Nijinsky Revolution

While introducing “The Ninjinsky Revolution,” Ballet West director Adam Sklute recalled the riotous shock with which much of Vaslav Nijinksy's work was met. Sklute described the boundary-pushing nature of Nijinsky's movement and libretti, inviting the modern audience seated in the Capitol Theater on opening night to see if they, like their historical counterparts, are scandalized by the three ballets offered. Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, Helen Pickett's Games and Nicolo Fonte's The Rite of Spring are re-imaginings of three of Nijinsky's four choreographic works. They are presented as contemporary continuations of Nijinsky's ideas. It seems appropriate to view them in that context, albeit with varying degrees of success. Robbin's Afternoon of a Faun is a masterpiece in its own right and Pickett's Games is an energetic rendition of one of Nijinsky's lesser known ballets, simultaneously dense and flippant. Fonte's The Rite of Spring, however, misses the mark having little of the revolutionary zeal found in Stravinsky's still shocking masterpiece.

As the first languid notes of Debussy's score, beautifully conducted by Jared Oaks, drift through the theater, the curtain opens onto a hazy, sunlit scrim, beckoning the audience into a dream world inhabited solely by two dancers and their elusive courting ritual. Robbins is a master at creating a world on the stage and Afternoon of a Faun is no exception. The entire ballet takes place in a bright, softly illuminated studio against a sky blue backdrop. The audience voyeuristically occupies the place of the studio's mirror. Throughout this short poem of a work, the gazes of the dancers are constantly directed towards that mirror, piquing the audience's curiosity without inviting them in. This outward gaze directly contrasts the Nijinsky original, which echoes a Grecian frieze in its two dimensionality and stillness.  As Adrian Fry and Emily Adams, look out toward the audience with subtle curiosity, boredom, vanity, and shyness, you find yourself growing more deeply interested in the dancers' exploration of each other and themselves and the unspoken rituals of courtship they are enacting through ballet's familiar forms. Adams and Fry cautiously approach one another, Fry mesmerized by the quietly bold Adams. I relished Adams' glamorous and confident interpretation of the female character; Nijinsky's Faun featured nymphs that spend the majority of their time running away in fear and modesty. Adams, however, directs the scene, drawing the eyes of the faun as she sensuously combs her dark hair and luxuriously extends her limbs as if basking in the warmth of afternoon sun. As Adams' withdraws from the gossamer studio leaving Fry to recline in reverie, you wonder if the sweet, dreamy interaction was even real.

Robbins' purposeful choreographic contrasts to Nijinsky's Faun and occasional references to the iconic movement were particularly satisfying. A flexed wrist and pointed hand, picturesque moments of suspended pause, the dripping veil of Adams' hair and Fry's mystified fixation upon it. Of the evening's three works, Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun is most successful at reaching beyond the revolutionary ideas of Nijinsky precisely because it has a solid and full understanding of the original.

The second piece, Helen Picket's Games, opens with dancers Alison DeBona, Arolyn Williams, and Christopher Ruud standing isolated in pools of light against the hint of an urban office building. This is the last moment of pause before the non-stop energy and exertion of the dancers' flirtatious romp begins. Throughout, the dancing is quick-witted and sharp. Each dancer engages the other two with a solo that can't decide if it is trying to entice one or the other or neither. DeBona's biting sparkle was a delicious counterpoint to Williams bright and enchanting girlishness, an especially seductive combination.  The score, another by Debussy, and the dancing are incredibly dense, changing tempo and theme almost constantly without ever letting up energetically.

Nijinsky's original, entitled Jeux, used the trappings of a tennis game to explore a romantic tryst between a triad of dancers, two women and one man.  Pickett does away with the metaphor of a tennis game, placing the story in a modern day office.  Cautions against office romance (especially office threesomes) aside, the removal of the tennis metaphor doesn't serve the ballet: though the sexual draw among the three dancers is more openly acknowledged, it is not more openly expressed, save a few kisses near the end. The action of the ballet hints at scandalous behavior without ever fully exploring or displaying either the behavior or its consequences. Largely light and playful, I was quite aware of the absence of actual game-playing. The dancers flirted and giggled but exhibited no jealousy or any other ill-feeling, guaranteed emotions in such a romantic arrangement. Games is short however; perhaps it would have been too much to fully explore the emotional landscape of polyamory in its brisk twenty minutes. Or maybe I'm reading too much into an unusual but frivolous one night stand.

The opening oboe solo of The Rite of Spring is undoubtedly iconic. It signals the beginning of one of the most revolutionary musical scores of the twentieth century, one which caused an actual riot at its premiere in 1913 and continues to challenge audiences today. Instruments pierce through wild discordance, blossoming into musical themes that are equal parts unsettling and captivating. Rhythms and harmonies interweave into a chaotic system that seems incomprehensible.  Stravinsky's score is a celebration of creation and the inescapable destruction that accompanies it, a hymn to the bloody, violent, cyclical process of artistic birth. In Nicolo Fonte's interpretation of this musical masterpiece, the stage is dominated by rusted metal monoliths and spider-like dancers clad in black leather and rhinestone leotards. There is little of messy spring in the scenery, much less the choreography. Fonte's interpretation is menacing and fierce like the score but it does not sweep you up. The ballet is filled with hyperextended legs, arched backs, splayed ribs and hands. There are unclear references to a narrative but little investment in its development. However, there is a pervasive sense of something being at stake; I just couldn't figure out what. Though the choreography is uneventful, the dancers perform it beautifully. They are sinewy and sensual in acrobatic twists and contortions, lending the movement intensity with their arresting gaze. I just wish they had been given something more substantial to work with.

Mary Lyn Graves dances for Ririe Woodbury Dance Company alongside other local teaching and performance. 

This review is published in collaboration with 15 BYTES, Utah's Visual Art magazine

Ballet West’s Multi-Faceted Iconic Classics

Ballet West’s 52nd season opens with Iconic Classics, a triple bill addressing milestones in 20th-century ballet, from its shifts towards two opposing directions — musical theatre and modern dance — to its classical apotheosis in George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.“

Opening with Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free,” the company explores not only narrative fare which typically interests a broad public but also the resurgence of ballet crossing over into musical theater. With New York City Ballet dancers Robert and Megan Fairchild (who, by the way, are Utah natives) taking on Broadway roles, the resurgence of Robbins’ work seems relevant on a local and national scale.

Known most widely for choreographing “West Side Story,” Robbins had a knack for choreographing theatrical scenarios with clarity: dancers move deftly and musically between complex phrase-work and simply walking across the stage. In solos exploring male bravado, Chase O’Connell in particular demonstrates a unique blend of character and precision, his long limbs at times held in perfect control and, at others, sent across the space with abandon.

After a recent performance in Minnesota, one blogger raised questions about the relevance of “Fancy Free’s” story-telling. She saw the premise of the piece as problematic, that three sailors on 24 hour leave in the 40s would not successfully vie for a woman’s attention by stealing her handbag. Although it’s true that some of the content seems out of sync with current sociopolitical conversations, it’s undeniable that Robbins had a gift for choreographing a narrative, if not supplying it.

Jiří Kylián’s “Overgrown Path,” is a significant shift in tone. Premiering in 1980, the choreography is based on a piano cycle by Czech composer Leos Janácek that considers the loss of his daughter. A series of lush vignettes spill out of the score and Jenna Rae Herrera and Arolyn Williams capture the combination of strain and frailty that the narrative suggests, with its titles like “A blown away leaf,” “Unutterable anguish,” and “In tears.” Throughout, mournful women clutch skirts to their chest, contract their bodies and fall back into the arms of their male partners.

The structure of “Overgrown Path” is unquestionably ballet, beginning with an ensemble, meandering through small groups and returning to an ensemble. But Kylián’s moving material calls to mind many women of modern dance. In a program of icons who all happen to be male choreographers, this reminder of works by Helen Tamiris or Martha Graham seem as topical as the work’s original dedication to Anthony Tudor.

Kylián’s work served as a touchstone into idioms popular in contemporary ballet, but the program concludes with Balanchine’s “Symphony in C,” a crown jewel of classical ballet. Ballet West has previously performed excerpts but this concert shows the full work and utilizes so many dancers that advanced students are also included to round out the corps de ballet.

Opening night featured a few technical missteps, but if anything, this highlighted the soloists commitment to Balanchine’s aesthetic of fully moving off the leg and manipulating their torso to elongate the body. The women, in white tutus and tiaras, are the embodiment of the ballerina in the jewelry box if her spring was loosened a bit. Unfortunately no such metaphor exists for the men so that the musicality and depth of performances by Adrian Fry and Rex Tilton lack appropriate description.

Ashley Anderson is the director of loveDANCEmore community events as part of her non-profit, ashley anderson dances. See more of her work on ashleyandersondances.com  This piece was written for the November edition of 15 BYTES and can be found here.

Photo by Will Thompson of Ballet West principal artists Beckanne Sisk & Christopher Ruud in “Symphony in C” by George Balanchine (C) The George Balanchine Trust

Joining the Corps: Ballet West’s Iconic Classics

New Yorker magazine critic Arlene Croce spent a good deal of her career finding words for Balanchine’s choreography. In 1975 she got to the heart of the emblematic nature of Balanchine’s objectives: “To make plain to American audiences the dynamics of classical style. In [“Symphony in C”] the dancing grows from simple to complex structures, and every stage of growth is consequentially related to every other. It is partly because of their structural logic that his ballets make such great sense—or such vivid nonsense—to us years after they were completed, but it’s also because such logic isn’t the featured attraction; it’s only the means by which a particular kind of entertainment is elucidated.” Ballet West clearly agrees with Croce’s sentiments, having regularly presented Balanchine. Iconic Classics doesn’t only revive “Symphony in C” but completes it, showing the full ballet after formerly excerpting the work.

Last week, Ballet West presented a rehearsal of the piece with live accompaniment of the Bizet score by Jared Oaks, a frequent conductor at Ballet West’s performances. The new Jessie Eccles Quinney Ballet Centre studios, where they performed, are as large as the Capitol Theatre stage, plus wing space, making it possible to take in the full ballet. The setting is sizeable but still more intimate than what audiences typically experience.

The soloists were, as usual, formidable; Emily Adams in particular captures joy through striving, a quality inherent in Balanchine’s work. But it was the corps that continued to draw attention as their power grew with proximity to the material. Artistic Director Adam Sklute persistently suggested that the corps dancers keep thinking about lengthening their backs. From a seat in the house it’s impossible to see how heavy the breathing of the corps is and unlike a soloist who may exit the stage, the corps primarily returns to the sides with their bodies held precisely. The difficulty in this task is easy to overlook which is particularly interesting considering how it is their role that holds the work together, keeping it turning like a kaleidoscope rather than a variety show of smaller acts.

Sklute also gave affirmations to members of the corps who were moving fully off the standing leg, a key characteristic of Balanchine’s work. This gesture is more visible sans costuming and theatrical lighting. Letting an audience in on the complexity of a posture makes the magic of pointe, in which a dancer supports all her weight entirely on the tips of her feet, more visible. Some of this magic may be hidden to audiences who attend the Ballet’s season opener this next week, but they can still consider these moments, opting to let their eyes drift across the action, not needing to be tied to the center. In particular this thought extends to those who find non-narrative ballet inaccessible but who may be persuaded by the sheer difficulty of small moments.

“Symphony in C” isn’t the only work presented in Iconic Classics. In a triple bill, it joins “Fancy Free” by Jerome Robbins and “Overgrown Path” by Jiri Kylian. The programming choices Sklute makes are never easy and in a post-rehearsal discussion he revealed that there are always subtle negotiations between what longtime patrons may expect and what newer audiences may crave. A craving coincides too with Sklute’s common metaphor for a program, a good meal. In the case ofIconic Classics he considers “Fancy Free” an appetizer, “Overgrown Path” a dense main course and “Symphony in C” a concluding hot fudge sundae. To return to critic Croce, she looked at “Symphony” again in the ‘80s and overheard a man in the lobby greeting a companion by saying, “Oh, I couldn’t miss ‘Symphony in C.’ It’s my bread and water.”

Ballet West’s “Iconic Classics,” at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre, Salt Lake City, Nov. 6 -14, www.balletwest.org.

Ashley Anderson is the director of loveDANCEmore community events as part of her non-profit, ashley anderson dances. See more of her work on ashleyandersondances.com  This piece was written for the November edition of 15 BYTES and can be found here.  Check both sites for a review of the production this weekend.