© Drew Donovan Ballet West 'Serenade' reviews 'Serenade' reviews recent Ballet West reviews Pennsylvania 'In the Night' reviews 'In the Night' reviews recent Pennsylvania Ballet reviews Houston 'Velocity' reviews recent Houston reviews more Oksana Khadarina reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months)

This festival, remarkable in its scope and importance, gave a wonderful opportunity for audiences to see a wide variety of companies and choreographic styles and a great chance for the dancers to perform on one of the world’s prestigious ballet stages. The eclectic choreographic repertory of the festival ranged from masterpieces by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Antony Tudor to the works of contemporary choreographers such as Twyla Tharp, Christopher Wheeldon, and Jorma Elo.

Even though there were no world-class troupes or big-star names in the casts, the overall result was enormously satisfying. The performances, featuring many talented and dedicated dancers, brought audiences plenty of memorable moments and surprising revelations. This was a vivid snapshot of the state of American regional ballet today, demonstrating its vibrant spirit and diversity of style.

Ballet West (the company from Salt Lake City was founded in 1963 and originally called the Utah Civic Ballet) opened the first triple bill program of Ballet Across America with George Balanchine’s timeless Serenade - a very appropriate choice for the inaugural dance of the festival: Serenade is universally considered a touchstone of the country’s national ballet. With this work, created in 1934 for students of the School of American Ballet, Balanchine launched his choreographic career in the United States, making his first steps in establishing American ballet as an art form.

Serenade was a beautiful showpiece for the Ballet West’s ballerinas. The opening night cast led by Christiana Bennett, Kate Crews, and Katherine Lawrence danced gracefully and sincerely, highlighting the poetic movements with a special touch of delicacy and nuance.

From the famous opening scene – the 17 ballerinas arranged in formal diagonals, their hands decisively raised forward as if proclaiming their independence and maturity; and then proceeding with simple classroom steps, demonstrating lovely poses of heads and arms, phrasing each steps with clarity and meaning – the dancers unfolded the dreamy radiance of the Balanchine choreography, allowing the audience to discover the ballet’s most fascinating mysteries.

Ballet West has a corps de ballet to admire. The ballerinas are tall, long-limbed, and attractively proportioned. Recapturing the very essence of Balanchine ballets, they brought a special feminine aesthetic to the dance, which made this Serenade so touchingly genuine and natural.

Although Balanchine insisted on the plotless nature of Serenade, many of the ballet’s images have a symbolic meaning. In the final scene, Elegy, the ballerina is slowly raised and carried as if on a pedestal by three men, her head and arms thrown back, reaching to the light. This moving sculpture leaves the audience with a sense of inevitability and loss; and her floating image creates an atmosphere of infinite poignancy that no longer appears nameless and abstract.

The Opera House orchestra conducted by Terence Kern gave a splendid rendition of the enchanting Tchaikovsky score.

The nocturnal tone of Serenade was stylishly elaborated in the second dance of the program – Jerome Robbins’s In the Night (1970), performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet. This company, founded in 1963 by a Balanchine protégé, Barbara Weisberger, is based in Philadelphia.

In the Night is quintessential Robbins, a beautiful study in motion of a romantic relationship. It’s a perfect marriage of piano music and dance movements adorned with a touch of theatricality. Gliding gracefully onstage to crystalline sounds of Chopin’s poetic nocturnes, three couples explore the stages of emotional feelings: innocent and young; wise and mature; and fervent and untamed.

On opening night, the best dancing came from Riolama Lorenzo and James Ihde in the second pas de deux – a glamorous, stately duet of two lovers who found endless happiness and contentment in each others arms. By contrast, the opening duet of Martha Chamberlain and Zachary Hench looked somewhat flat and unassuming, the dancers paying too much attention to the steps rather than the characterization. It was a technically clean performance, but the sense of exuberance and excitement of the young love, which their duet was meant to translate, was missing. In the third duet, performed by Amy Aldridge and Francis Veyette, the couple’s passion came out rather overheated and unnaturally agitated, also diminishing the emotional impact of the piece.

The stellar ensemble of Houston Ballet – America’s fourth largest ballet company – concluded the evening with the intrepid Velocity (2003), a tour de force created by Stanton Welch as a sequel to his earlier work Divergence.
 

Melody Herrera in Houston Ballet's Velocity
© Drew Donovan

The pace of this piece is conveyed by its title. Danced to a selection of vibrant minimalistic compositions of American composer Michael Torke, Velocity sets the cast in perpetual motion with an exhilarating speed. Here, the choreographer makes the classical ballet steps look not only ultra modern but also highly athletic.

Welch, the 38-year-old Australian choreographer who became artistic director of Houston Ballet in 2003, compares Velocity with “a butterfly mating ritual, in which only the strongest that can fly highest will mate.” His rigorous choreography pushes the dancers to the limits and commands the true virtuosic performers.

An oversized replica of the abstract painting of Dutch artist Piet Mondvian depicting patterns of gray and brown blocks decorated the stage. The black-and-white palette of the dancewear – white short tutus for the women and black costumes with transparent sleeveless tops for the men – gave the dance a special sense of formality and focus. The effective lighting designs by Francis Croese – geometrical patterns of squares, circles, triangles of various colors and sizes projected on the floor – were deftly incorporated in the choreography, adding an extra bonus to the dance’s visual appeal.