For the ravishing opening night of Ballet West’s quadruple bill connecting the Broadway stage to classical ballet, one could not have launched this unforgettable evening of Utah premieres better than with Alison Olsen playing the last ten bars of Debussy’s Syrinx for solo flute as the prelude for Jerome Robbins’ Antique Epigraphs.
Intimate, delicate and fragile, the music sets the stage as the curtain rises, showing eight marvelous tall dancers — womanhood and love together as an accomplished instrument. Unlike the athletic, propulsive, high-octane choreography of Robbin’s’ West Side Story Suite which closed out the evening, the seven scenes of his Antique Epigraphs were poetic miniatures of pristine minimalism. Just as Adam Sklute, Ballet West’s artistic director, described in a preview at The Utah Review, the dancers created enlightened Greek antiquity ideals of sexuality, feminism and transcendental beauty, with a “gesture of the arm, a turn of the head, a look in the eyes.”
Robbins set the first six sections of this 1984 work to music by Debussy written originally to accompany the intimate, erotic prose poetry of Pierre Louÿs, as part of the set of songs Chansons de Bilitis (1897), and which was later arranged for orchestra by Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet. The seventh section was set to Debussy’s Syrinx, a three-minute solo for flute which signifies the double transfiguration that occurs in the story of the river nymph (Syrinx), who was pursued by the god Pan.
Together with the meticulously balanced, gossamer-like clarity in the Ballet West Orchestra’s performance, the eight dancers (Katlyn Addison, Lillian Casscells, Kye Cooley, Nicole Fannéy, Victoria Vassos, Rylee Ann Rogers, Anisa Sinteral and Claire Spainhour) bring us to a contemporary realization of the Hellenic dream of mythical powers where women imagine overcoming the experiences of being secluded from the realms of art, music and poetry to become powerful independent muses who articulate their own language of eros and desire. The work was staged by Jerri Kumery.
Just as compelling in moving effortlessly across the transom between Broadway and classical ballet was Christopher Wheeldon’s exceptional distillation of Carousel, the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein blockbuster musical. Carousel (A Dance) is a heart-bursting tribute, as Wheeldon took an arrangement with bits from the musical’s three greatest numbers— The Carousel Waltz, If I Loved You and Soliloquy —and choreographed a cogent map of the emotional ups and downs in the complicated, imperfect and contentious romance between Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow.
Amy Potter and Jordan Veit were stellar as the couple, who convey the enormity of the struggle of finding their own piece of the dream, as they dance under the vast starlit sky. The musical’s score constantly brings back a two-bar circular motif. Veit convinces us of Billy’s restless swings between wild behavior, his frustrations with his vulnerabilities and his capacity for tenderness and sensitivity. Potter reminds us of Julie torn between unconditional love for Billy and the pain of his anger and frustration which puts their love in a dark place. The dance corps emulate the dystopian carousel and calliope effects. The Ballet West Orchestra delivers the sweeping impacts of what this critic believes was Rodgers’ finest score for a musical. Ballet West is fortunate to have Michele Gifford, a former New York City Ballet dancer who is an in-house stager and répétiteur for Wheeldon works as well as for the George Balanchine Trust.
The other Wheeldon gem, the pas de deux section from After the Rain (2005) matched the intimate, fragile, delicate character of Robbins’ Antique Epigraphs. Set to Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, one of the Estonian composer’s best known works, the duet was given its superb Utah premiere by Emily Adams and Hadriel Diniz, along with the equally first-class onstage musical performance by cellist Lauren Posey and pianist Vedrana Subotic. Adams and Diniz portray senses of longing with incredible impact and the closing is stunning, with Diniz hoisting Adams into the position of a ship figurehead. As the music fades, one wonders if the couple’s souls will be resilient enough to ward off future storms in their love.
There was no question that Ballet West’s Utah premiere of Robbins’ West Side Story Suite was going to be the barn-burner of the evening. It was an electrifying, adrenaline-pulsating phenomenon, as the classically trained dancers crossed confidently into the Broadway musical and jazz vernacular. The audience shook the rafters with thunderous approval.
Ballet West spared no margin for ensuring absolute fidelity to Robbins’ creation, which has not aged at all since the full West Side Story premiered 70 years ago. Robert La Fosse, the New York City Ballet dancer who played Tony both in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (which won six Tony Awards in 1989 including Best Musical) and the West Side Story Suite, worked extensively with the company on staging.
Jin-Xiang Yu, opera singer and owner and teacher of Studio JX, trained the dancers who sang on stage as well as spoke lines in their roles. The highlights were Jenna Rae Herrera as the singing Rosalia in America and David Huffmire as Riff, super-sharp as the main Jets antagonist and in singing Cool, one of the most challenging Broadway songs, especially as this jazz-inflected offering is written à la the form of a twelve-tone fugue by Leonard Bernstein.
Guest artist Robbie Fairchild, a Salt Lake City native with extensive credits on Broadway and ballet (New York City Ballet), led the cast as Tony. In America, Georgina Pazcoguin, a former New York City Ballet soloist, Broadway performer, and one of the last artists personally coached in the role of Anita by Broadway legend Chita Rivera, preserved and reiterated the legacy of the show’s second female lead. In the pit, tenor Christopher Puckett delivered the goods magnificently in Something’s Coming (Tony’s first-act song which is specified to be sung in the pit according to the original suite arrangement by Robbins). Likewise, other vocalists amplified the musical theater vibes, including Tania Molinar, Alexandra Utrilla, Kristiana Utrilla and Tara Wardle. The final scene with Somewhere, the impassioned lament for an end to violent rivalries, tied the evening’s quadruple bill together in its emotional thematic journey.
As with the other Utah premieres, for West Side Story: Broadway and Beyond, the Ballet West Orchestra, led by Oaks, deftly handled the musical landscape, with its unconventional meters to capture the jazz and Latin American textures. This included the huapango dance mixed meter patterns in America, as well as the stormy Rumble scene and the explosive pulse of the high school dance in the gym.
Overall, the creative brief for this production fulfilled Sklute’s assertion, as mentioned in the preview, that this “is an event unlike anything Ballet West has ever put on.” The four Utah premieres comprised a rosetta stone for companies like Ballet West who envision sensible bridges between the vernaculars of classical ballet, musical theater and even contemporary dance that stretches and enriches the versatile artistic toolboxes for choreographers and dancers.
Three performances remain: April 16 and April 18, 7:30 p.m. and April 18 at 2 p.m. For tickets and more information, see the Ballet West website.