Offering a twin bill that any ballet company would deem difficult to pull off successfully, Ballet West was unfazed on opening night, presenting equally glorious performances of Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, a Victorian-era adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (The Wedding).
The Dream was enchantment par excellence. Ashton’s blend of theatrical comedy and classical ballet that also expands the movement vocabulary into new territory especially for male dancers popped with commanding effect, as evidenced by the opening night audience’s robust approval.
Photo: Ross Richey.
Adrian Fry was utterly fabulous as Oberon, capturing the deeper layers of his character’s masculinity and otherworldly nature. Notable were his rapid chaînes and his incredible flexibility when moving into an arabesque penchée. As Puck, Oberon’s attendant, William Lynch was mischief personified, causing chaos for literally every character that crossed their path. Their chemistry here stands out, given that just a few weeks ago, in Michael Smuin’s Romeo & Juliet, it was Fry, seething with rage as Tybalt, who killed Mercutio, the role that Lynch danced. This was a gratifying display of individual and collective acting chemistry.
As Bottom, Jonas Malinka-Thompson won the audience’s heart, in portraying the endearing but naive weaver whom Puck turns into a donkey. In a masterful comedic performance, Malinka-Thompson, who dances pointe choreography when he is a donkey, nails the appearance of struggling to look graceful on his new hooves. And, he is wearing a donkey head that weighs 10 pounds. To prepare for the role, he took beginner pointe classes and engaged in months of conditioning and strength training to build up his ankle endurance and learn to balance without sight.
Photo: Ross Richey.
Likewise, Katlyn Addison as Titania offered the deeper layers of the femininity embodied in her character. Addison beautifully interprets the role as a resolute sylph who does not behave as one might expect. She is fascinated by Bottom’s transformation into a donkey, which rejuvenates her sexual desires. When Titania and Oberon dance the pas de deux signifying their reconciliation, Fry and Addison perfectly notch the theatricality, especially when Oberon caresses her wings and we see Titania quivering at his touch.
The Ballet West Orchestra, led by Jared Oaks, matched the enchantment of the dancers and marvelous sets and costumes, in its performance of Mendelssohn’s music as arranged by the late English composer John Lanchbery. Ashton found the right balance between the diabolically mischievous tricksters we know from the Shakespeare original and the feathery, shimmering character traits of the fairies in Mendelssohn’s score. Joined by soprano soloists Melissa Heath and Ruth Angerbauer, the orchestra achieves the feathery, shimmering effects while attending to the lush, more legato romanticism that emanates in Ashton’s Victorian era setting.
The Dream stays true to many of the themes in Mendelssohn’s famous score of incidental music and it is clear how the choreography syncs up with them. For example, the rapid-tempo Scherzo is performed after Oberon commands Puck to create a fog, under which everything is put right for the four lovers: Helena (Emily Adams), Hermia (Lillian Casscells), Demetrius (Hadriel Diniz), and Lysander (Dominic Ballard). This section features a mesmerizing pas de six with Oberon, Puck and the quartet of fairies (Peasblossom, Jazz Khai Bynum; Cobweb, Maren Florence; Moth, Rylee Ann Rogers, and Mustardseed, Lexi McCloud).
Ballet West. Photo: Ross Richey.
Meanwhile, some of the music is used in narrative contexts which differ from those Mendelssohn followed in his score. Lanchbery set the Fairy March for the argument between Oberon and Titania and the Nocturne, which Mendelssohn intended when the four lovers are sleeping after their spells have been lifted, for their reconciliation. It works because in both instances, the music signified a happy ending.
The evening opener was a revival of Les Noces, which the company performed in April 2023 and is a crowning achievement for the company’s excellence in technical expertise. Acknowledging the demands to give Nijinka’s groundbreaking choreography and Stravinsky’s taxing score their full justice, staging this work is difficult and this 1923 ballet is not frequently performed. Staging it twice within 40 months, Ballet West demonstrates how it continues to ripen as a universally respected performing arts institution.
Ballet West also has the envious advantage of pulling together the musical forces to complete the process. Oaks led the ensemble which included soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, bass, a chorus (again with 26 voices for this production, with Jane Fjeldsted as chorus master), four pianos and percussion ensemble. For this second production, the musicians found crisper attacks and the ideal precision in melding the complex rhythmic nature of the Stravinsky score. The 2023 lineup returned intact for this production: singers Seth Keaton, Melissa Heath, Christopher Puckett and Jin-Xiang Yu; pianists Ruby Chou, Nicholas Maughan, Whitney Pizza and Vedrana Subotic.
Watching Les Noces again elucidated new thoughts about a work that challenges the audience to delve into understanding the historical context of Nijinska’s artistic choices. In his program notes, Adam Sklute, Ballet West’s artistic director, mentions that Nijinska intended Les Noces to be stark “and almost monochromatic,” adding that “one wonders if this was Nijinska’s statement on Communism and the USSR which had been just established.”
The choreography for this country wedding is, in Sklute’s words, “not individually difficult per se, [but] remembering their order to the complex rhythms of the music and the precision mixed with the aerobic repetition Nijinska demands of the entire cast makes this one of the most challenging works to perform.” Nancy Van Norman Baer, who wrote a definitive biography about Nijinska, explained that in Les Noces, the choreographer “manipulated masses […] as an impersonal body, thus symbolizing the weight of custom and the inexorable working of fate.” Van Norman Baer added that Nijinska used pointe technique, not to give dancers elegance, but instead to strip “naturalism from the movement.”
The most striking element in this performance of Les Noces is how individuals are directed to stand out among such a large cast. The dancers magnify their eye contact and facial gestures and, more than a couple of times, they sustain their gaze out into the Capitol Theatre audience.
The production’s overall look, along with the music, stage sets, and costumes, is a fascinating mix of hints of Russian iconography in the visual arts and reflections of the polyphonic burst of modernism in art that occurred in Ukraine during the first decades of the 20th century.
Three performances remain: Nov. 13 and Nov. 15, 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. For tickets and more information, see the Ballet West website.