Not wasting any time after concluding its superb production of Romeo & Juliet, Ballet West will open a twin-bill Nov. 7, with weddings as centerpieces in both works.
A delightful gem, Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, a Victorian-era adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, blends classical ballet with theatrical comedy, including a male dancer performing on pointe to emulate a hooved character. This is the first time in 16 years since the company performed this ballet. Ballet West had slated to stage it in 2020, but it was scrapped because of the pandemic shutdown. “It’s funny, sweet, elegant and gorgeous,” Adam Sklute, Ballet West artistic director, said.
Reviving its stunning production from 2023, Ballet West will present Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces, set to an extraordinary neoclassical score by Stravinsky. Les Noces (The Wedding) signifies the transition where young people lament the inevitable passing of their innocent status but then move on to celebrate the new stage of matrimonial life with their families and friends. This artistic rarity features ground-breaking choreography by a woman with scenic and costume designs also by another woman, Natalia Goncharova, a notable achievement for its time.
The Ballet West production of Les Noces, which premiered in Paris in 1923, is set in four tableaux, with a total running time of around 25 minutes. The work is rich and dense in its metaphorically ritualistic take on a folk village wedding. Sklute said that this second production will give audiences who saw the 2023 edition the opportunity to discover many things that perhaps they did not catch when they saw the work for the first time.
In terms of music for both works, this production shines the spotlight on the outstanding Ballet West Orchestra, led by Jared Oaks, which will be augmented by other members of Utah’s deep bench of musical talent. Stravinsky scored Les Noces for 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. This will again be a powerhouse pit, as it was in 2023, with singers Seth Keaton, Melissa Heath, Christopher Puckett and Jin-Xiang Yu joined by pianists Ruby Chou, Nicholas Maughan, Whitney Pizza and Vedrana Subotic.
Photo Credit: Ross Richey.
Stravinsky’s instincts about the primal features of Russian folk music and his acknowledgment of its idiosyncrasies distinguishing one village from another, sync up with Nijinska’s philosophy about choreography. In a 1932 interview in Paris with writer Jean Rollot, Nijinska said, “For me, dance is a rhythm. You know what rhythm is in music. Well, dance rhythm and music rhythm are not the same. Dance, music: two sisters with a ‘single’ existence. Two separate rhythms. The same thing in one harmony.”
With Ashton‘s The Dream (1964), we find a different Shakespearean couple who have a happier ending than Romeo & Juliet, even though their relationship is strained at some points: Oberon and Titania. Ashton, who was just appointed the artistic director of the Royal Ballet, created the ballet to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth. Unlike George Balanchine’s adaptation of this Shakespearean classic, Ashton condensed the source material, by cutting the first and last acts of the play, which eliminated the wedding of Theseus and Hippolytha, and instead focused on the relationship between Oberon and Titania. The difference with Ashton’s version is that Oberon and Titania move past their quarrels and reconcile.
The hooved character is Bottom, who dances on pointe after Puck turns him into a donkey. This amounts to be striking because it is extremely rare for a male dancer to portray a cisgender male character on pointe in a classical ballet setting. The key note here is that Bottom only performs on pointe when he is a donkey, and not in human form. After Puck has turned Bottom into a donkey, he struggles to look graceful on his new hooves. The innate humor in this, of course, is welcome, but what really is more significant is how Ashton presents the on pointe shoe as a theatrical metaphor and thus, in the process, effectively subverts the exclusively feminine connection to the on pointe shoe. Even with Oberon, Ashton’s choreography in The Dream opens a tantalizing window to challenge the traditions and conventions of representing masculinity and femininity in ballet.
Photo Credit: Ross Richey.
Stravinsky’s score for Les Noces is far different from A Symphony of Psalms, which Ballet West performed last season, featuring a 32-voice choir. In an interview with The Utah Review, Fjeldsted talked about what has been different in preparing the choir of 26 voices this year, as compared to the previous performance two and a half years ago.
In 2023, Fjeldsted had three rehearsals to prepare the choir for Les Noces before handing the group to Oaks, in order to combine all of the musical forces during tech week. “Then it was preparing a new score with the help of different performances, recordings and aspects about how to approach the music,” she said. This year, all of the singers received these notes and materials before they gathered so they could be fully prepared for the first choir rehearsal. Fjeldsted had only two rehearsals this time before the group was handed to Oaks.
Stravinsky conceived the Les Noces score and its unprecedented instrumentation to be fully integrated into the atmosphere and contexts of the ritual celebration, which matched precisely to Nijinska’s choreography. For example, in the opening scene with the bride, Stravinsky had explained, her lament is manifested “not necessarily because of real sorrow at her prospective loss of virginity, but because, ritualistically, she must weep.”
Photo Credit: Ross Richey.
For this 2025 production, Fjeldsted said she had the advantage of getting the score “back into my body and head” before going into rehearsal and remembering what Oaks had done the first time around to ensure the music synced up with the choreography on stage. Likewise, the four pianists and vocal soloists from the 2023 performance are returning for the latest production. Fjeldsted, who also has prepared choirs twice for Ballet West’s production of Carmina Burana as well as last season’s A Symphony of Psalms, is thrilled that Les Noces has been returned promptly to the stage. This ballet is replete with rigorous demands for dancers and musicians and the fact that performing artists in Utah can claim that they will have participated in two Los Noces productions is an exceptional credit to note in their CV.
Melissa Heath, soprano soloist, said it is wonderful to have “a second crack at such a rarely performed piece because even doing it once is lucky.” Singing in Les Noces requires a focus that is on a whole separate plane of intensity, she explained, given the score’s angular and rhythmic architecture and the fact that she must stay consistently in her highest vocal range.
Of course, Mendelssohn’s famous score for A Midsummer’s Night Dream is a feast for Ballet West Orchestra musicians, who had just risen splendidly to the complexities of Prokofiev’s score for Michael Smuin’s Romeo & Juliet. However, Mendelssohn’s music has its own complexities. For the ballet, Concertmaster Aubrey Woods said string players have to adjust their strokes for the proper dance and theatrical effects.
In a concert setting, there is the desired transparency, as strings recreate the fairy magic with light, bouncing spiccato strokes. However, in this instance, Woods said that instead of spiccato, the desired stroke here should not be “airborne,” but as close as possible to or on the string, in order to control the bow stroke and achieve genuine feathery and fluttering effects. Woods added, with a chuckle, there really is no specific label for that effect, as an instruction for string players. Perhaps the most approximate label marking for string players might be a unique combo of more flautando (flute-like sound) and less sul ponticello (which means playing on the bridge of the instrument but going instead for a more eerie or magical effect). Neither term is sufficient by itself, but Woods’ example confirms the meticulous sensitivity the orchestra exercises in order to accommodate the full theatrical effects being asked for in the choreography.
Among the choicest moments for wind instruments in the Mendelssohn score are reserved for bassoonist Brian Hicks, who has played for 23 years in the orchestra. Hicks, who joined the orchestra when his father, Roger, was first bassoonist, said that while he really enjoyed playing the Prokofiev score for Romeo & Juliet, he considers the Mendelssohn score a”breath of fresh air.” The family connection is strong for this senior member of this orchestra. He met his wife, Heidi, a retired violist, in 2004, when they played in the pit for the Carmen ballet. In addition to The Nutcracker, Hicks said he has enjoyed many of the company’s best-known productions including Giselle, Coppelia and The Rite of Spring.
The cast for Les Noces will feature Victoria Vassos and Anisa Sinteral in various performances during the run as the bride and Jake Preece as the groom. For The Dream, Katlyn Addison and Jenna Rae Herrera will take the role of Titania, in rotating performances, while Adrian Fry and Jordan Veit will similarly rotate in the role of Oberon. William Lynch will dance as Puck and Jonas Malinka-Thompson as Bottom.
Performances will take place between Nov. 7 and Nov. 15 in the Capitol Theatre in downtown Salt Lake City. For tickets and more information, see the Ballet West website.