"The Look of Love"
Festival Ballet’s 'Winter Passion'
The Providence Phoenix
By Johnette Rodriguez

Following the acclaim given to Boston-based choreographer Gianni Di Marco’s short ballet Schéhérazade in 2005, Festival Ballet’s artistic director Mihailo Djuric commissioned Di Marco to create another new ballet for the company. Thus, the world premiere of El Amor Brujo, set to the music of Manuel de Falla, will take place, with a reprise of Schéhérazade, for the company’s pre-Valen¬tine concert, “Winter Passion” (February 9-11 at the VMA Arts & Cultural Center).
Seen in rehearsal last week, El Amor Brujo, often translated as “Love, the Magician,” was every bit as captivating and sultry as Schéhérazade. Di Marco adapted his one-act ballet from a 1915 work by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, which relates the tale of Candela, a gypsy girl, trying to escape the ghost of a man she had loved in order to devote herself to her current lover. Women friends try to comfort and support her, but eventually she turns to a gypsy woman who has the power to vanquish the ghost.
 
Festival Ballet principal dancers Leticia Guerrero and Gleb Lyamenkoff claim the central roles of lovers Candela and Carmillo, respectively, while the Ghost and the Gypsy are shared by Mark Harootian and Maxime Podshevalenko and Carolyn Dellinger and Vilia Putrius. Harootian and Dellinger took the parts in the run-through I saw. Both Harootian and Lyamenkoff have remarkable pas de deux with Guerrero, and both the music and the movements make clear the difference in their characters’ passions.
 
Harootian and Guerrero link arms when he swirls her around his body or over his back; their gestures are harsh and quick, the angles their limbs form are sharp, almost geometric. In contrast, Lyamenkoff and Guerrero move with tenderness in every glance and touch, caress and embrace, in thrall to their love for each other. He slides her across the floor, then leans over her on his knees, pressing his face to hers, trying to draw her out of her reverie.
 
Guerrero and her six friends clearly show influences of gypsy dancing, twisting their hands in front of their faces, then their whole arms, bent at the elbow, making similar sinuous shapes. Folk-dance steps slip in among the toe shoes, as do feet held flatly in the air when a dancer is lifted (the six women are joined by six male partners in a later segment).
 
Di Marco is excited but cautious about his new work: “You don’t always know how it will come out until it’s before an audience — it’s kind of like when you’re cooking. I’m trying to be true to the story and how the couple ends up together, and I’m just trying to flower up the garden around them.”
 
The garden plays a key role in Schéhérazade as well. The music here is by Rimsky-Korsakov; the narrative comes from 1001 Arabian Nights. This tale is of a sultan (Shayryar) and his harem and the sultan’s brother (Zeman) who, for his own reasons, tells the sultan about an affair taking place between the sultan’s favorite wife (Zobeida) and one of the slaves. A trap is set for the lovers and the ending is not a happy one.
But the dance Di Marco created makes the story come alive and adds more depth to the characters. As in El Amor Brujo, the harem girls move their arms in languid arcs, but in this instance, their hips and legs match that sway. Di Marco gives the eunuch as well as Zeman great dramatic movements in leaps and turns. But the choreographer’s vision is fully realized in the memorable pas de deux between Zobeida (shared by Jennifer Ricci and Heather O’Halloran) and the Golden Slave (shared by Alexander Akulov and Davide Vittorino).
 
In 2005, Di Marco described it this way: “I made the duet with Zobeida and the Golden Slave more intimate, a little sexually avant-garde, because we live in a different age now. People see reality shows and want to be part of it. I wanted this to be as if the audience saw themselves involved in this relationship, for them to relate to it more.”
 
Thus, when that familiar strain of Rimsky-Korsakov begins, the Golden Slave lifts Zobeida onto his thighs and bends her back across one knee. Their movements become a seamless and sensuous undulation of lifts and turns until the moment when the two of them roll over and under each other on the floor.
 
Sizzling with emotional content as much as physical images, both ballets will heat up a February night (or afternoon). Grab that sweetie and go see them.