Fresh Steps: Festival Ballet’s Up CLOSE, On HOPE
Issue Date: November 14-20, 2003
by Johnette Rodriguez
In introducing the program at the headquarters of Festival Ballet Providence last Saturday, artistic director Mihailo (Misha) Djuric said that he’d envisioned a black-box dance theater in the high-ceilinged back studio from the moment the group first moved into the former funeral home on Hope Street two years ago. He hopes that the smaller venue can offer new opportunities to choreographers, composers, and up-and-coming dancers.
At this opening series of Up CLOSE, On HOPE, four choreographers were represented in nine dances: four by Djuric himself; one each by Piotr Ostaltsov, a Festival company member, and Gianni Di Marco, a principal dancer with Boston Ballet; and three by Colleen Cavanaugh, who directed the former Cadence Dance Project. Three of the pieces by Djuric were created while he was still in his native Yugoslavia: the very classical For Susan (1987), the very romantic The Unexpected (1986), and the very dark Fading (1990).
James Brown and Beth Petkus dance to the music of Tchaikovsky in Fading. He seems in the depths of despair, his head hanging limply, his whole body giving way, as he frequently falls to the ground. Petkus enters in a red dress and tries to get him to respond to her, pulling him up from his knees, even carrying him at one point. But no matter how hard she tries to lure him out of his fog, he remains in a daze and, in the end, he collapses onto her, back-to-back, as she crumples beneath him. A stunning image for a stunning dance.
The Unexpected feels like a spring rendezvous between French lovers, danced quite simply and beautifully by Jennifer Ricci and Davide Vittorino. For Susan is much more adolescent Sturm and Drang, arms stretched longingly toward each other, the back of a hand brushing a cheek, a lift in which Ty Parmenter expertly carries Heather O’Halloran around the stage in three different poses. They perform this piece with skill and with feeling.
O’Halloran displays even more of a lover’s anguish in Ostaltsov’s Tristan & Isolde (2003). She dreams of Tristan (Eivar Sair), her hand stroking her face, and he appears. As they dance together, they reach to gently touch palms, to stroke a shoulder, to nuzzle their heads together. Sair’s leaps and landings are so strong and so sure that he rivets your attention. But it is O’Halloran who makes visible Isolde’s heartache after Tristan leaves. Lying on the floor, her back arched, she thrusts one splayed hand upward, as if pleading to some distant god.
Cavanaugh also makes a dance from a lover’s tryst in Caress (2003). Gleb Lyamenkoff partners Leticia Guerrero in a loving and tender pas de deux to the adagio movement in Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 23. Cavanaugh’s solo piece Impatient (2003) is an emphatic statement in abstract sequences, and Karla Kovatch nails both the mood and the movement, with balled fists, shifting hips, and sharp angles — sometimes a flat-footed turn, sometimes arms locked behind her.
In response to September 11, 2001, Cavanaugh looks at cycles of loss, grief, and love in a long piece set to Thomas Oboe Lee’s Piano Trio No. 1. Demeter’s Tears (2002) is based on the Greek myth of Hades, god of the underworld, carrying off Demeter’s daughter Persephone. Kovatch as Demeter and Guerrero as Persephone are heart-wrenching as the mother/daughter duo. The somber tone of leave-takings and comfortings is enhanced by a Greek chorus-like trio of Caitlin Novero, Piotr Ostaltsov, and Jennifer Young.
Up CLOSE, On HOPE also contains two lighter pieces in contrast to the intense emotional content of several of the dances. In the first half, Vals Fresco (1994, by Djuric) features four young women in a corps de ballet-like waltz, whose classical movement is broken briefly (and humorously) by march steps.
In the second half, Gianni Di Marco’s Killing Time, to the music of Bobby McFerrin, is a real crowd-pleaser. Cameron Baldassara and James Brown are two lackadaisical characters stretched out on the floor, their heads on their hands, counting the minutes of their day. They try various things to push each other into action and eventually they get moving. Two memorable sequences: to the twang of a jaw-harp, they dance, heads bobbing, in a slack-bodied style that looks like those Appalachian stick dolls that are bounced on someone’s knee; and they lean their backs against each other, their legs stretching out in a balancing act, then lean their heads back and then — boom! — fall flat on the floor. A delightful piece of slapstick!
The variety in the selections for Up CLOSE, On HOPE makes for a great evening of dance. In place of Ostaltsov’s piece on November 15, an excerpt of Viktor Plotnikov’s Short Stories for a Small Magazine will be performed by Larissa Ponomarenko and Yuri Yanowsky, from Boston Ballet, where Plotnikov is also a principal dancer. This smaller performance space for Festival Ballet (and their guests) is a welcome addition to the dance scene in Rhode Island. Like encore enthusiasts at a rock concert, we dance fans always clamor for more, more, more!
Up CLOSE, On HOPE will be presented on Saturday, November 15 at 825 Hope Street, Providence. Call (401) 353-1129..
