Ohio Ballet @ Ohio Theatre 5/20
Ohio Ballet, Playhouse Square's small but excellent resident ballet company brings a varied and satisfying spring program. Consider this a review-preview; this last Saturday we traveled to Akron to see Ohio Ballet at Akron's (visually rambunctious) Civic Theatre. The program starts with Peter and the Wolf, an always-charming story ballet with a score that can't miss. Choreographer Victoria Morgan has given things an interesting spin by staging it on a school playground. Voiceover narration keeps everything crystal clear and the dancers happily enter into their characters and some manic business with monkey bars, duck feet, pom poms, a basketball, and a very long kitty tail. A few things went wrong on Saturday night (a halo fell off, literally, not figuratively, and the basketball wandered back on stage when it wasn't supposed to) but these things do happen, even to professional companies.
Choreographer Sam Watson's aptly named Hijinks keeps up the pace with a rapid fire series of movement and costume gags "inspired by numerous television variety/comedy shows of the mid 1950's and 1960's." It's all for comic effect; there is hardly a ballet step in sight, but the dancers deliver the bumps and shimmies with sharp unison and comic timing.
If you have a small child you would like to take to a ballet, these first two pieces could make an evening (sit on an aisle so you can exit after Hijinks). A ballerina-enthralled slightly older girl probably would also enjoy the classical pas de deux that follows, which introduces a completely different tone. Grand Pas Classique, as pretty and old fashioned as a David Austin heirloom rose, gets the solid ballet technique and the pitch perfect treatment it needs from dancers Eva Trapp and Toby George and their accompanist on live piano, music director David Fisher.
Mazurkas, a seldom seen work by Jose Limon set to the music by Frederic Chopin, provides a brilliant succession of duets and solos, each displaying a different relationship and emotional tone. Fisher's live piano channels Chopin while it provides a perfect foil for the dancers' insight into the Limon style. This is a long piece, which seems a little out of place in this particular program, because so much has gone before and more is yet to follow. It is considerably less instantly accessible than the previous pieces, more a work for the serious student of dance styles and techniques, but your patience with it will be rewarded, as it is well worth watching.
Ravi Shankar provides the sound track for Artistic Director Jeffrey Graham Hughes to tap back into his youth in San Francisco in the '60s. There's even a little bit of superannuated hippie strobe light. In bodysuits of a ravishing color (Peach? Muted coral? Warm apricot?), the dancers seem to embody Hindu deities. In a nice touch, lead dancer Alicia Pitts has gotten herself slightly pregnant, which gives her a voluptuousness highly appropriate for a fertility goddess.
At two and one half hours this is a veritable double feature dance concert. If you take kids, resign yourself to taking them home after Grand Pas Classique. If you're not into Peter and the Wolf, consider going 30 minutes late to focus on the more sophisticated end of the program. If you're a dance geek like us, rest and eat beforehand, the better to enjoy the abundant splendors of this program.
Ohio Ballet is by far the best ballet company in Northeast Ohio and one of the best dance companies around. They offer ballet AND modern technique AND repertoire AND costumes AND lighting: the whole gestalt; yet they remain a largely undiscovered gem in our midst. Their tickets are distinctly affordable and, in our experience, available even at the last minute. Do yourself a favor and go see them.
See two shows beginning Fri 5/20 at 8PM and Sat 5/21 at 2PM and 8PM. For tickets call 241-6000 or visit http://www.Tickets.com.
from Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas vicnelsa@earthlink.net
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