Cleveland Orchestra + Joffrey Academy
By Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
We’ve seen a lot of Nutcrackers, but this year we decided to focus on one short, sweet, live performance amidst the blizzard of seasonal entertainments. In the process we talked with three people who love their work — a local dancer making good, a ballet master and choreographer whose work Clevelanders will be seeing more of, and a conductor of protean abilities.
We first noticed Diana Yohe at a Cleveland City Dance Company concert; among her young, talented colleagues she projected a special quality, something that made us notice her. Now she’s enrolled in the Joffrey Academy in Chicago and she and her fellow Trainees will be bringing Scenes From the Nutcracker to Severance for a Family Concert with Cleveland Orchestra. We spoke with her by phone.
CoolCleveland: You do how many hours of classes and rehearsals in an ordinary week at Joffrey Academy?
Diana Yohe: We work Monday through Saturday with classes from 11:30 to 4:30 and usually rehearsals until 5:30 or 6:30. That’s 4 classes a day, technique, pointe, and then either character, repertory, jazz, or sometimes modern. Then once you’re in the company there’s a little more rehearsal and less class work.
How did Cleveland City Dance prepare you for this?
Courtney (Courtney Laves-Mearini, Executive and Artistic Director of CCD Company) was a huge help. After school I would go to CCD for about 4 hours a night for class and rehearsal. The difference is in the intensity.
To what should we attribute your standout performance quality?
It’s hard to describe. There’s something about dancing. You can basically be anything you want. There are a hundred different interpretations that you could do. And I love embracing what they give you. I mean, sometimes they give you the weirdest roles but you can always have fun with it.
It sounds like you really love dancing and that you have a sense of the possibilities of the art of dance. What exactly will you and the other Trainees be dancing at Severance? We assume this will be excerpts from the Joffrey Nutcracker?
We’ll be doing the Trainee Nutcracker, which is definitely different from the Joffrey Nutcracker. I have actually been doing both Nutcrackers, rehearsing some with the company. Our Trainee Nutcracker is choreographed by our director, Alexei Kremnev; it’s shorter with no Act I party scene. At Severance we’ll start with Spanish, then Mirlitons, Sugar Plum, Russian. I’m in 3 of the dances, but they want you to learn several roles in case someone is injured.
That’s what we learned covering Cleveland Ballet. The run of a Nutcracker — from Thanksgiving weekend until New Years Day for some companies — is such a marathon that all the dancers have to be prepared to dance a lot.
Clevelanders are always sad when a talented young person leaves. People ask, “Why couldn’t you dance with a company in Cleveland?” For that matter, why did you choose the Joffrey over other places you studied, like San Francisco Ballet School, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Cincinnati Ballet Academy, or Julliard?
Cleveland doesn’t have a big ballet company any more. I chose Joffrey because in the end it’s who chooses you. But Cleveland will always be my home and I’d love to come back, of course. It’d be amazing to have a Cleveland-based ballet company again.
So you’re living away from home, though not for the first time [Miss Yohe graduated from high school at 16 and is now just 17]. Are you living in a dormitory? Do you have a roommate?
This is definitely the longest I’ve been away from home. My two roommates and I live in a place the Academy recommends. I think I lucked out because my roommates and I get along really well. They’re Trainees, too, and it’s nice when you get home, tired and wiped out, and you’re with someone who’s in the same boat.
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Yohe provided an excellent preview of the Trainee Nutcracker. We also spoke with Artistic Director of Joffrey Academy, Alexei Kremnev, to fill in some details and to get a better picture of Joffrey Academy.
To describe Kremnev as “Russian” gives too short shrift to his top tier training, international performing career, and his success training and presenting young dancers in the USA. See his credentials and those of his wife and long-time dance partner Anna Reznik here.
We understand you’ve been working in the USA for some time.
Alexei Kremnev: I came here in 1997 and started my new works for students. In the past 14 years I created 11 full-length works and many shorter, contemporary works. So for 14 years I’ve been focused on children’s productions… productions for students.
Your students have gone far.
Absolutely. I have many students in professional dance companies right now. And I have presented many students in competitions. It was a lot of work and a lot of good students.
What exactly will the Joffrey Trainees be dancing in Cleveland?
This Nutcracker will be a little bit different from what we usually do. If you look at the stage at Severance it’s very, very small, so we had to do smaller versions of our dances, particularly Waltz of the Flowers.
Another thing missing from our production is — basically — strong story line. Instead we present scenes of dancing.
This sounds like our ideal production of Nutcracker, then. However important the narrative aspects of Nutcracker to first-time audiences, we’ve always felt that it’s the dancing that makes or breaks any given production and it’s the promise of excellent dancing that brings people back to their second Nutcracker.
Some say that ballet (a form of dance that originally developed in royal courts) can never fit into a democratic nation like the USA. What do you think? How would you describe your mission as a ballet master in the USA? How does this performance fit in?
If you look at the history of dance, it is always an expression of the human spirit. I think in the United States right now ballet is a huge tradition in many families; they start the kids at age 3 and it stays with them for their whole lives. My mission is to give my students a good understanding of classical ballet first of all, an appreciation of this dance form. It doesn’t matter if they become professional dancers or not but I want them to have an appreciation — and a love — of classical dance.
The Nutcracker that we’ll be doing in Cleveland is a small, small hint for young people who like dance. The fact that the music is so familiar to everyone makes the dancing in Nutcracker more accessible. Nutcracker also provides many performance opportunities — for children as supernumeraries and for dancers. This collaboration is also a great opportunity for us because Cleveland Orchestra is a first class orchestra. For my students and for myself it’s a big, big honor to dance with the Cleveland Orchestra.
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We first saw James Feddeck in action last January when he conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in a Family Concert that included Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Three Joffrey Academy Trainees and students from the Cleveland School of Dance performed. Feddeck projected a sweet enthusiasm for the music, which drew young audience members in. When we spoke with him by phone recently, we learned that he’s done some high-profile work conducting for ballet.
You’ve been enjoying one success after another. Most recently you conducted the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra to great acclaim. Last March you stepped in for Franz Welser-Möst to conduct Don Giovanni, which must have been exciting for you.
James Feddeck: Opera is a great joy of mine and I’m very enthusiastic about the Youth Orchestra but ballet is also, really, a passion of mine. Recently — in June of 2010 — I was one of the conductors at the Kennedy Center for the Ballet Across America Festival. I performed with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and the Kennedy Center Orchestra, one of the first times I worked with dancers for an extended period. I came to really enjoy it and I came to appreciate the nuances of working with dancers. It was such a thrill, not only to do that performance, but to see all those other companies as well and to really jump right into that medium, conducting for dance.
So I was very excited last January when the young dancers of the Joffrey Academy came to do Firebird. The whole thing was such a success with the audience and all of us at the Orchestra that we said, “What are we going to do next?” The Nutcracker is such a clear choice; it’s wonderful music and if you listen to it all by itself as a composition it’s beautiful, it’s engaging, but when you add the incredible visual element of the dance it takes your appreciation to an entirely new level.
Sir, you are preaching to the choir. We enjoy the performance so much more when we can see both the musicians and the dancers.
Absolutely! And this was what was so thrilling for our young people in the audience last January when we did Firebird. They became totally enraptured. The dance brought the music to them in a way that made it an entirely broader and richer experience.
It’s a real thrill any time you collaborate with performers from a different artistic medium. We can learn a lot from each other in bringing this project to life. It’s especially exciting for me, being in the middle as the dancers meet the Orchestra and the Orchestra meets the dancers.
Joffrey Academy Trainees join the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Assistant Conductor James Feddeck to perform Scenes From Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker on Fri 12/2 at 7PM @ Severance Hall. Free pre-concert activities begin at 6PM. Tickets $15 and $22. Call 216-231-1111 or 800-686-1141 or go to http://ClevelandOrchestra.com for tickets and information about many other Holiday Festival concerts at Severance.
Cleveland City Dance Company presents Winter Wonderland and Act II of the Nutcracker with guest artists Mark Otloski and Andrea Blankstein-Otloski, both formerly of Cleveland San Jose Ballet on Sat 12/3 at 7PM. Matinee at 2PM on Sun 12/4. At Tri-C’s Eastern Campus. Advance reserve tickets sold at the studio are $15 for adults and $10 for children under 12 and seniors. Tickets purchased at the theater the day of the shows are all $20. Phone 216-295-2222 for tickets or go to http://ClevelandCityDance.com for more information.
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.
One Response to “Rashômon Nutcracker: Cleveland Orchestra + Joffrey Academy”
Margaret
Glad to have dance information returned to Cool Cleveland. I missed the updates.