Verb and Dickinson Rock On @ DanceWorks
By Elsa Johnson & Victor Lucas
We went to Cleveland Public Theatre on Saturday night and saw Verb Ballets wrap up DanceWorks with two works choreographed by Verb’s and Cleveland’s own Richard Dickinson.
We’ve spoken with a number of singers who explained to us that Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss is an emotional, artistic, and spiritual Mount Everest. Dickinson and his dancers provided a sensitive commentary on the songs, duly weighing their joy, loss, regret, and resignation.
Spring began with harsh red lights (Lighting Designer Trad Burns) on the backs of the 6 dancers as they walked away from us in slow motion; as the Spring dance ended, the harsh red light had given way to pink and white light on a pas de deux between Stephanie Krise and Brian Murphy.
We noticed that Krise did a lot of solo dancing throughout this concert as she did in Verb Goes Electric with Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the concert that opened DanceWorks. Her turn to shine and she did herself and Verb proud.
In the second song, September, the words by Herman Hesse,
Summer marvels and smiles to see
His own garden grow faint with grief,
were embodied by a pas de deux between Leslie Miller and Ori Sagi. She danced first, showing a nice fleet quality with dazzling changes in facing and direction of movement. It was a quality we hadn’t seen in her before, a quality that’s rare in tall, slim dancers whose efforts to control long limbs and torsos often end in stiffness and strain.
Sagi, who had shown off his quickness in other Verb performances, looked very nice in big, sustained adagio movements.
After the two had danced together, they turned to face upstage in shrinking, turned-in poses that suggested the garden withering as autumn ends.
Dance 3, Time to Sleep, began with the 3 women held aloft by their partners , poised, and progressed to a tableau in which they reclined on the stage floor. There followed a circle dance, that dance metaphor for climactic inclusiveness, and a solo by Kara Madden that ended with the women tenderly holding the bowed heads of the men.
In the final song, At Dusk, the ensemble progressed slowly on a diagonal toward downstage right, literally moving toward an intense white light. “Can this perhaps be death?” ask the lyrics by Joseph von Eichendorff. A black cloak was pulled aside and Murphy was revealed lying supine. As Krise, his partner in the Spring pas de deux, walked past him he stopped her with his hands on her thighs, as might a husband or lover. As more and more of the dancers exited downstage right, Murphy kept preventing Krise from exiting, turning her from the diagonal.
Dressed in white, Madden re-entered from downstage right and stood waiting. She was eventually joined by the rest of the dancers, also changed into white costumes, and they too stood waiting. Eventually Krise joined them and they exited together, leaving Murphy reclining as before. Left behind by the resurrection or the rapture or simply the last to die?
After the gravity of Four Last Songs, the same dancers and the same choreographer presented The Rite of Spring: The Bride Unseen, a dance with a very different tone.
During the intermission, Dickinson got busy placing a collection of rocks downstage center, a mischievous smile playing over his features. As we got busy reading the program, we got an inkling why the smile. “I am taking great liberty with the original concept of The Rite of Spring,” writes choreographer Richard Dickinson in Program Notes. We cannot help but agree, “Man, is he ever!” A glance at the characters in Dickinson’s The Rite of Spring: The Bride Unseen reveals no sign of the ancient Russian tribespeople of the 1913 scenario, but a garrish list of extreme types ripped from the headlines and reality television: a cross-dressing Father of the Bride, a gay priest Brother of the Bride, a truck driving Mother of the Groom, and the like.
Too much? Perhaps, but it sure was fun. As lights came up on the rocks, we heard not the plaintive oboe that we’re used to from the orchestral version of Rite of Spring, but the surprisingly sweet notes that begin the four-hand piano version of the score. Throughout The Bride Unseen, the piano score that Dickinson chose to work with provided a fresh approach to the familiar rhythms and melodies, doing much to clear the way for Dickinson’s highly original scenario set to Stravinsky’s music. Well-crafted ballet theater aptly filled the music so that the outrageous characters and action were always clear, always supported by the music.
This is to be an arranged marriage, but the Bride, Krise, and Groom, Sagi, could not be less interested in each other.
The Bride just wants out of the wedding but her cross-dressing Father, Murphy, insists for financial reasons of his own. In one scene he is puppeteer to her puppet, standing on a step ladder and manipulating her with elastics tied to her arms and legs.
The Groom, meanwhile, lusts after his future mother-in-law, Madden, as a smokin’-hot-behind-her-horn-rims-librarian.
Madden, however, is uninterested in her future son-in-law and perfectly comfortable with her cross-dressing husband, matter-of-factly zipping him into his dress.
Clearly this cannot end well. The Bride flees pursued by the 2 families wielding (oh, yes,) the rocks. But before the rocks can be put to their terrible use, the Bride appears in silhouette behind a screen with the step ladder and a hangman’s noose.
Too much? We prefer to describe The Rite of Spring: The Bride Unseen as a triumph of wretched excess, with timing so sharp and wit so wicked that the audience hardly had time to laugh.
Verb Ballets performed at Cleveland Public Theater April 18 – 20, 2013.
Readers may have noticed many versions of Rite of Spring in theaters throughout Northeastern Ohio and the world, for this is the centennial of the famous work. In Paris on May 29, 1913 the Ballet Russe premiered the Rite of Spring with revolutionary choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; the famous riot that accompanied the premiere was expedited by the cunning impressario Sergei Diaghilev, who courted notoriety by inviting rival artistic factions to the premiere.
GroundWorks Dance Theater did their own Rite of Spring recently.See video here.
We know of one more opportunity to see Rite of Spring in Northeast Ohio, this one with choreography as close to the 1913 original as we are likely to see, performed by the Joffrey Ballet at Blossom Music Center at 8:00 PM on Saturday and Sunday, August 17 & 18. Call DanceCleveland during regular business hours for tickets, 216-991-9000.
Next for Verb, Fresh Inventions. their annual showing of new works in progress May 17 & 18, 2013 at 7:00pm & 8:30pm. RESERVATIONS REQUIRED. Go to Verb Online or phone for tickets 216.397.3757.
[Photo by Nancy Balluck]
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.