Sat 10/25 @ 8pm – Performance
Sun 10/26 @ 11am – Master Class
Coming up at PlayhouseSquare this weekend is a performance packed with moonlighting dancers from New York City Ballet (NYCB), The Ashley Bouder Project: An Exposé on Ballet Style.
Who is Ashley Bouder? She’s a dancer for NYCB who’s been cutting quite a swath since she first joined that company during the Nutcracker performances of 2000/2001. A quick survey of New York Times reviews tells the story. In the earliest review of Bouder we can find, eminent dance critic Anna Kisselgoff praised her jumps and turns but also her mastery of style.
Later in 2001 Bouder was a mere corps member when she replaced an injured ballerina and won acclaim for her Firebird. In 2002 she’s only 18 and still in the corps but winning more recognition for not only killer jumps and turns, but also acting. And so on through 2007 when she “scorches with a high definition clarity” and 2012 when, in her Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, “She is a treasure.” Bouder continues to thrill and amaze the critics to the present day as here, where she dazzles with a turning jump, and, more recently still, here, where she’s praised as at once “fantastically fast” and “precise.”
See her pointes, turns, and jumps for yourself. Watch her talk about herself including the first of her famous onstage falls. Watch her and freestyler TWitch jam.
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To learn more about the show, we phoned Phil Chan, Co-Producer and acting spokesperson for ABP.
Phil Chan: Ballet in Cleveland is really trying to be an educational organization, so Ashley and I decided to bring 4 pas de deux in order to compare and contrast different ballet styles. We start with Don Quixote Pas de Deux, which is classical ballet choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1869; followed by Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960), a neoclassical ballet choreographed by George Balanchine; followed by the White Swan Pas de Deux from Swan Lake (1895), classical ballet choreographed by Petipa and Lev Ivanov; followed by Agon Pas de Deux (1957) choreographed by Balanchine. Ashley dances in the Don Quixote and in the Agon she’s partnered by Amar Ramasar, a principal dancer at NYCB. The rest of dancers are all exceptional corps de ballet dancers from the NYCB.
Cool Cleveland: Always nice to see Balanchine choreography, and it’s been too long since we’ve seen dancers from NYCB in Northeast Ohio. Now please tell us more about the final piece on Saturday’s program, Rouge et Noir; we see from the program note that it’s for 6 dancers with credits for Costumes, Set, and Lighting Design.
Yes, after a short intermission we present Rouge et Noir, which means “red and black” in French. It’s a world premiere choreographed by Joshua Beamish, who might be kind of a risk for a big company but he’s doing tremendous work trying to push the ballet technique to say things that are relevant in the 21st century.
We hear Beamish started out as a hip-hop choreographer and we feel that we can still see the hip-hop in some of his recent work with ballet dancers. Are his hip-hop roots still evident in Rouge et Noir?
I’ll let you see it and decide for yourself. We wanted to create an homage to another ballet, a legendary collaboration also titled Rouge et Noir, premiered in 1939 by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Like the 1939 original, we use music by Dimitri Shostakovich. Our costumes by fashion designer B Michael — incredibly beautiful layered on Josh’s choreography — and the incredible 50-foot backdrop by Cleveland-based visual artist Mark Howard are inspired by the cut outs of Henri Matisse, who collaborated on the original Rouge et Noir.
All these production values and a live performance of the Shostakovich trio! (By graduate level musicians from the Kent State School of Music.) Surely this is the beginning of a tour.
We’re taking the work to Vancouver in March and we’re also talking to a few New York presenters, but Ashley is heavily booked. The stars must align for her to do a show like this. The impetus for this show started in Cleveland when Jessica (Jessica Wallis of Ballet in Cleveland) approached Ashley at a master class last year and asked her to come back and perform. I still have family in Cleveland so I’m proud to have been part of this labor of love.
We were going to ask you to compare ABP with Restless Creature, the touring Wendy Whelan concert that DanceCleveland will bring here in April.
In Restless Creature, Wendy’s collaborating with 4 different contemporary choreographers — including Joshua Beamish — exploring 4 sides of her range as an artist. (She’s an incredible artist! She’ll be retiring from NYCB on 10/18 and I’ll be there in the theater crying like everyone else.) But ABP is trying to educate, to introduce people to this incredible art form, showcasing history but also looking forward to create something new. As part of this educational effort, we’ll be giving away hundreds of free tickets to the dress rehearsal so that local high school students can feel first-hand the impact of a performance like this.
That’s very interesting. You may not know, but when Jessica started talking about “bringing ballet back to Cleveland,” that raised the eyebrows of some who had been working along those lines already. Some felt that Ballet in Cleveland’s master classes were over-priced, for instance. But if you’re giving away the dress rehearsal, I think that says something to that kind of complaint.
Integrating something new into a greater community can be a challenge. (Chan was the founding General Manager of the Buck Hill Skytop Music Festival, the largest arts presenting and arts education initiative in Northeastern Pennsylvania.) But the master classes are not over priced considering the caliber of people she brings in. There are scholarships for master classes; it’s $10 donation for the Guys Dance Too classes. What Jessica is doing here is absolutely incredible.
More topflight master classes and performances for Cleveland? Bring it! But we hope this doesn’t portend squabbling over audiences and the fund raising pie.
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8pm Sat 10/25/2014 at the Ohio Theater, the Ashley Bouder Project is presented by Ballet in Cleveland with support from Forest City Enterprises and Portside Distillery. Tickets $20 to $100. Buy tickets online or by phone at 216-241-6000 or 866-546-1353.
Master classes from 11:00 am to 5:30 pm on Sunday 10/26/2014 taught by Bouder, Ramasar, and Beamish. At the Gund Dance Studio at Playhouse Square, 1375 Euclid Ave, Cleveland 44115. Registration closed on 10/20 but they might still let you in.
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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.Cleveland, OH 44115