Sat 4/2
On Saturday we drove to Cleveland Public Theatre to see Verb Ballets’ annual Fresh Inventions concert, new work choreographed by the dancers. Some of the dances were works in progress, but others were surprisingly polished in both concept and execution despite what must have been short rehearsal times.
For the first piece, Resilia, choreographer Kate Webb wrote a program note about how “People face hardships but persevere.” Watching seven of the Verb dancers perform the piece, however, we managed to forget about the program note and enjoy Resilia as an agreeable music visualization. Musicality! Movement invention!
In the second piece on the program, Little Chopin Dances, Nicholas Rose seemed to work in the opposite direction, starting with nicely chosen ballet steps for one, two, then three of the Verb women and then introducing a bit of a narrative. After they have danced, you see two of the women, Megan B and Christina Lindhout, hold hands before they exit. The third woman, Lieneke Matte, wants to hold hands too, but they reject her and exit without her. Michael Hinton enters and wants to be friends so he and Matte dance together. From this simple pantomime of exclusion and acceptance, Rose and his dancers build a spare but clear narrative arc that informs the solos, duets, trios and quartets that follow.
In Baby Birds, the third dance on the program, choreographer Hinton presents the seven Verb dancers in white masks. Christina Lindhout stands apart in a white dress. The ensemble is bunched up together wearing black unitards. Individuals emerge from the ensemble; couples form; masks are removed and those unmasked hurry to put their masks back on or suffer repercussions. We wouldn’t presume to interpret everything but we found Baby Birds engaging. Like Enough, another of Hinton’s dances in a previous edition of Fresh Inventions,it successfully used dance to talk about couples in insightful ways.
In Back to Blue, Meagan Buckley choreographed to, among other music, a remix of Rhapsody in Blue. Watching the mix of ballet and jazz steps Buckley’s given her three dancers, it’s impossible not to be reminded of another jazzy ballet set to Gershwin, George Balanchine’s Who Cares? Nicholas Rose kicks things off with a solo. Lieneke Matte and Michael Hinton dance a pas de deux. The three trade solos and finish with a pas de trois. The steps fit the music, a music visualization clearly conceived and well performed.
We were especially looking forward to Stephaen Hood’s choreographic offering. For a previous edition of Fresh Inventions he’d told a melodramatic fable, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, in clever, stylized strokes. For Saturday’s program, Hood choreographed Jess, a very different kind of dance, an ambitious, emotional piece dedicated to a good friend of his who had passed away.
Megan Buckley portrays the role of Jess with her hair down, for much of the ballet alternately wringing her hands and reaching out. She gives a passionate, powerful performance of the central role, especially in a brief pas de deux with Omar Humphrey. Jess also includes original music, some of it played live on stage by dancer/musician composer Darnell Flux Weaver. Jess demonstrates how classical dancing can give voice to powerful emotions.
Saturday’s program ended with Grace (2010), a piece set on Verb in 2015 by the choreographer Royce Zackery. Grace is in many ways an exemplary music visualization, adding so much to our appreciation of the music, Beethoven’s Andante Cantabile con Variazioni. But Zackery was also inspired by his personal memories of his family, his mother’s elegance, and the elegance of women. In Grace, the specifics of the choreographer’s personal emotions are submerged but still powerfully present in a beautiful dance.
[Written by Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas]Cleveland, OH 44102