<B>Eugene Ballet stumbles with props in revivals</B><BR>By JANET DESCUTNER For The Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon)<P> <BR>THE EUGENE Ballet Company filled the Hult Center's Silva Hall stage with beautiful visual effects Saturday. Artistic Director Toni Pimble revived her version of Lewis Carroll's quirky "Alice in Wonderland" for its third Eugene showing and revisited "Silk and Steel," a 1999 creation with greater physical challenges than the norm.<P>The company has had more than a little turnover in dancers during the last two seasons. Dancer memory is important to a repertory company, particularly in the case of choreography originally created in collaboration with its dancers.<P>Saturday's ballets seemed reconstructed in haste, in need of more coaching to achieve the flavors of characterization and more rehearsal to pull off the physical difficulties of the choreography, particularly the demanding manipulation of props in "Silk and Steel."<P><A HREF="http://www.registerguard.com/news/20020226/db.balletreview.0226.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

<B>Ballet fails to follow through on its stunning opening</B><BR>By JANET DESCUTNER For The Register-Guard (Oregon)<P><BR>BAREFOOT AND WET in a nude body stocking, Jennifer Martin cavorted in a real waterfall on the Hult Center's Silva Hall stage Saturday night in the premiere of Eugene Ballet Company's centerpiece ballet, "The Rite of Spring."<P>In realizing Igor Stravinsky's revolutionary shocker, artistic director, choreographer and, on this occasion, set conceptualizer Toni Pimble cast aside elaborate costuming and scenic trappings for the symbolism of falling water, in both its purifying and its terrorizing aspects.<P><A HREF="http://www.registerguard.com/news/20020507/db.rite.0507.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

Jacquelyn Lewis - Oregon Daily Emerald, October 10, 2002:
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Dancing with Swords: Eugene ballet adapts 'The Three Musketeers'
By Fred Crafts for The Register-Guard (Oregon)

SWORDS FLASHING and foes falling, D'Artagnan and the three Musketeers - Porthos, Aramis and Athos - have at last vanquished their foes. In a moment of supreme triumph, they turn to each other, slap their swords together and shout - nothing.

This is a ballet. Ballets have no words. A gesture must convey it all, and this sword-smashing display of unity fairly shouts the motto, "All for one and one for all."

Projecting that famous phrase across the footlights was a key hurdle that Eugene Ballet artistic director and chorographer Toni Pimble had to clear as she turned Alexander Dumas' swashbuckler into a full-length dance opus.

Trimming Dumas' novel down to a two-hour action libretto, creating her own musical "soundscape" and teaching dancers to fight with swords were other challenges Pimble had to overcome.

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Taking flight again
20 years after she danced it during Hult Center's opening, Eugene Ballet director Toni Pimble revives 'The Firebird'. By Fred Crafts for The Register-Guard (Oregon)

The first time Toni Pimble choreographed "The Firebird," she almost went batty.

It was in September 1982. The fledgling Eugene Ballet Company was preparing to perform during the opening weekend of the Hult Center for the Performing Arts.

But first, the acoustics in the new Silva Concert Hall needed to be "tuned" - at the very same time Pimble was in the hall with scenic designer Peter Dean Beck, setting the lighting patterns.

Brett Mills (center) has the title role this time around in Eugene Ballet's ''The Firebird.'' Hyoung Il Joung (left) is the Prince and Matthew Hope dances the role of Katschei.

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Fred Crafts of The Eugene Register-Guard previews "Sing, Sing, Sing" at Eugene Ballet, April 17-18 at Hult Center in Eugene, Oregon:

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/04/11/ar.euballet.0411.html