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A late post but hopefully informative.<P>State Street Ballet 11/16/01 at the Annenberg Theater in Palm Springs.<P>“Heartland” began with a humorous song and fiddle number performed by Peter Feldmann accompanied by one of the dancers on the guitar. Then the ballet proper began to a taped compilation of bluegrass numbers. Setting dance to regional music amounts to a virtual subgenre within ballet (all those mazurkas, czardas, etc) and still remains a fruitful area for contemporary dance makers. Think of Balanchine’s “Western Symphony,” Taylor-Corbett’s “Celts,” Marks’ “Sargeant Early’s Dream” all seen in San Francisco Ballet’s recent rep. Mark Morris even has a country western dance number in his rep though it isn’t a ballet piece (it’s amazing what that man can do). Now, the choice of bluegrass music was a special treat since I had grown up with bluegrass on WAMU so the depth and variety of the genre doesn’t come as a surprise—more than bluegrass of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” or “I Saw the Light” –middle aged men in straw hats and denim, fiddles and banjos, but 2 steps, waltzes, and gospel songs that resonate with the imagination of an agrarian land not of an idealized pastoral (“Coppelia”) but of combines, diesel, and American Harvester.<P>Gustafson doesn’t want to appropriate the folk idiom; it is all ballet steps. For the most part it stuck to familiar ground—boys and girls rival good naturedly but with plenty of pluck for each other’s attention. Kathryn Petak, costumed in a red top and short skirt, played the only named character, “Spitfire,” the plucky Ballet Bad Girl to Olga Tchekachova’s Good Girl dressed in white and blue farmer’s daughter dress. They hiss, they smolder, they dance, all but one step away from a catfight-- Gamzatti and Nikiya as farmer’s daughters. For all the good, clean fun of high extensions, petite batterie, and even some fouettes, however, the most memorable section was the all girls’ dance to a gospel song sung a capella by Allison Krauss. In its search for formal clarity and purity of execution, this section clearly restates the ritual almost sacramental dimension of ballet expressed not as a highly refined aesthetic object (like the pas de deux) but as the defining history for an entire community. There is an amazing affinity with parts of Ailey’s “Revelations” or Tharp’s “Shaker Songs.”<P>“B.A.N.D.” is a suite of dances for 10 dancers set to music by The Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Duke Ellington. To see “B.A.N.D.” is not to revisit the vintage era—that is the forté of Victoria Simon’s “Salute to Sinatra” represented by the excerpt, “Where Are You?” a pas de deux for Olga Tschekachova and Gary McKenzie. To paraphrase from Michael Breitwieser on the jazz-like quality of the great novel of the vintage age, “The Great Gatsby,” jazz willfully sets aside fidelity to its point of origin, it liberates cultural matter, puts it into motion. Sund starts with jazz—Ellington, I think—not the Big Band sound of the wireless, but the “cool” sound of high modernism. The ballet opens with the dancers prowling in small groups, a dream of Paris or Berlin boulevardiers. They gaze out at the audience coolly and self-aware of the curious and controlling gaze—their own and the audience’s. In “Rum and Coca-Cola,” three girls have all the fun as they slink and tease the boys who, rebuffed, slink and tease on their own. Choreographic meaning accretes around cultural matter like the Bing Crosby songs—not with the jazzy paw hands and raked lines of Balanchine’s “Rubies,” but with a concern for formal invention that seems almost rococo. When it seems that the most impressive ballets are being choreographed by those from the modern dance tradition (I’m thinking Tharp and Morris), I find it encouraging that Sund is from ballet.<P>The final work, “Nuevo Tango,” by William Soleau to music of Astor Piazolla, brings us back to ground made familiar by Hans van Manen “Five Tangos” and others. Like the other choreographers on the program, Soleau’s steps are ballet with only occasional allusions to the popular idiom. The music is exciting, reflective, tense with hint of danger. At times its almost like gladiatorial combat—though the dance alternates between pas de deux and group sections, the five pairs of dancers never leave the stage. When they’re not dancing, they’re perched or posed on barstools around the stage, waiting their turn in the arena—perhaps it repeats the familiar scene of dancers at the barre looking at each other and those in the center of the studio wondering who’s the best. The dancers looked good—it’s obvious that they believe in the ballet, but it doesn’t quite come up to “Five Tangos.” Paraphrasing Croce on Robbins’ choreographic tribute to Astaire in “Pennies from Heaven,” the ballet expresses a clear vision of tango’s possibilities but with no particular insight into its tradition.<P>Though seeming to be unlikely programming, take away moments of the evening went to “Heartland” and “B.A.N.D.” Clearly, State Street Ballet is a young company on the move with an enviable repertory that makes the most of its dancers. I am often intrigued by what a small Sund work like “B.A.N.D.” or “Ravesque” (in Ballet Pacifica’s rep) would look like on a big company overflowing with talented and ambitious dancers. Just as great string quartets do not orchestrate well, I’m not sure that the result would be better because “B.A.N.D.” and “Heartland” realize the potential of chamber ballet. Southern California may not be able to field a D.W. Griffith sized “Nutcracker” but in a sense, it doesn’t need to. I certainly hope to see this company again, soon.<BR>
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<P>Elena Filip'yeva and Denis Matvienko<P><BR>The Santa Barbara News-Press tells the story of two Ukranian dancers who nearly didn't make it to guest in Street Ballet's "Giselle": <P> <A HREF="http://news.newspress.com/toplocal/dancefor1117.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://news.newspress.com/toplocal/dancefor1117.htm</A>
<P>I am most intrigued by this young company. Checking out their website, it looks like founding AD Rodney Gustafson (former ABT) has collected quite an array of dancers from California and Russia.<P>Check out their website: <A HREF="http://www.statestreetballet.com/" TARGET=_blank>www.statestreetballet.com</A><P>Belinda, any comments?<p>[This message has been edited by Azlan (edited February 25, 2002).]