S'Wonderful - Finale

The final piece of the dance is just a joyous, continuing restatement of a waltz. Each dancer comes in completes the movement phrase and then exits.



Everyone comes back in and has a brief solo as the others dance in unison behind them. They then face flat front, restate the waltz and finish on their knees.

It took the dancers a little while to get used to the shifting back-up patterns, but once they got them down, they had a blast with it.

Friar's Point Shuffle - Trio

The penultimate dance in the piece was a trio, featuring Shannon (the first soloist) and the two men.



I thought this was a nice way to let Shannon have something like the dance that she didn't get to do in Sonnets (because of her injury). The difference between the two dances (apart form the fact that Sonnets was 3 guys and girl) would be that in Sonnets the girl is relatively passive. She is passed from guy to guy.

With this piece, I asked Shannon. "Why do you think you have two guys partnering you?" She couldn't think of a reason, so I told her... "Because you are too much woman for one man."



For me, things always have to have a logic to them. In this small ballet, there are a lot of choreographic "relationships."

Shannon BEGINS the piece alone. She then has the LAST "dance' with two men.

At the beginning of the ballet (after Shannon's prelude solo), the two girls who dancing with the guys are the two soloists. Shannon's partner is Abby. The two girls who have the partnered pieces in the ballet. Abby will have two dances (one with one guy and one with the other. 2 with 1) While Shannon will have one dance (one with two guys. 1 with 2.)

If you count the solo that Shannon in front of the curtain as a prelude, the two girls solos sit exactly on either side of the exact center of the ballet.

I hated math in school, but I loved order. Did I mention that as a kid, I used to go into stores and instead of going to the toy department, I would go put all of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries in order.

Order and chaos. The manipulation of energy is an important concept in keeping things interesting onstage.

Anyhoo, this all sets us up for the Finale, which is up next...

There'll Be Some Changes Made - Solo

So here is the third solo of the piece and it is danced by Chelsy to the tune "There'll Be Some Changes Made." It was choreographed rather late in the process, but before Abby's two pas de deux's.



I don't like my pieces to look as if the dancers have been pedantically drilled for hours and hours, and then arrive onstage to dutifully perform their dance. I like the dances to look as if they are springing spontaneously from the dancers. So the sooner a dancer can show me that they can inhabit the choreography, the better. Or else I will be thinking, "That step needs to be changed, it looks unnatural on her body."

Which is not to say that sometimes I don't leave in difficult steps. But I can pretty much tell which steps will eventually work and which aren't worth the effort. Chelsy is a dancer who immediately makes the steps you give her look... like a dance.



We all thought that she "looked" great doing the solo. But she didn't "feel" good doing it. By the time she got to her favorite passage (near the end), she was too winded to enjoy it. She got through it, but she received no pleasure in doing so. In classical ballets, variations normally last 1 to 2 minutes. All 3 of the solos in this piece were 3 to 4 minutes long. They were also very dense choregraphically.

Dancers are NOT servants to the audience. They don't dance so that people can applaud for them (or at least they shouldn't.) They dance because of the joy and pleasure they get from dancing (or at least they should.)

So I worked with her to change a few things, so by the time she got to her "favorite" part, she could enjoy it. Whenever I start thinking of the "godlike perfection" of my choreography, I always remember two anecdotes...

Violette Verdy, I believe, was taking on a new role at New York City Ballet.



Verdy was an exquisite dancer, with a refined technique, but the ending of the pas eluded her. Rather than force her to do it the old way, Balanchine said something to the effect of, "Don't worry. You have a pretty pas de chat. We will do that instead and end with a shoulder sit. It will be our secret. We'll surprise the audience. It will be wonderful!"

The second story has to do with Margot Fonteyn, the leading ballerina at the Royal Ballet, during its formative years.



The company had been performing the classics under the steely eye of a repetiteur, who would not allow the slightest deviation from Petipa's originals. After WW II, a Russian dancer joined the company, Violetta Elvin.



She had been brought up doing the exact same classics that the repetiteur guarded so carefully. But she had a much less strict view of the necessity to adhere to what had been done before.

When Fonteyn (who was battling with the 32 expected fouettes in Swan Lake) approached Elvin (who was happily romping through a Bluebird variation that suited her to a T) about this, Elvin smiled, batted her eyes, and said, "In Russia, we think its more important to have a beautiful effect." Effectively taking the straight-jacket off of a generation of British ballerinas.

Dance is a plastic art form. It is also of the moment.
There is choreography out there which is equal to some of the greatest works from other art forms. But the art of dance lies in the dancer and what they are doing NOW, not how well they can approximate what someone has doen BEFORE them.

And isn't it funny how serendipity works, I just now realized how appropriate the title of Chelsy's solo was to the content of today's post. Ah, life!

When Your Lover Has Gone - Duet

And now we have a second pas de deux.

Abby returns to the stage, but she has traded Askar for Pali.



This piece was a delight to choreograph. It was also the last piece set for the ballet. It has a more dramatic flavor than the piece with Askar.



Abby has such a pretty quality to her dancing that she doesn't often get a chance to show her more sensual side. She usually gets cast in soubrette roles. In Nutcracker, she is the Marzipan Shepardess who bemusedly herds her flock of errant sheep. So it was nice to give her a break.



This piece is a fairly classic adagio pas de deux. And by that I mean... there are no surprises. It moves along from one sequence to another, logically.

Without the element of surprise or change of tempo, it is then up to the dancers to create the tension necessary to keep the audiences interest.



In staging pieces to music from the Twenties and Thirties, I dislike nostalgia or sentimentality. To me, this was the "Modern Age" in the 20th Century. Retrospection was not the vogue. So while I use lines that are evocative of the time, I don't do so because I want people to "go back in time."

I want people to stay in the present. Memories are never as vivid as current experience. If a dance becomes TOO MUCH of a period piece, you place a barrier (of time) between the audience and the subject. I think this keeps an audience from fully engaging with the dancers.

Stairway to Paradise - Solo

This solo was also choreographed for inclusion at the In Studio performances in Spring of 07.

Like Jillian's dance in Joplinesque, it was taught to the whole company. And they all fell to the wayside, except for Kirsten Thorne and another dancer who was with us at the time, Atsuko Mihoura.

Originally, I didn't know whether this was going to be a solo for a guy or a girl. I think it could still be danced by a guy.



The problem with this piece was that (as has been mentioned) it hadn't been video taped. And unfortunately there were big hunks (about 50 percent) of choreography that Kirsten (nor I) simply could not remember.

So I had to rechoreograph, which is no big deal, except that I had liked the original. The original was also harder than the second version, but for some reason, the second version tired Kirsten out more.



I love this photo. It is such a transitional, blurry mess, but she looks so free in it. Like one of those gauzy pictures of Isadora Duncan's students.

Improvisation for the March of Time - Duet

The structure of this ballet is as follows...

1st soloist. Group dance. Duet girl and partner. Second soloist. Duet girl and second partner. 3rd soloist. 1st soloist dances with two men. Group Dance.

So after the introductory group dance, Abby comes back in with Askar.



The dance that they do is fairly acrobatic (as you can see.)



But Abby is always able to project a sense of calmness and precision in whatever position she finds herself.



Like the Rhinoceros dance in Carnival of the Animals, some of this dance was recycled from a performance with the Grossmont Symphony. But it suits this music, as well.



The new choreography highlighted a bouncy soubrette quality of Abby's, along with Askar's willingness to toss her over his shoulder over and over again.



The dance ended with a nice series of lifts on the diagonal. The final ending was a bit troublesome, as, musically, it just sort of petered off. We tried everything (a lift offstage, a pirouette, etc, etc).

Finally, we just sort of let the dance degrade and had the dancers meander off.

That worked best.

Nobody's Sweetheart

Shannon's dance takes place on the apron of the stage.

As she finishes, she rises and crosses upstage as a black drape opens (courtesy of me pulling it, Yes, I work on the crew as well, How's that for multi-tasking?) There are 2 guys and 3 girls already in position, as Shannon melds in.



Danced to Nobody's Sweetheart, this is basically just a mirror dance. The two girls and guy on stage left exactly mirror the two girls and guy on stage right. Step for Step.

For most of the dance, we see the guy dancing with one girl as the other girl does a solo (duet, remember the mirror). They come together briefly to form a trio (2 trios). Then the guy changes partners, so that his original partner is dancing alone and he is dancing with the first soloist. The number comes to an end shortly after that, as each couple runs off. Followed by the individual girls exiting.



When I gave the guys their costumes, I told them "You wear the ties as belts." They came back to me with the ties around their necks. Since Askar is from Kazakstan and Pali is from Hungary, sometimes there can be a little language problem. So I said...

"No, as belts."

Blank expressions.

"Around your waist."

Blank expressions.

"Like Fred Astaire."

Blank expressions.

"Just do it."

They couldn't fathom that someone would tie a tie around their waist.



Ah well.

Jazz Suite #1 - She's Funny That Way

Okay, Jazz Suite #1.

This was actually the middle piece of the program. However, it was the last to be started. We have a larger jazz piece in the repertoire, Opus Swing. It utilizes a cast of about 24 and is set to the lush big band sounds of Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman.

But (non-commercial) jazz is usually (and was usually) played by small combos. For a while, I have wanted to set a smaller jazz piece that would reflect the intimacy of this intimate, yet intricate sound.

Like the Joplin ballet, this piece was created over some months. The first solo created actually falls in the middle of the ballet, and I'll discuss that when it pops up.

The second piece created became the solo (danced by Shannon Hunter, set to "She's Funny That Way") that opened that ballet.



Shannon has a unique style. Soft and absent-mindedly sensuous. She can dance in the corps quite well, but I think that she actually needs to be onstage alone for the audience to catch the nuances of her phrasing. Alone or surrounded by attentive men.

As mentioned in our discussion of Sonnets (in an earlier post), Shannon was replacing another dancer in just such a "attentive men" number, when she suffered an ankle injury and had to be replaced. The doctor told her that she would be unable to dance for a few months.

As we had our fundraiser coming up, I needed to create some unique dances for it.

Nothing was wrong with Shannon, apart from a bad ankle, so I decided to choreograph a dance for her where she would just stay on the floor. Rolling.



I also knew I was doing the jazz piece in the next season, and I knew that I would need a variety of intimate solos.

What can be more intimate than a beautiful girl stretching on the floor?

Floorwork is something I am quite comfortable with. When I started dancing, jazz and theatre dance was very much influenced by modern dance. Not a day went by when we weren't falling, sliding or spinning on the floor.



The piece was very popular at the fundraiser... and after watching it over and over again, I decided it should open the ballet.

Now...
All along we thought that someone had video taped it (as the show had been recorded by a few people). But both this dance and the other solo from Jazz Suite had not been shot.

So when we were ready to actually start the piece in earnest, we had to reconstruct it from memory. Luckily, most of it came back to us. The rest... we just tweaked to fit.