While some might argue that NC Dance Theatre’s strong suit is its recently achieved mastery of prime Balanchine ballet repertoire, it’s evident that key people piloting the company have a notion that there may be too much starch in that suit. Last week’s Innovative Works, like the “Beatles Barbeque [sic] & Balanchine” program that opened the season in September, featured balletic moves in moderation, mixed in with high-concept modernistic pieces and funky hoedown celebrations.
The lineup, presented as usual at Booth Playhouse, wasn’t the most outre or provocative in NCDT’s “Innovative” series, but it was easily the most artfully polished. Artistic director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux has the company immersed in a Heritage Project, anticipating a watershed national tour next season. Innovative 2004 supplied a bumper yield of fresh ways for Charlotte’s best performing arts company to strut their stuff.
Uri Sands’ “Sweet Tea” was the most rousing new work in the lineup — and the one that tapped North Carolina’s heritage most resourcefully. The dancer/choreographer chose a prime cut from the work of jazz pioneer John Coltrane, who was born in Hamlet, NC, and grew up in High Point. Using a starry parasol and a couple of very wide-brimmed bonnets to sultry effect, Sands took a hot Coltrane Quartet performance of “Equinox” and fused the 12-bar blues to images of fierce summer heat.
Decked out in wide suspenders, Jason Jacobs did the man’s share of the sweltering, punctuating his labors by mopping his brow with a big hanky every five choruses or so. Mia Cunningham and Rebecca Carmazzi sashayed with those prodigious bonnets to wanton effect, working up fine sweats of their own.
At the other end of the spectrum, Septime Webre’s “Rushing Angels” was the one new piece devoid of regional reference — or a particularly original concept. Set to Samuel Barber’s familiar “Adagio for Strings,” the work paired Carmazzi and Sasha Janes as ardent lovers. Jacobs, Servy Gallardo and Patrick Kastoff — all in gauzy short skirts — were the trio of angels who whisked Carmazzi away from a bereft Janes. Rest assured, all of Webre’s balletic treacle was executed with appropriate gravity.
Sands had some fine moments onstage paired with Traci Gilchrest as the lead dancers in Daryl Gray’s feel-good hoedown, “American Folk.” No pretentious diaphanous costumes here, you can bet, just honest jeans and dresses as the two leads, framed by eight other dancers, interpreted such favorites as “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
There was a comfortable informality as Asheville singer/songwriter Christine Kane sidled onto the stage for a pleasant interlude of two songs. She stuck around for three more numbers as the spotlight shifted to Nicholle Rochelle, in a Betsy Blackmore costume that reached flamenco temperature, partnered by Daniel Wiley. Bonnefoux’s choreography for “I’m With You” made the unlikely blend work harmoniously.
Most provocative was the long-awaited marriage of Mark Godden’s high-concept “Double Blind” with the down-home music of Greasy Beans, Doug Wallin and Ola Bell Reed. It was a symbolic spectacle with rich Faulknerian flavorings, featuring Cunningham as our profoundly burdened protagonist.
We saw her wending her way through a storm-tossed field of reeds. Then we saw her rolling up the long root to one of stalks, stretched all the way across the Booth stage, and turning it into a massive boulder. We saw episodes of spurned affections and spouse abuse, watched commemorations of Billy the Kid and other murderers, heard thunder and gunshots over the rain and the crickets, and watched Cunningham survive it all as perishing bodies reached skyward. Thankfully, Godden was there to explain after the curtain went down in the post-show powwow.
The evening began almost as hauntingly as it ended — with the world premiere of Mary Hudetz’s “Word’s Edge.” There really was something meaningfully ineffable about this spectacle, set to the musical collaboration of Brian Eno and Jon Hassell. Roots here stretched further back than Faulkner as this piece ended. The sextet of dancers, after interacting in trance-like fashion, wound up facing us from the lip of stage, each one repeating a different set of motions. They seemed like a row of human hieroglyphs, their collective message etched with yearning and pain.
Just 36 days after Charlotte Symphony Orchestra performed Brahms’ Symphony #1, the Dresden Philharmonic came to Belk Theater, courtesy of the Carolinas Concert Association, and performed the same music under the direction of Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos. Sure, the interpretation was very different from what we heard when maestro Christof Perick was on the podium with the CSO a month ago — but not enough to get me nearly as excited about Brahms as I was then.Fortunately, the emissaries from Saxony also enlisted young Julia Fischer to the cause, opening the program with Johannes’ Violin Concerto in D. The 21-year-old showered us with much-needed freshness and assurance, lighting up one of the most familiar warhorses in the literature with cool precision and crusading fire.
Whereas the silken winds and the lush strings seemed to clog up the Symphony now and then, here they were a perfect backdrop for Fischer’s ethereal meditations and her ecstatic exuberance. For her part, Fischer heard the accompaniment extraordinarily well, arguing against it when the moment was right but also caressing it in the memorable adagio.
Making comparisons inevitable, Symphony brought in Kyoko Takezawa to highlight their all-Russian program last week. It was clear from the outset that the CSO was primed to provide Takezawa with sterling accompaniment in Stravinsky’s neo-classical Violin Concerto.Unfortunately, Perick & Co. were scheduled to play Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo & Juliet Overture” first, and the steely cold-bloodedness you attack Igor with just doesn’t work that well with Pyotr Illych’s passion and melodrama. You could admire how some of the detailing, like Bette Roth’s harp, was so clearly individualized. But it was hard to warm to the music when it sounded so atomized and clinical.
Back for her third go-round with CSO, Takezawa was confident and persuasive throughout the Stravinsky, though the phrasing in the opening toccata wasn’t as crisp as some other versions I’ve heard. Overall this was astringent, muscular playing, but in the third movement (“Aria II”), Takezawa poured out a fervent belief in the melodic Stravinsky, deftly navigating the transitions between the spiky and the sweet episodes.
Brass and winds have a lot to do in the opening toccata, and they handled it well. More than most concerti, this violin showcase also shines a spotlight on various principals in the orchestra, dialoguing with the guest artist. CSO concertmaster Calin Ovidiu Lupanu and trombonist John Bartlett both had delightful duets with Takezawa in the concluding capriccio.
This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2004.
