Two major dance companies in North Carolina have received considerable éclat in the New York press over the past year: Raleigh-based Carolina Ballet and Charlotte’s best performing arts company, North Carolina Dance Theatre. Last week was ideal for seeing both heralded companies in action. With a rare lull in theater openings here in Charlotte, I was able to get my first glimpse of Carolina Ballet just two nights after NCDT unveiled their Comedy in Motion at Belk Theater. Coming in the wake of his They Shoot Horses and A Streetcar Named Desire, Mark Diamond’s There Again, Not Slowly came at us like a caffeinated energy jolt when we first saw it last season at Booth Playhouse — an absolutely hilarious departure. Some of that contextual comedy vanished in its transition from the intimate Booth to the elegant Belk.
Yet the impression was more spectacular and electric in the larger venue, with amped-up lighting from Nate McGaha accompanying the techno obsessions recorded by Aphex Twin and Chemical Brothers. Diamond’s uptempo stylings combine high speed and robotic precision, and nobody packages them better than the long-limbed Nicholle Rochelle, edging another notch upward in the NCDT firmament in a hot red costume by the choreographer.
There were laughs galore in Peter Anastos’ Yes Virginia, Another Piano Ballet, featuring the return of Kati Hanlon Mayo as a mopey Girl in Lavender. But Ayisha McMillan, as the Girl in Pink, took the most jarring pratfalls in a sendup of spontaneous rehearsal hall grace that dates back to Anastos’ early days with Les Ballets Trockadero. The most unexpected pratfall was undoubtedly by pianist Whit Kellogg, sent sprawling off his bench by an errant dancer amid his fine renditions of Chopin.
Topping off the evening with a fine froth was artistic director Pierre Bonnefoux’s Ménage à Quatre with Sasha Janes and Traci Gilchrest as a baron and baroness who are cheating on each other — and Daniel Wiley as a Gigolo upstaging them both. The two scenes of amorous intrigue, set to the familiar dancehall bonbons of Offenbach, were the essence of Parisian libido and joie de vivre, spiced with frilly petticoats, cartwheels and cancan lines.
Up at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, the Carolina Ballet staged a Carolina Jamboree, serving up live music by the Red Clay Ramblers with the main dish. Preceding that down-home hoedown, Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Lost and Found was an unexpectedly heavy appetizer.Set to a selection of somber piano etudes by Robert Schumann, played live onstage by Nancy Whelan, this piece took us back to the stunned confusion and profound emptiness we all felt in the wake of 9/11. Survivors desperately sought out new connections while haunted by their painful loss.
Timour Bourtasenkov, clearly the best dancer in the company, personified the wrenching ambivalence most keenly. Melissa Podcasy, dressed in bright yellow that contrasted tellingly with the drabness of the other costumes, flitted around the survivors — and off into the wings — symbolizing the departed souls and their agonizing hold on the living.
Fortunately, the Ramblers’ Jamboree ramped up gradually to all-out bluegrass frivolity in the wake of the pre-intermission dreariness.
Copies of Bland Simpson’s non-fiction novel, The Murder of Beautiful Nell Cropsey, were available in the lobby before and after the Rambler pianist narrated the tale to Taylor-Corbett’s choreography. Podcasy returned as the foredoomed heroine while Cyrille de la Barre stepped forward impressively as Jim Wilcox, the fiancé who may have killed her.
Now the Ramblers shifted into their most rambunctious gear for Part 3, “Fiddlesticks.” They skirted the cliff with the audience-participation segment, “You All Hid,” getting us all to say something stupid about a billy goat. Then they pretty well drove off the rim with “The Chicken Song,” getting seven of the best-trained artists in the Carolinas to spell out the succulent poultry with their bodies. Again and again. Somebody shoulda cried fowl.
But in the midst of the silliness, Margot Martin had the chance to shine as the evil “Snuffdipper.” On this night, she was the one Carolina ballerina who showed charisma that was comparable to de la Barre’s and Bourtasenkov’s.
It was the worst of times for local theatergoers in the wake of Charlotte Rep’s dispiriting announcement that it was bowing out after 29 years. Subscribers had a special right to feel miffed, learning by letter that they had been stiffed on the remainder of Rep’s season without receiving refunds on two canceled productions.But North Carolina Dance Theatre was among the first to jump heroically into the breach, garnering ink in the Charlotte Observer early last week with three area theater companies.
More theater companies joined the cause later in the week, rallying to the appeals from leaders of the Metrolina Theatre Association. For a complete listing of local theatre groups redeeming Rep tickets, go to the MTA website at MetrolinaTheatre.org.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2005.
