Tag Archives: Raven Barkley

“Flip” Is Charlotte Ballet’s New Lab and Launching Pad

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By Perry Tannenbaum

Whenever you see a Charlotte Ballet performance at Knight Theater or the mighty Belk, you’re going to see talent, grace, athleticism, imagination, and dancers in abundance. At the McBride-Bonnefoux Center for Dance, however, only the first three of those wondrous plenitudes are guaranteed. Formality is loosened. Scale is often reduced. And over the past few years, Charlotte Ballet’s season has concluded with evenings of homegrown choreographies by members of the troupe, many of them new to the art.

The title of these venturous, experimental evenings has evolved from Choreographic Lab, when Hope Muir established them in 2018, to the current Flip – as in flipping the script – when Alejandro Cerrudo took over as artistic director. Moving from the big venues to the double-studio layout of the McBride-Bonnefoux, one studio accommodating the audience and the adjacent studio (partition opened) serving as the dancers’ stage, you feel like you’ve abandoned Broadway for a black box.

But without sacrificing the swank factor: the façade and lobby of the Center for Dance are more like a modern museum than a ballet school. So there’s an elegant patina layered onto the funky ambiance of briefer, smaller budget pieces, often reduced to solo performances or pas-de-deuxs. You might expect two or three pieces at most before an intermission at the Knight or Belk Theater. This year at Flip, there were nine, with five more in the lineup after the break.

So you can conclude that, among the 20 dancers in the Charlotte Ballet troupe, 70% can now affix the profession of choreographer to their résumés. Not quite. At this year’s Flip, members of the secondary Charlotte Ballet II troupe also participated in performing and choreographing the program. Six of the eight CB2 members profiled at the charlotteballet.org website danced in the program, with David Anthony Scheuerman-Saucedo also among the choreographers.

What happens behind the scenes must be a fascinating process, as the dancers choreograph for their comrades, teaming up by preference, negotiation, or random assignment. Two lighting designers, Jenni Propst and Rick Moll, split the 14 pieces between them, another negotiation or lottery.

Normally, two solo dances would be two too many for me. But at Flip, Raven Barkley’s “Groove” and Clay Houston’s “Nuit tombante” both transcended the norm. Set to Jackie Wilson’s cover of “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher & Higher,” Barkley’s choreography put little demand on her athleticism and was hardly unique. She was: lithe and charismatic in a vivid red dress.

In a sense, Houston’s piece wasn’t a solo at all. When night fell, he not only switched soundtracks, he also switched genders, discarding a wig and assorted paraphernalia and becoming more himself. At first, the transformation hit me as surprising and comical, but the mood – and the choreography – deepened and became touching.

Between these two solos, two of the best duets were programmed: Anna Owens’ “That’s all” and Adriana Wagenveld’s “Tethered.” Owens’ piece, set to a couple of non-Tiny Tim versions of “Tip Toe Thru the Tulips,” actually offered a rather comical reason for all the tiptoeing. At the climax, Owens in the female role gets Oliver Oguma to assist her in reaching a tulip that dangles temptingly from above. That’s when the “That’s all” came into play, as Owens departed instantly afterwards, without according Oguma the thanks he deserved.

Oguma, in the comical spirit of the music, looked more bewildered than pissed by the brush-off.

Wagenveld spliced two favorite Sebastian Plano tracks together for her soundtrack, recruiting her sister from CB2, Serafina Wagenveld, to join her in the project. Fortunately, Adriana’s tethering concept isn’t carried out literally. Though neither of their bios suggests that the siblings are twins, the matching costumes for the piece only encouraged that conjecture.

At times, Plano’s minimalist style seemed mated with the Wagenvelds’ walk-like-an-Egyptian grace and their stolid serenity. The sisters’ intertwinings, beautifully timed and carefully composed, might also take on a hieroglyphic look. Their costumes were sleek and timeless, sheer taupe tops with tight half-sleeves – think nylons – over flowing white slacks.

Two other duets stood out for me. Rees Launer’s “Kinetikos” was appropriately pulsating and percussive in opening the evening, set to a mashup of a couple of Aphex Twin tracks for Scheuerman-Saucedo and Serafina Wagenveld, growing more lyrical and nostalgic when the music transitioned to an Emile Mosseri piece. Most unique of all, perhaps, was Isaac Aoki’s “Topaz,” set for himself and Remi Okamoto to Mark Izu’s “Mermaid in a Silent Sea.”

With Aoki’s videography, we were taken more explicitly to desert lands in “Topaz” than we were by “Tethered.” The torrid climate fit hauntingly with the plodding tempo of the music, caravan-like when the whining Japanese shakuhachi dominated. Or the flute. Or the bass clarinet. The loneliness of the dark-clad Asians contrasted starkly with the sun-drenched hilly terrain, justifying that whining sound. Unlike “Tethered,” there was little connection at first between the two dancers. The piece was the antithesis of festive – until the tabla began to bubble underneath, gradually emerging and quickening the pace.

Of the remaining pieces, I found that the love-triangle narrative shape of Scheuerman-Saucedo’s “you and me and me and you” overcame my misgivings about listening to yet another setting to Jules Massenet’s “Meditation from Thaïs.” Although Part 1 of Mario Gonzalez’ “Fever Dream” struck me as a generic piece for four dancers, never once reminding me of Geppetto’s search for Pinocchio (let alone “Chapter 35”), Part 2, “25%,” enabled Stephen Myers to deliver one of the most vivacious solos of the evening, set to “Orchestra” by Labrinth.

Both his costume and charisma rivaled Raven’s. Nor was “Chapter 35” a waste, for it prodded me to investigate the insane “Big Hammer” video by James Blake. A cinematic masterwork!

You may disagree, but discovering new music is a key part of the adventure that Charlotte Ballet’s labs or Flips has to offer me. That was not the case with the closing offering of the evening, Maurice Mouzon Jr.’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” set to the Nina Simone recording. It’s been done before – and before that.

Mouzon’s setting, for four dancers, doesn’t stop at the threat of separation. It crosses over into the agony of it when it happens. So two couples is the right choreographic choice, for Mouzon allows ample opportunities for the two women, Barkley and Adriana Wagenveld, and the two men, Launer and Luke Csordas, to suffer and commiserate with one another in alternating segments.

Nor does Mouzon send the women off, an annoying choreographic tic, when the spotlight shifts to the men. Instead, he freezes them in a sad attitude while Moll dims their light. Why should they be out of sight if they’re not out of mind? Since the Simone track peters out in pitiful pleas, seemingly repeated after being irrevocably denied, Mouzon can only offer us a wan hope of reconciliation.

Hugged from the rear by their partners, their legs bent and suspended in air, Barkley and Wagenveld reached across the void between them and embraced with their arms fully extended, forming a poignant bridge. What a wonderful closing tableau.

Newsflash: Printedprograms for Flip and Charlotte Ballet’s previous show, One Thousand Pieces back in early May, contained announcements of the company’s 2026-27 season and a slate of touring engagements, an exciting new dimension for the troupe. A couple of new developments since Flip concluded its run on June 20.

The company has already appeared at the American Dance Festival in Durham for the first time since 2017, bringing with them a work by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin once again later in June. Then, less than a week ago, they fulfilled their promise to add to their announced touring dates.

Newly augmented, here’s the slate:

  • Sept. 25-26, 2026: Ballet Bend – Fall Dance Festival (Bend, OR)
  • Oct. 29-30, 2026: Brooks Center for the Performing Arts at Clemson University (Clemson, SC)
  • Nov. 7, 2026: Dance Cleveland (Cleveland, OH)
  • Jan. 27-31, 2027: The Joyce Theater (New York, NY)

The 2027 rendezvous at The Joyce Theater will be the first time Cerrudo has brought them there during his tenure. Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, who died in the spring of 2025 at age 82, was still the artistic director when the company last wowed New York audiences at The Joyce in 2004. Ten years later, he would rebrand his troupe, but back then, they were known as the North Carolina Dance Theatre.

Charlotte Ballet’s “Whispers, Echoes, Voices” Is Excitingly Sensual, Primal, and Imaginative

Review: Whispers, Echoes, Voices at Knight Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

October 30, 2025, Charlotte, NC – Over and over again, as I drove home after opening night of Charlotte Ballet’s Whispers, Echoes, Voices – capped by the world premiere of resident choreographer Mthuthuzeli November’s As I Am, I found myself asking, “What Did I Just See?” That is not an unusual question for me to ask after a stellar evening of modern dance, for the art is usually abstract and chameleonic in the extreme, but on the eve of Halloween, the urgency of the question felt compounded. Exponentially.

Sitting in the fifth row, near many young people who were experiencing such vibrant abstractions for the first time, I couldn’t help but hear their exclamations and enthusiasms during the two intermissions that punctuated the program. “Amazing!!” was the most repeated outcry but not the only one, and the cumulative enthusiasm was at a you’ve-got-to-come-see-this pitch I rarely hear. But beyond the fevered response and what had caused it – for the standing ovation after November’s triumph was instant, electric, and virtually unanimous – there was a fundamental question that was not abstract. At the climax of As I Am, when a deluge rained down on soloist Maurice Mouzon Jr., out of the sky and into an opening at the top of the moody cave designed by Celia Castaldo, what had I seen? Literally.

At first blush, it seemed obvious that it was water. It looked like water, it glowed like water, it photographed like water, and it bounced like water. But as Mouzon’s primitive countrymen returned to the cave and helped him off the ground, evidence mounted quickly that it had been something else. Mouzon’s back was newly caked with the stuff and had to be wiped off. None of the barefoot ensemble of ten dancers sloshed or slipped on the stage afterwards, including the vatic priestess in her reindeer crown, and when we rose to applaud all this mystic magnificence, the stage was completely dry, without a single drainage hole in sight. Since a deluge of sand would be dangerous to the performers – and us! – my conclusion, confirmed by CharBallet the next day, was that we had seen rice.

What we had also seen, no question, was the premiere of Charlotte Ballet’s most exciting and primal original since Salvatore Aiello’s Rite of Spring.True, November’s companion soundtrack, which he composed, did not rival Stravinsky, but it was no less evocative… and obviously, more of a piece with the choreography. Here were the whispers and voices referenced by the program’s title, with plenty of pulsing and primitive percussion layered on.

After reading a review of the dress rehearsal performance, two further questions arose in my mind. How many people in the audience, contrary to the evidence before their eyes, had gone home thinking they had seen water onstage at the Knight? Was that more than the number of people who, not scrutinizing the program, didn’t realize that tonight the ensemble for As I Am was all-male, and that two of three remaining performances will be all-female? Costumes in CharBallet’s publicity photos confirms what they’ll miss. In all, four soloists will dance November’s new work, including Raven Barkley, Remi Okamoto, and the opening night priestess, Isaac Aoki.

The evening began far more elegantly and wittily with a reprise of Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, an international staple premiered by Nederlands Dans in 1991 and unveiled at the Knight in March 2024. It’s good to keep in mind that Kylian’s piece is more about what the title implies, “the ecstasy of sexual intercourse,” than about the two slow movements from famed Mozart piano concertos, No. 23 and No. 21 (Elvira Madigan), he sets to dance in a series of ensembles and six pas de deux. There’s a definite uptick in the quality of what we see this time at the Knight, only partially because Kylián’s explanatory notes are printed in the program beneath the credits, cluing us in to the sensuality at the core of the choreographer’s concept and the precise satire he intends with the sabers wielded by the men.

You knew that sabres were sharp and pointy, but did you realize that, by accurately kicking their handles, they will roll around the floor in a perfect circle? Mastering that trick along with the close brushes that the blades, straight or curved, make with the females onstage during Petite Mort – these can account for a bit of fear and hesitancy among all the dancers. So another reason the revival scores better than the initial thrust two seasons ago is that the dancers are handling the hardware with more confidence and élan. A complete delight this time around, with all its suggestive episodes more sensuously sketched.

In the middle of the two rousing spectacles, Crystal Pite’s dimly lit Solo Echo, set to cello sonatas by Brahms, stood out in quiescent relief. Or it did during its early moments. Flakier stuff came down in the darkness as Pite’s piece began, partially illuminated by a vertical rack of lights from the wings. That horizontal lighting, designed by Tom Visser, gradually descended from the flyloft, stopping in midair just above the dancers’ heads. Slow-paced choreography, frequently for just a couple of the seven dancers, dressed drably in costumes by Joke Visser and the choreographer, added to the hypnotic spell. Confession: I briefly fought the impulse to doze off during this monochromatic dreariness.

But then the pace quickened and Pite deployed her complete ensemble in more feverish action – while the whole upstage brightened into a skyscape depicting a glorious snowy night. More importantly, Pite’s echo concept crystallized as six of the seven tightly intertwined, one on top of another, in a vertically mirroring pose above the recumbent Mouzon, once again garnering special attention. In this blizzard, the ensemble might split apart slowly like the folds of an accordion. Or they might break apart, scurry around chaotically, and make wretched attempts to form a moving circle. Often, however, one of the dancers stood isolated from the ensemble. He or she could be viewed as an outsider, but also as the solo mind generating the echoes.

“Beyond the Surface” Amazes and Parties-Down

Review: Beyond the Surface at McBride-Bonnefoux Center

By Perry Tannenbaum

The new Charlotte Ballet season is off to a blazing beginning. Presenting Beyond the Surface at the McBride-Bonnefoux Center for Dance through October 26, the troupe looked fresher and younger than ever. But the choreography was far, far younger: two world premiere hatchlings that emerged from their shells last Thursday from Omar Román de Jesús and Mthuthuzeli November, and a third Charlotte Ballet commission by Jennifer Archibald that had its premiere less than two years ago in the same studio.

On that auspicious occasion, Archibald’s fledgling was at the top of the Innovative Works program, sparking hopes that the pieces that followed would reach the same high level. This year, HdrM is nestled in the middle of the program – and my 2023 hopes were already realized again in 2024 with the premiere of De Jesús’s Balúm.

Yes, the first dance of the night easily merited a climactic spot in any evening of premieres: beautiful, complex, mysterious, symbolic, intricate, moving, epic, and surreal. Music by OKRAA, Ola de Luz, was relentlessly propulsive, with random noises at random intervals littered around the main core, a minimalist loop with a harp-like timbre. Once that core cleared the noisy interference, like a spiraling starship navigating through a belt of asteroids, a sudden hypnotic calm and spaciousness prevailed – and the wonder of this dance multiplied, lending it an uncanny glow.

De Jesús has indicated that he is exploring our interactions with the air that engulfs us, from the moment we are born until we take our last breaths. Or maybe that emergence from the noise field near the beginning of the piece is an expulsion from the womb, our birth after a pre-natal prelude. The Puertorriqueño choreographer also has a hand in scenic design and Branimira Ivanova’s costume designs, for she has some specific prompts to execute in fashioning the dancers’ outfits and props.

The most notable of these are black: Two umbrellas that conjure up the surrealism of René Magritte and the fearfully magnificent ambiguity worn by Rees Launer. One of the umbrellas starts upstage center, held by one of the dancers seated on a bench, and it gets passed from dancer to dancer during the action, frequently cycling back to its starting position. The other is held stolidly by a woman on a side bench who resolutely faces away from the action until the stunningly gorgeous denouement – when we get to see the air!

At various moments when Launer grips our attention, we can have different conjectures about what his stern character represents. A raging fire-and-brimstone preacher? a demon? a witch? the Angel of Death? Launer will be a member of two of the three ensembles that get to present Balúm during its current 16-performance run. Another standout in the opening weekend’s seven-member ensemble, Maurice Mouzon Jr., will be in all the performances of this piece.

The liquefied movement of the dancers – along with some robotic intertwining – was juxtaposed with no-less-idiomatic lifts that were more horizontal than vertical. Like chapter markers at the end of episodes, the ensemble would gather and swirl around the stage in an evocative oval parade. Autumn leaves swirling in the wind. Often two or three subgroups performed simultaneously before an ensemble swirl would resolve the dissonance.

What amazed me most was that synchronized entrances and overlapping actions were so precise when there were seemingly no musical cues to give the dancers a toehold. If you’ve heard music by Philip Glass, you know that minimalism is not particularly danceable music. Musicians playing it and maestros conducting it must concentrate intently on the score to keep their bearings amid the repetitiveness. I’m still gobsmacked by how this Charlotte Ballet team pulled this off.

Following Balúm, a piece so untethered from every aspect of its music except for OKRAA’s tempo, Archibald’s HdrM struck me from an altered perspective. Archibald’s ability to mesh expressive movement to a soundtrack of musical compositions by Ludwig Ronquist, Heilung, and Federico Albanese stood out more boldly than ever after the more abstract and surreal De Jesús piece – though these intimate bonds in HdrM could be broken by abrupt mechanical disconnects from the score.

Two other conflicting factors came into play. Most welcome was the opportunity to see the Canadian-born choreographer’s work reprised by three of the eight dancers who performed at the 2023 premiere, Raven Barkley, Luke Csordas, and Shaina Wire. The piece looked more natural and “lived-in” twenty months later, so its internal contrasts were sharper and its sensual moments more relaxed. Barkley, in particular, stood forth dramatically, as sensual, captivating, and devastating as we’ve ever seen her. Nor can you fail to notice the ‘do.

Here, more than in any other dance of the evening, the ensemble bought into the “Unfiltered” theme of CharBallet’s 2024-25 season with their spirited, lyrical work. My only worry was off the dance floor and in the program booklet, where Archibald’s useful explanatory remarks where no longer in print. There in 2023, she was concerned with environmental psychology and posed a pointed question: “Is there a social responsibility to humanize architecture?”

Just asking that question helps us to connect with Archibald’s struggling language of movement. It also hints at the likelihood that Kerri Martinsen’s drab costumes are intended as institutional, such as clothing worn in hospitals, prisons, or mental wards. Aside from the contrast between lithe and mechanical movement, HdrM holds our gaze with a nice balance of ensemble, individual, and pair segments that flow naturally into one another.

Like many finales we’ve seen before from CharBallet, November’s Vibes and Variations is the most celebratory and carefree piece of the night. After last year’s From Africa With Love, it’s also the second consecutive November premiere to kick off a season at the McBride-Bonnefoux Center. Where Africa was surprisingly serene and monochromatic, preoccupied with mauve-colored ostriches from his South African homeland and their exquisite fragility, Vibes seems to wander westward to South America, to samba, tango, and carnivale.

Ivanova’s costumes burst with pastel cotton-candy colors and outré pleating, what my late mom in her saltiest Yiddish would call ongepochket, crassly over-decorated. The bulges on the men’s costumes give them seahorse legs and the frilly women look like spinning tops in a color scheme that matches the men’s harlequin-like rigs. The music starts off rather quietly with Gaby Moreno singing the first vocal on the program, her cover of “Cucurrucucu Paloma” over a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment, smoldering with bossa nova intimacy and sadness.

Things intensify as the 15-person ensemble digs into the Bang on a Can All-Stars’ version of David Lang’s strangely percussive – and minimalist – “cheating, lying, stealing.” But the most intense partying launches when we arrive at beatmaker Jamie xx and MC Moose performing the brash, irresistibly mindless “Gosh.” Catching my eye most compellingly were Csordas and Fuki Takahashi, each of whom will be in two of the three rotating ensembles performing November’s piece throughout its current run.

If I have to predict who will land the title role in Carmen next spring when artistic director Alejandro Cerrudo and CharBallet unveil their Vegas-showgirl update, my guesses would be Takahashi or Barkley. Since that Charlotte premiere will be running for two weekends, both temptresses could take turns at it.

The Full Cerrudo Experience Is a Hit in Come to Life

Review: Charlotte Ballet’s Come to Life at Knight Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

March 7, 2024, Charlotte, NC – Midway through his second full season as artistic director, we can now say that Alejandro Cerrudo has stamped Charlotte Ballet as his company. The corps looks fresh, peopled with more newbies we’re getting to know than trusted heirlooms who have long since proven their mettle. The choreography on their current Come To Life program at Knight Theater – Cerrudo’s Little mortal jump, Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort, and the world premiere of Penny Saunders’ Beat the Clock – is beguilingly adventurous. Wow factor? Check.

For those of you who remember the 1950s, yes, Beat the Clock exhumes the classic TV game show hosted by the preternaturally vacuous Bud Collyer and sponsored by Sylvania. So at first, it wasn’t at all apparent that Saunders was targeting gender roles in those ancient days. But while the jackpot money was still flying gloriously above the dancers portraying the announcer, the host, the contestants, and the amped audience, we were cinematically fade-dissolving into a different scene as the shower of bills hit the ground.

This was a panel discussion where three women discussed the provocative question of whether housewives could benefit from additional education. Though it’s a godsend for the choreography, the discussion got heated, which may frustrate a few feminists in the audience. What frustrated me, however, was that Saunders’ sound design wasn’t as clearly audible for the panelists as it was for the archival gameshow track.

As the panelists’ hubbub subsided at stage right, there were a few moments of split screen as Michael Korsch’s lighting intensified at stage left for a briefer husband-and-wife scene, where both of the marrieds ended up feeling ignored and unvalued. Is this why we won the war? Sometimes, it felt this way. This brief microcosm gave way to two concluding community scenes, the first spotlighting the women and the finale embracing the entire 14-person ensemble.

Kerri Martinsen’s costume design had something to say about conformity in the outfits sported by the gameshow contestants and audience, later giving way to assorted nondescript outfits. Similarly, Maurice Mouzon Jr. as the announcer and James Kopecky as the host wore uniform outfits – with glittery silver blazers, to hell with historical accuracy. Back then, the em in emcee stood emphatically for master of ceremonies, so I suspected that Saunders and Martinsen were double-underlining their point.

After the first intermission, the repertoire flipped from cinematic to theatrical, with costume designer Joke Visser adorning Kylián’s men with gilt-edged cavalier attire that fit tightly and, for his women, the stiffest possible dresses. Suffice it to say that you’ve probably never seen women move laterally across the stage as these ladies in black do. Nor can it be doubted that these ladies – or their dresses – are the little deaths implied by Kylián’s Petite Mort title. Scored with slow movements from Mozart’s 21st and 23rd Piano Concertos, Mort both celebrates and lovingly skewers classic elegance – with a beautiful set of pas de deuxs between the ensemble segments and a couple of breathtaking transitions that require some nifty undercover choreography of their own.

The most eye-catching pairings among the six couples, for me, were Kopecky and Samantha Riester along with Raven Barkley and Rees Launer. Your mileage may vary, especially if you’re witnessing Charlotte Ballet for the first time, and the six couples will change from performance to performance (only Reister and Kopecky are constants, and they will be swapping out dances and partners). Just try not to gag on the relentless grace and symmetry.

If Kylián’s piece was a wry and perfect gem, then Cerrudo’s Little mortal jump, premiered by Hubbard Street Dance back in 2012, impacted like a coolly calculated over-the-top extravaganza. Korsch italicized the spectacle with his lighting design, principally when he aimed his beams at the audience and when he illuminated rows of vanity bulbs on cue. Branimira Ivanova’s costumes arguably upstaged Korsch’s lighting and Cerrudo’s choreography, literally stopping the show and putting two of Charlotte Ballet’s dancers in suspended animation, pinned to the scenery. Well before that, it was apparent that Cerrudo’s scenic design – massive movable boxes about as high as a school locker – was an integral part of his choreography. The movements of these huge boxes made transitions between scenes a constant source of excitement and surprise.

Ten pieces on Cerrudo’s playlist, listed alphabetically rather than sequentially in the program booklet, add to the kaleidoscopic swirl of his scenario and the giddy, stagey energy of the dancers. So his magical moment of suspended animation stands all the more dramatically apart from the hectic electricity that bookends this utterly unique pas de deux. Cerrudo’s piece, longer than the others, fit in well with them, maybe even eclipsing them a little. More comfortable in his leading role, his welcoming remarks were confident, for his invitation to support CharBallet’s 2024-25 season would soon be buttressed with a stunning program. The buzz in the house seemed to indicate that Cerrudo is winning over fervent new fans in his audience and onstage. As one ticketholder summarized, leaving the elevator that descends into the nearby parking garage: “Holy cow.”

Charlotte Ballet’s “Peter Pan”: An Intriguing Hybrid With Provocative Possibilities

Review: Peter Pan at Knight Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

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We don’t grow up with the various incarnations of James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan as much as we used to. The aged Mary Martin musical is no longer resuscitated every year, the Disney animation has been relegated to a fairy-dust sprinkling for their theme park promotions, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw an ad for the peanut butter. And gosh, wasn’t there once a popcorn? Not a kernel remains in all of Googledom.

Yet the young flying prince of Neverland is still a powerful presence. Whether in touring musicals, glittery ballets, the original stage version, or that bizarre Broadway offshoot, Peter and the Starcatcher, the eternally young green sprite has visited our Metrolina stages at least 15 times during the new millennium. And tomorrow, Disney’s refresh, Peter and Wendy, starts to stream in your home if you’re subscribed.

Renaissance or evolution? The amended title begins to tell the direction of the Disney+ refresh. Meanwhile at Knight Theater, Charlotte Ballet unveiled their new Peter Pan, choreographed by Christopher Stuart. Building upon the previous version choreographed by Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux in 2004 for Peter’s centenary, Stuart has retained Howard Jones’s set design and most of A. Christina Giannini’s costume designs.

The jolly pastiche of Rossini favorites that Bonnefoux leaned on for his score, with gossamer drizzles of Respighi, is replaced by a full-length ballet score by Stephen Warbeck, best known for his Billy Elliott and Shakespeare in Love film scores. In exchange for the one step backward in his scenario, restoring the traditional resurrect of Tinker Bell, Stuart took the evolution of Barrie’s story a couple of steps forward toward political correctness.

Was such evolution necessary? When Mary Martin first flew in from Neverland on the wings of Moose Charlap and Jule Styne’s music, she turned Peter into a female action hero, smoked the peace pipe with Tiger Lily and her tribe, and depended on the Darling women across the generations. Not that these were radical changes, either, since Nina Boucicault (daughter of the famed playwright Dion) originated the title role in 1904.DSC_6648

So with respect to women and Native Americans, termed Indians back in 1954, Peter Pan easily passed for progressive in my eyes. But in recent touring versions and in the Bonnefoux remake, you could see these sore points addressed. Styne’s “Ugg-a-Wugg,” with its Comden and Green lyric, remained in all the Broadway revivals through 1999, but has been discreetly reworked or dropped in recent tours. Bonnefoux turned the Indians into Incas in 2004, and when he brought his version back in 2013 with the new sets and costumes, Captain Hook’s pirate crew were equally divided between men and swashbuckling S&M women.

Stuart’s Tiger Lily, gracefully danced by Raven Barkley, is now a fighting flower. Thanks to new costumes by Kerri Martinsen, Tiger’s all-female militia are now billed as the Lillies of Neverland. While the Lost Boys haven’t changed their name (or costumes), half are now girls. The feminine swarm is augmented by a dozen female butterflies, but there are now a few more gigs for boys. Following in the wake of the funky Crocodile that Bonnefoux reconceived, a new gaggle of Little Crocodiles added microscopically to Pierce Gallagher’s menace at the premiere.Peter Pan

A quarter of this reptilian dozen are boys, so I’m guessing that the gender breakdown among the younglings parallels enrollment at the Charlotte Ballet school. The pre-recorded music, the hand-me-down costumes and sets, and especially the profusion of child labor – all of these economies make perfect sense. But did Stuart really think it would fly with a 2023 audience if Peter, Wendy, and the Darling bros didn’t fly?

Surely there were mommies and daddies out there in Knight Theater who had promised that Peter and Wendy would fly. Hell, there were adults out there counting on it. I couldn’t think of a single reason, not even a politically correct or environmentally responsible reason, why they didn’t fly. Flying by Foy is on strike, they missed their flight, or their train was derailed. Try those.DSC_6332

If nothing else, the gaps and hybrid aspects of the new Peter emphatically indicate that it is a production in flux, ready for new twists, new replacement parts, upgrades, and embellishments in years to come. To Stuart’s credit, he tinkers brilliantly with Tinker Bell, impishly danced by Isabella Franco at the premiere. The new opening scene, at the newly-discovered Darling Orphanage, shows her stealing a newborn from its cradle and whisking it off to Neverland.

In the ensuing scene, when the curtain goes up, Tink is more jealous of Wendy than usual, a resentment and hostility that will carry over to Neverland – where Peter, the little babe she has raised, must eventually put her in time-out! A delicious moment. Michael Darling and John Darling, danced by Tyler Diggs and Lorenzo Dunton, also get more development than I usually note before Peter’s arrival. Their mom and dad, Sarah Lapointe and James Kopecky, were admirably contoured as well. Kopecky showed a little achiness after dancing with his sons, yet Lapointe regally summoned him for another spin or two on the floor.DSC_6024

Both Sarah Hayes Harkins and Maurice Mouzon Jr. were youth and joy from the moment they met, but their start was a bit awkward in the Darlings’ bedroom compared to their outdoor adventures in Neverland. Aside from the no-fly-zone reveal we had to overcome, Stuart needs to clean up the sequence and the lighting of Peter’s lost and found shadow. He seems to have his shadow quite dramatically soon after he comes in, but then he inexplicably loses it.

There are usually two scenarios to choose from. The musical has Peter returning in search of a shadow left behind an indeterminate time ago. In other tellings, he might fly away from Wendy in a huff only to realize that his pesky shadow has stuck on the supersized window sill when he left. Stuart and lighting designer Jennifer Propst have to be on the same page with these niggling details.DSC_5944

Up in sunny Neverland, it all goes so beautifully. As always, Franco as Tink has taken the shortcut, arrives before all the others, and instigates the shooting down of our airborne Wendy by one of the Lost Boys. With a slingshot, not a bow and arrow.

For a flower, Barkley does seem to have a lot of fight in her, so her kidnapping by Ben Ingel as Captain Hook remains a satisfying battle. In his rescue of Tiger Lilly, Peter is wounded by Hook, proving that the pirate is a worthy foe. But don’t expect Ingel to be as fearsome as Jude Law will be on Disney+. He retains some of the comical blood that Bonnefoux infused into previous Hooks, lurking and skulking across the stage when he isn’t prancing merrily or fleeing in terror from the cheerfully chomping Croc.

There’s plenty of lovely, charming, and colorful mayhem as the nearly poisoned Peter rescues Wendy, the Darling bros, and the Lost Boys. Joy is abundant in the homecoming, and Stuart tacks on the cherishable postscript when Peter returns a generation later for Wendy. Four little girls will get to play the touching part of Jane during the 12-show run, one more than any other role.

Now aside from a phone call to Foy, Stuart and company might consider returning to that Darling Orphanage they’ve left dangling for future editions. In Barrie’s novelization, one of the Lost Boys, adopted by the Darlings, becomes a titled lord and another becomes a judge. The least Stuart and CharBallet could do is bring them home.

Charlotte Ballet Takes Us Back to the Future in Rousing and Meaningful “Innovative 1970”

Review: Innovative 1970 at Center for Dance

By Perry Tannenbaum

Innov1970 gypsy moths photo by Jeff Cravotta

February 4, 2022, Charlotte, NC – Distorted by delay, the title of Charlotte Ballet’s latest program sounds more like an oxymoron than ever. Innovative 1970 was originally designed to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, but COVID intervened in all our lives so that the official celebration couldn’t be staged until October 2021, already 51 years after the original troupe was formed in Winston-Salem as the North Carolina Dance Theatre. That commemoration included an electrifying revival of The Rite of Spring by Salvatore Aiello, who brought NCDT to Charlotte in 1990. Following that program, the company more predictably reprised The Nutcracker for the holidays, choreographed by Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, who succeeded Aiello as NCDT’s artistic director in 1996 and rebranded the troupe in 2014.

The durably titled Innovative 1970 is thus the first program of all-new pieces since Charlotte Ballet returned to live performances this season and the first to return dancers and subscribers to the Patricia McBride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux Center for Dance, doubly appropriate because 1970 was adopted as the creative trigger for all three newly commissioned pieces on the program, choreographed by Andrés Trezevant, Rena Butler, and Ja’ Malik.

Innov1970 What was it for Photo by Jeff CravottaAppropriate to its Vietnam War theming, Trezevant’s “What Was It For?” arrived for its premiere as a partial amputee, for the beginning of the scenario in the printed program, where war protesters make houses out of draft cards, is MIA – along with the conspicuous absence of Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets (1974).” What remained thrust us into middle of warfare, Julie Ballard’s lighting design turning the floor of the Center for Dance’s black box into camo splotches of green and gray, while a house of cards lingered downstage, now a cryptic relic of the original concept. A quaint portable radio was spotlit near the opposite wing, likely another leftover, but it remained functional, emitting only white noise as five male dancers, dressed as soldiers, populated the stage, simulating scenes of combat, capture, escape, and rescue.

We were clearly – and perhaps angrily – back home, when Maurice Mouzon Jr. subsequently performed a dashing solo to Nina Simone’s “Backlash Blues (1967).” The two women in this piece, Sarah Lapointe and Anna Mains, arrived onstage as healers while the scene brightened somewhat. Now the returning soldiers – Colby Foss, Ben Ingel, James Kopecky, and Rees Launer – were presumably in hospitals and rehab, dealing with mental and physical trauma in the grim aftermath of a futile war. I suspect that the house of draft cards was intended to fall at the end, but it remained standing.

Innov1970 Subliminal Tsunami photo by Jeff Cravotta

Subliminal Tsunami by Rena Butler, with original music by Daniel J. Hoffman, was a more acerbic and satirical piece that took 1970 as a checkpoint on the state of women’s rights and horizons, compared with where they are today. Recorded voices of Gloria Steinem, Nikki Giovanni, and ABC News anchor Marlene Sanders were in the colloquium, intermingled with recorded voices of seven Charlotte Ballet dancers delivering their own personal accounts. Sharply contrasting with this dignified discussion was what we saw onstage, five women dancers coldly confined by Ballard’s lighting into five squares. The stiffness of Lapointe, Raven Barkley, Isabella Franco, Sarah Hayes Harkins, and Amelia Sturt-Dilley, dressed in matching costumes by Kerri Martinsen, clearly identified them as a collection of Barbie dolls, handled dutifully by four men – Foss, Ingel, Launer, and David Preciado.

Only occasionally did the voices compete with the dancers for attention as the piece proceeded, giving the dancers more latitude for movement. No doubting that the black box’s sound system sorely needs an overhaul, OK for rehearsals but not suitable for prime time. It was still a bit stinging to listen to the cautions against following your impulses issued to young girls contemplating a future of homemaking. Lamentably, the pace of progress for women has been mostly subliminal, not at all a tsunami, though cumulatively we have evolved substantially since 1970, and more progress can be perceived if we look back to when women gained the right to vote 50 years earlier. While I was bothered to see the dancers still masked in 2022, Butler had an ingenious way of coping with the situation: Big smiley, lipsticked mouths on Martinsen’s matching flesh-colored masks were clearly and effectively part of the women’s design.Innov1970 gypsy moths 2 photo by Jeff Cravotta

After the traumas of war and the indignities of gender inequality, it was refreshing to return after a second intermission to gypsy moths, Ja’ Malik’s joyous celebration of funk rockers LaBelle and their frequent collaborator Laura Nyro. A teeming cast of five men and five women, all in spangled masks, converged on the floor for “Met Him on a Sunday,” Nyro’s 1971 cover of a song introduced by The Shirelles thirteen years earlier, and “Come Into My Life,” introduced on LaBelle’s Chameleon album in 1976. “Gypsy Moths,” introduced on the same LaBelle album, paired the company into five couples Emily Porter with Kopecky, Harkins with Humberto Ramazinna, Shaina Wire with Josh Hall, Emerson Dayton with Preciado, and Barkley with Mouzon.

It wasn’t until the ensuing three songs that it became clear that Barkley and Mouzon were the alpha couple of Malik’s piece, for Barkley was obviously the lead in “The Wind” and Mouzon was unquestionably the alpha male in “Going on a Holiday,” both backed by the full cast. Neither of these ensemble segments was as special or memorable as Malik’s seething setting of “Been on a Train,” the whole stage cleared for a slithering Barkley-Mouzon pas de deux. “Desiree,” taken from Nyro’s 1971 Gonna Take a Miracle album was only slightly anticlimactic, a glittery showcase for the other four women, and “What Can I Do for You” was a stirring finale for the entire cast, so infectious that it roused rounds of rhythmic clapping from the audience. The ovation when the spectacularly dressed Malik joined the dancers onstage was even more raucous.

Originally published on 2/5 at CVNC.org

Charlotte Ballet’s 50th Is Luxuriously Long and Varied, Culminating in a Sizzling “Rite of Spring”

Review: Charlotte Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Celebration

By Perry Tannenbaum

ROS Rehearsal Photo

Sitting next to an audience member I’d never met before and conversing with her, thanks to the COVID vaccines and to our vaccination cards that had been scrupulously checked in the Belk Theater lobby, I could share her excitement in being back to see the Charlotte Ballet, out in public without pods or social distancing, and enjoying live performance in a real audience for the first time in nearly 19 months. Even though we were all masked – discarding social distancing seems to increase our tendency to take this precaution seriously – my wife Sue and I felt a distinct residue of wariness.

Yet my trepidations must be an infinitesimal fraction of the wariness anti-vaxxers maintain toward getting vaccinated and an infinitesimal fraction of the daily risks they’re willing to take. Trusting that the people sitting next to you and the people checking them are trustworthy was a calculated leap of faith, my first occasion of sitting next to a stranger since March 2020, so I could understand why the upper tiers at Belk Theater were empty for Charlotte Ballet’s 50th Anniversary Celebration, and why the orchestra and Grand Tiers weren’t teeming to capacity.

Gathering us together for their big celebration after two postponements, Ballet didn’t shrink from keeping us together, offering us a longer and more varied program than we’ve seen in many a season. More than that, they welcomed Christopher Warren-Green and the Charlotte Symphony to the pit (have we ever seen him down there before?) to perform a Philip Glass piece and brought four masked Symphony principals onstage to fuel a performance of Antonin Dvořák’s Piano Quintet. With the exception of Salvatore Aiello’s electrifying setting for Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, the program didn’t find Charlotte Ballet in a retrospective mood.

Christopher Stuart, the new Charlotte Ballet II program director, jumped into the fray first with a new piece, “Then, Now, Forever,” set to the live Glass. Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, whose work has been featured at Spoleto Festival USA on a couple of occasions dating back to 2009, made an edgier Charlotte debut with “A Picture of You Falling,” paired with the Stuart piece before the first of two intermissions. Framed by the two intervals, Val Caniparoli appeared in Charlotte for the first time with Ibsen’s House, interestingly set to the Dvořák. All of these choreographers were present for the celebration – except for Aiello, the former North Carolina Dance Theatre artistic director who died in 1995 at the age of 51.

TROS Young Warrior

The company itself, launching season 51, looked no less fresh and new, especially with etoile Sarah Hayes Harkins happily sidelined on maternity leave. No less than five dancers were taking their first steps as new members of Charlotte Ballet and Charlotte Ballet II, including two Isabellas, Franco and Bertellotti, who are time-sharing a role in the three performances of Ibsen’s House through Saturday. Meanwhile, a trio of seven-year veterans of the troupe; Sarah Lapointe, Raven Barkley, and Amelia Sturt-Dilley; are striding more to the forefront. Lapointe and Barkley struck me as the most arresting presences in Section 1 of the “Then, Now, Forever” suite. Tempo quickened noticeably for Section 2, with newcomers Franco and Emerson Dayton paired with Ben Ingel and Davis Preciado. Easing back to a languid midtempo Section 3, Lapointe poured out her newfound imperious confidence opposite Rees Launer, which made the fast pace of Section 4 that much celebratory, teeming with 10 dancers. Stuart’s choreographic style didn’t startlingly depart from classical models, so his costume design collaboration with Katherine Zywczyk, as well as the dancers, somewhat upstaged him. Backlighting and dramatically silhouetting the famously inert Belk Theater organ pipes, lighting designer Jeff Emory made them useful for the first time in their ignominious history.

Standing spotlights were the scenery for Pite’s “A Picture of You Falling,” surrounding Sturt-Dilley and Andrés Trezevant in a semi-circular formation as the tenuously connected couple performed to Owen Belton’s original 2008 music and Pite’s cold, emotion-free text. We are perhaps invited, without any cordiality, to identify with this brief deconstructed romance, first from Trezevant’s point of view as he faced himself and the repetitive emptiness of his life. Eventually, we escape from this spiral as Pite takes us to the moment where he literally bumps into Sturt-Dilley.

Flirtation and courtship do not figure on this island of light in Pite’s pitch-black universe, so when Trezevant is shown falling, the effect is from gravity rather than love – “This is you falling,” “This is you collapsing” – and his heart literally hits the floor rather than filling with passion. Sturt-Dilley seemed to take over the lead, drawing our empathy for a while, as the little chronicle climaxed at “The Place,” with a light hint that what’s happening, as the two are engaged in their pas de deux, isn’t happening to him. “This is how it happens” transitioned swiftly, without the luxury of regret, “to this is how it ends” after repeated, obsessive descriptions of the room, something like a Last Year in Marienbad video loop or some classically gloomy Ingmar Bergman. Repeated collapses followed, and the falling featured some slo-mo and freeze-frame touches reminiscent of The Matrix.

We haven’t seen any Ibsen from our local theatre companies in Charlotte since a lackluster production of A Doll’s House in 1999, so Caniparoli’s Ibsen’s House figured to be a bad mismatch with the Queen City’s theatre tastes, theatre history, and local theatre professionals outside UNC Charlotte, where they presumably remember that the Norwegian is revered as the father of modern drama. Caniparoli showcased five oppressed Victorian women, including the heroines from Ghosts, Lady from the Sea, Rosmersholm, and the title character of Hedda Gabler. Yet it would be irresponsible for me to recommend catching up with these scripts, for there was little from Dayton and Ingel that reminded me of feminist icon Nora Helmer, insensitive ingrate husband Torvald, and A Doll’s House – or anything at all from Lapointe as Hedda, Josh Hall as George Tesman, Sturt-Dilley as Mrs Alving, and Peter Mazuroski as her son Oswald that awakened memories of Gabler or Ghosts, the other Ibsen staples in Caniparoli’s gallery that I’ve seen. Dayton captured Nora’s early timidity beautifully and Lapointe had a steely resoluteness that was almost intimidating, yet we never found ourselves in the vicinity of the notorious endings of their dramas. Scenic and costume designer Sandra Woodall is best in evoking this strait-laced and corseted era, and Caniparoli excels brilliantly in choreographing the Dvořák, whose 1887 quintet was completed between the times that Ghosts and Hedda Gabler premiered.

Sarah Lapointe in TROS

Having already previewed The Rite of Spring, we need not dwell on the fire and fury of Lapointe as The Chosen One – other than to say that Lapointe didn’t disappoint and completely owned the sacrificial maiden’s every move (Sturt-Dilley dances the role on Friday and Lapointe returns Saturday). Lapointe upstaged and literally towered over everyone else in sight, but the clash between Ingel as the Old Chieftain and James Kopecky as the Young Warrior was primal, intensely physical, and thrilling. Presiding over everything with a shamanistic presence as the curtain went up was Nadine Barton as the Earth Figure, a grand coming out for her in her third year. About the only clear reminder we had all evening of concessions we’re still making to COVID was the absence of live winds, brass, and percussion blaring forth and flailing away at Stravinsky’s score in the orchestra pit. Representing the Salvatore Aiello Trust, curator Jerri Kumery brought the spirit of the choreographer into the hall, and the 17 dancers onstage kept the temperature of his work white-hot.

Hook, Tink, and the Croc All Chomp Scenery in Bonnefoux’s Merry “Peter Pan”

Review:  Peter Pan

By Perry Tannenbaum

Peter Pan 2

Swordfights and kidnapping are still part of the action in Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux’s scenario for Peter Pan, and the choreographer hasn’t stinted on the services of Flying by Foy when Peter takes Wendy and her sibs back and forth from Neverland. If you thought the musical version of James M. Barrie’s beloved fantasy injected a little hambone into the villainous Captain Hook, you’ll marvel at how completely this Charlotte Ballet production slathers him in it – with extra dollops divvied out to Tinker Bell and Hook’s menacing nemesis, The Croc.

Bonnefoux first unveiled his choreography in 2004, celebrating the centennial of Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow, and the current run at Knight Theater marks the third time the comedy has been revived since then. With a score that is top-heavy with Rossini overtures, the mood never grows somber enough for Tink to nobly drink Peter’s poisoned milk – or for Wendy to take an arrow from the Lost Boys on her Neverland arrival.

It’s more about dancing and fun, so I’m hoping pickets and protests won’t be organized because Hook cut Wendy free and danced with her after she was abducted to his pirate ship. That was not the first nor the last of the bizarre pairings and tableaus occasioned by Bonnefoux’s mischievous reshaping of Barrie’s characters. While still quite diaphanous and elegant as Tinker Bell, Sarah Hayes Harkins expanded on her jealousy toward Wendy to the point of pugnacity, also targeting Tiger Lily for her adorable aggression. Over and over, the Wendy-Peter-Tiger Lily pas-de-trois was disrupted by Harkins’ interventions and comical assaults. Making Tink more flirtatious chimed well with that profile, though we the audience bore the brunt of Harkins’ simpering.

As Bonnefoux shows us again and again, crocs also want to have more fun. It’s not just terrorizing Hook that delighted Jared Sutton as Crocodile (along with a half dozen Baby Crocodiles, students from the Charlotte Ballet Academy), he barged into the celebratory dance of Peter, Wendy, Tink, and Tiger Lily, joining their merry reel. Having stolen that scene, Sutton chomped down another with a solo display capped by a moonwalk across the downstage. Most heretical – and inspired – of all Bonnefoux’s innovations, when the heraldic trumpets sounded in the mighty “William Tell Overture,” the Croc got a hold of…

Nah, I shouldn’t give it away.

New set designs by Howard Jones and costume makeovers by A. Christina Giannini were commissioned for the 2013 relaunch of the Bonnefoux choreography. Maybe city fire marshals confiscated the bridge for the Baby Crocs to cross the orchestra pit, but otherwise, the new Jones sets still look fresh and new. I’m not at all sure Giannini hasn’t fussed some more with the costumes, for I no longer see the Croc as a green major domo, and Peter looks sufficiently bland and sporty to have done his clothes shopping at J.C. Penney.

The traditional foppery has vanished from Hook’s attire, so the pirate king now seems modeled after the “fantastical” oddness we associate with Petruchio in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Dancing without outerwear as Hook, Drew Grant still stood apart from his pirate crew, not an easy achievement when some are S&M females, crossing over from foppery to outright effeminacy to get the job done. For brash hambone outrageousness, Grant far outdistanced Harkins, vying with Sutton for top honors. One of the many ankelbiters in the audience was laughing uncontrollably at some of Grant’s opening night antics, a sure sign that he was on to something.

Jean Pierre Bonnefoux's Peter Pan_Elizabeth Truell and Peter Mazurowski_Photo by Taylor Jones_7936-2

The dramatic characters, while shamelessly upstaged, were beautifully danced. Josh Hall sparkled with innocent arrogance as Peter Pan, smilingly sure he was the envy of all, and Alessandra Ball James gracefully straddled the borderline between girlishness and pubescence as Wendy, projecting genuine wonder and joy in taking flight for the first time – of course, there was no lingering tedium from doing it over and over in rehearsals!

There was no ambiguity at all about the womanhood of Raven Barkley as Tiger Lily, charmingly shedding her petals before she danced her tropical solo. Discreetly, Bonnefoux and Giannini have adhered to political correctness, so we now have 18 Incas in Tiger Lily’s train instead of Native Americans. Unlike the Crocs and the Butterflies, none of the Incas are cute little children, another instance of Bonnefoux’s taste and wisdom.

The Incas and Sutton as the Croc are the only dancers in the show who are single-cast. All four of the matinees – and one of the remaining four evening performances – will be performed by a second cast. Part of the spectacle spills over into the Knight Theater lobby, where there is plenty of Pan, Hook, and Wendy swag on sale. My mom and I were obliged to halt in the lobby upon our arrival until a line of kids and parents got to experience their photo op in front of the stylish Charlotte Ballet background. You could pose for a camera holding various printed placards with appropriate Neverland quips and slogans.

I only had to explain – confirm, really – one aspect of the show to Mom, which takes me to the remaining comical character, Ben Ingel as Shadow. Ingel cavorts with Harkins’ Tink in the Darling children’s bedroom before Hall arrives as Peter, emerging from under one of the little brothers’ beds to shadow Tink before Peter claims him. Obviously, there’s a pre-history that would need to be explained to any child who isn’t already familiar with the story. I’m glad that Bonnefoux left this episode in his scenario, because for once it allows Wendy and Peter to be a part of the comedy.

Ball, officiously sewing as Wendy, and Hall, squirming and feeling the needle as Peter, made a full three-course meal of the ceremony, and the audience caught up by the time Wendy’s needlework was done. A vanishing act by Ingel and a well-aimed spotlight by lighting designer Jennifer Propst underscored what it had all been about, and of course, Propst was also up to the dramatic moment we all remember from childhood: when the big windows of the Darlings’ bedroom magically spread open and Peter Pan flew into our imaginations for the first time, never to leave.

After a Disconcerting Alarm, Charlotte Ballet’s “Most Incredible Thing” Runs Like Clockwork

Review:  The Most Incredible Thing

By  Perry Tannenbaum

After watching the YouTube video of choreographer Javier de Frutos’ adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Most Incredible Thing in its original 2011 Sadler’s Wells production, I had to wonder how much of this dazzling spectacle Charlotte Ballet artistic director Hope Muir could deliver at Knight Theater. Although villainous Karl the Destroyer was danced by Ivan Putrov in London with devastating panache, and Clemmie Sveaas as the Princess – offered along with half the kingdom by her father, The King, to the creator of the most incredible thing – was a marvel of spasmodic anguish, I had little doubt that their American counterparts, Anson Zwingelberg and Chelsea Dumas, would shine as brightly. My doubts centered on Knight Theater itself.

Incorporating so many movable set pieces by Katrina Lindsay (who also designed costumes), studded with challenging video installations to accommodate film and animation by Tal Rosner, The Most Incredible Thing would test the Knight’s capabilities beyond anything I’d witnessed there since the facility opened in 2009, including The Aluminum Show, Momix, Avenue Q, and Peter and the Starcatcher. To be honest, The Most Incredible Thing is more collaborative and ambitious than most full-length ballets or even new operas, for it has so much more baked into it than the de Frutos choreography and an original score by the Pet Shop Boys, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. Film and animation have to be delivered – onto screens and scrims – with even more pinpoint accuracy than the dancing.

Ominously, the opening night performance and the ensuing Saturday matinee were canceled “due to mechanical failure.” Announcements appeared at the Charlotte Ballet website, on the company’s Twitter account, and on their Facebook page – the latter time-stamped at 5:07pm on the evening of the performance. So until I took my seat at the Saturday evening performance, I really hadn’t known that I was attending the opening night of the American premiere of The Most Incredible Thing. An usher delivered the news instead of Charlotte Ballet’s PR rep. There was a bit more tension and drama to this performance than I had anticipated!

As it turned out, the most significant modifications that I noticed in Act One appeared to result from deliberate changes by de Frutos to his choreography and Zwingelberg’s approach to Karl. In contrast with Putrov’s charismatic take on Karl, reminding me of vintage Baryshnikov and Lucas Steele’s recent Broadway portrayal of Prince Anatol in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Zwingelberg was more angular and Machiavellian, his eyes blackened to emphasize his menace. Yet perhaps nodding to the fact that his piece now occupies a slot in Charlotte Ballet’s season normally filled by such fairy fluff as Cinderella and Peter Pan, de Frutos has softened Karl somewhat so that he no longer brutalizes his henchmen before his abortive attempt to seduce The Princess.

Instead of a talking TV emcee entering with a hand-held microphone, the Charlotte Ballet version has Sarah Lapointe mutely dancing the role in sync with the Emcee’s prerecorded patter. The entire staging of The King’s contest is radically altered, with silhouetted contestants projected on a centerstage scrim and new video supplanting some of the original views of the judges (carried over from the Sadler’s Wells version in its quaint silent film black-and-white). Instead of hundreds of hopefuls vying for The Princess’s hand, the cosmic number of contestants rises well past 10 billion as the video fades out.

All of these alterations work remarkably well, but what brought us more grandly to intermission was the decision to delay the break until after Leo the Creator, already backed and beloved by The Princess, demonstrates his miraculous watch. As the watchmaker, Josh Hall abandons the tortured artist mien of the London protagonist in favor of a more wholesome interpretation – the miraculous watch springs to life from his hands as a phenomenal wonder even to himself rather than as an agonizing pang of giving birth. And the Rosner video, interspersed with live dancing, is an undeniable wonder.

Rising and falling while constantly displaying the steady flow of animations, the huge clock proves to be an electronic video screen rather than a cloth projection screen, maybe the largest circular TV that I’ve ever seen, including the movie version of The Wizard of Oz. Blowing away at least half of Andersen’s concept of what each digit on the clock represents, de Frutos and Rosner make it a retrospective of all human history, beginning with Adam as 1 and Eve as 2. Lindsay gets into the act here with skimpier costumes for Adam and Eve that paradoxically supply their full names instead of their initials, and when we reach 4 o’clock, she abets de Frutos’s altered choreography by labeling the dancers’ slacks with the names of the four seasons, adding clarity to the previously abstract episode.

Even as de Frutos contrives to make this Charlotte Ballet version more family-friendly, the watchmaker’s demo grows majestically in power during its second half. Echoing the “Big Spender” number from Sweet Charity, the depiction of the Seven Deadly Sins, also newly labeled, featured seven sultry female dancers – some of whom were actually men in red wigs – with white-gloved “Fosse hands.” Eight was a play on the musical octave that not everyone will catch onto, and 9 o’clock signaled the presentation of prenatal video, referencing the months of pregnancy.

Ten was the last borrowing from Andersen, presenting the Ten Commandments, with ten dancers splayed around Moses shifting their formations as an overhead view of them flashed on the clockface. From there, we blasted off to video of Apollo 11 and man’s first walk on the moon. With a Zarathustra-like swell in the musical score, 12 climaxed Leo’s demonstration by summing it all up – with some 300 names of great artists flashing onto the screen to underscore the overall theme of creation.

Emerging from Knight Theater for the single intermission (three acts have been reconfigured into two), I had no doubt that what I’d already seen far eclipsed the technical sophistication of any show previously presented at that venue. In fact, Matthew Bourne’s ballyhooed adaptation of The Red Shoes, which toured Charlotte back in October at Belk Theater, seemed puny in its technical ambitions by comparison and clumsy in its storytelling. Everything ran with nearly absolute precision at Knight Theater, so it was reasonable to assume that all “mechanical failure” had been conquered. Nor were there any indications that last-minute alterations were necessitated anywhere in Act Two, when Leo’s happily-ever-after victory in the contest was dramatically detoured – but not ultimately destroyed – by Karl the Destroyer. Karl ambushes the lovebirds backstage, seizes and destroys Leo’s miraculous watch, and the contest judges, consulting their rules, have to declare that destroying the most incredible thing is more prizeworthy than creating it.

When the kingdom falls into a desperate gloom after this twist of events, the lighting motif by designer Lucy Carter is still a lurid red, but most of the bloody elements of the video depicting the devastation have been discreetly muted or removed. On the other hand, when the Three Muses who helped inspire the marvelous clock return to rebuild it, they now have supersized scissors to cut the villain into bits and spring Leo from prison. All of this magic and good fortune – with encore video on the big clock – is crowned with a joyous wedding celebration. The regimented citizens who had previously danced robotically back and forth to their places at a long table now tossed confetti with equal precision at the wedding. On Saturday, that was the only hazardous scene in the entire show, for Hall nearly slipped on the confetti afterwards when he trotted out to take his bows.

The battle between divine creativity and brute force plays out beautifully in this edgy extravaganza, the Tennant-Lowe score nearly as nuanced as the de Frutos choreography. In her starring role, Dumas mostly dances hostile pas de deuxs with Karl or her father, relaxing and showing her potential for joy only intermittently with Leo. Her black wedding with Karl is the deepest thing in the piece, for it is here that de Frutos taps into the heart of his scenario, linking the robotic citizens of the despotic kingdom with the incredible watch that might ultimately liberate them. In this black wedding, there are moments when the women circle around the men like arms of a clock, Karl towering above them all, and there’s a sequence when we see couples dancing in place, moving around each other like wooden brides and grooms on a medieval town clock tolling the hour. We were not only seeing a somber variant on the townspeople’s precision movement but a foreshadowing of the miraculous return of Leo’s clock.

The supporting roles were all superbly danced, including Sarah Lapointe as Emcee, Drew Grant as Adam, and Raven Barkley as Eve. Anyone seeing Charlotte Ballet for the first time will not be surprised to learn that each of the Three Muses – Amelia Sturt-Dilley as Concentration, Sarah Hayes Harkins as Love, and Alessandra Ball James as Courage – has danced leading roles for the company in the past. As the kingdom’s drones, Karl’s henchmen, and numerous other cameos, 18 other members of Charlotte Ballet and Charlotte Ballet II also populate the stage. Almost as impressive in this complex collaboration, they frequently act as stagehands, setting up, disassembling, or merely reconfiguring scenery pieces and scrims so that this sensory assault never drifts out of sync with the Pet Shop Boys’ prerecorded soundtrack. The Most Incredible Thing may be the most hyped title you’ll ever encounter, but this Charlotte Ballet production often made it seem like a casual description. Despite the alarm of its sudden opening night cancellation, it was running like clockwork the following evening, far more vivid and moving in live performance than on YouTube.

©2018 – CVNC.org

Charlotte Ballet’s New $1 Million Nut Is Everything It Was Cracked Up to Be

Dance Review :  Nutcracker

By Perry Tannenbaum

Many of the people who jammed into Belk Theater on Saturday afternoon, nearly filling the top balcony to the rafters, were wondering the same thing as I was. Just how much can $1 million do to improve Charlotte Ballet’s already stellar production of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker? There weren’t any gaping holes that needed to be filled in when it came to the live music. Charlotte Symphony has played the ballet score beautifully ever since Salvatore Aiello transplanted the dance troupe, originally known as North Carolina Dance Theatre, from Winston-Salem in 1990.

Many of the musicians – and many of the orchestra’s principals – who accompanied Aiello’s setting for Nutcracker in the early years have played on through the many iterations of Jean-Pierre Boonefoux’s choreography, which premiered in 2006. Every one of the players works up the same zest for the music as the year before. Nor can money buy a much finer array of dancers to fill the stage with agility and grace. Calling the dancers in Charlotte Ballet and Charlotte Ballet II – not to mention the various levels of apprentices, trainees, and students from the company’s Academy – the best in North Carolina may actually be an understatement.

Of course, the unprecedented gift had garnered plenty of positive publicity for the donors, the McColl family of Bank of America fame, and the worthy recipients. Unless you had completely ignored the Charlotte Observer for the past three months, you already knew that the McColl makeover would bring new Nutcracker costumes and new scenery to the Belk stage – and to lavishly renovated Gaillard Center in Charleston, where the Christmas classic will sojourn on December 10 and 11 before returning to Charlotte on December 13-23 for an additional 13 performances. I probably wasn’t alone in bringing a show-me attitude to the unusual matinee premiere, for the costumes, the scenery, and the spectacle of Bonnefoux’s Nutcracker, incrementally upgraded in its early years, had already proven to be quite formidable in their elegance and wit.

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Holly Hynes’s new set of costume designs gobbled up most of the prepublicity. Taking her inspiration from the Belle Epoque (1871-1914), Hynes and a team of 300 dressmakers in 15 states created 208 new costumes, each one costing as much as $6000. As she confessed in one of the two infomercials I’ve seen, Hynes often had to rely on a bunch of polyester to offset the extravagance of the dancers’ silks. The new scenery by Alain Vaës obviously took its inspiration from Bonnefoux’s traditional Nutcracker scenario and Steven Rubin’s set designs, seeming to depart more radically from Rubin’s concepts as the story moved from the Stahlbaums’ Christmas party to Clara’s dreamy fantasies, developing a whole new motif of whimsy – lifesize cutouts! – along the way.

Vaës wasn’t working with a paltry budget, either. A whole new trim, teeming with red, covered the entire arc of the proscenium. The backlit scrim of the Staulbaums’ town, more brightly lit by the lamplight gleaming through the windows of the homes than by the moonlight, greeted us like the frontispiece of a storybook.

In its nocturnal grayness, the first exterior view of the Staulbaum home was very similar to Rubin’s, but we were looking from a greater distance, seeing all that can be seen instead of merely the front façade. There was a little more humor in the gradual reveal of the magnificent interior, for the first of the new cutouts, a housemaid, was wheeled out to centerstage to greet the guests. Onto its outstretched arms, the parade of guests flung coats, stoles, and scarves until this cunning portable closet was rolled away.

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Imagery in the new Vaës scenic designs is bolder, more calculated to appear colossal, and the designer’s drawings evoked for me two of the great masterworks of the Belle Epoque, War and Peace and Alice in Wonderland. Probably by sheer accident, the bold muscularity and the florid curves in some of the scenery reminded me of Fritz Eichenberg’s memorable illustrations for the Heritage edition of Tolstoy’s epic. But the evocation of Alice was quite intentional. After the party, when Clara nodded off, the Mouse King entered the scene on a broken teacup for his royal battle with the Nutcracker. Once Clara assisted her champion in his victory, the set changed briefly to a surreal and magical toyland, where the head of Clara’s doll was as large as the castle. Very Alice.

The new scenery also brings fresh emphasis to numerous arrivals. Drosselmeyer’s amazing gifts, Clara’s Toy Doll and her brother Fritz’s Toy Soldier, arrive on carts where each of them is flanked by two lifesize cutouts of the same toy. Instead of lifting her massive skirts to reveal her periwigged Marzipan brood, Mother Ginger arrived on the second floor of her own gingerbread house, opening the front doors to let them out. But aside from the Mouse King’s teacup and the flying balloon-boat that carries Clara off to the Land of Sweets – a galleon now large enough to transport two honeymooning couples – the most significant entrance was created for Herr Drosselmeyer. He arrived at the Stahlbaum soirée in his own clock tower!

Mark Diamond may hold onto his annual stint as Drosselmeyer even after he’s forced to arrive clutching a walker, for he still revels in reminding us with his comical antics that he himself is program director of Charlotte Ballet II and, more importantly, one of the company’s potent line of resident choreographers. The Drosselmeyer shtick always looks like Diamond is doing his own thing, altering the routine every year – maybe every performance.

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The new clock draws the spotlight in Mary Louise Geiger’s new lighting design when Tchaikovsky’s score tolls the midnight hour chez Stahlbaum. Using his new cutouts, Bonnefoux completely alters this segment in his choreography. In past years, spotlights flashed on a different costumed kid each time the bell tolled, unpredictably scanning the full width of the stage. Now there was simply a single-file parade of various cutouts, their manipulators hidden behind them. As we approached the final chiming, we had our first glimpse of the lifesize girl doll that would enlarge to supernatural Alice-size in the yet-unseen scenery.

Geiger also teamed up with Hynes on some of the new magic. Like the opening cityscape, Vaës’s new Land of Sweets builds on Rubin’s previous concept of candy canes and gumdrops by putting us at a greater distance and increasing its scale. We could now see a huge skylight window in the rooftop dome opening up on a starry evening sky. At floor level below, the view also opens up to the outdoors, directing our gaze toward the horizon. Initially, there was a marked difference between the two views: it was still twilight on the horizon while it was already evening above.

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In this unflattering light, we had our first glimpse of the newly minted backup dancers for the Coffee segment. Their bright red skirts, contrasting sharply with their dark blouses, seemed garish under the bright light between the little Marzipan and Candy Cane groups. But Geiger would dramatically lower the lights for Raven Barkley and Ben Ingel, so it was now (briefly) nighttime both on the horizon and above when they performed their sinuous Coffee pas de deux – and the perfection of the six backup dancers’ glowing red skirts in this dimmed light redeemed them from the first impressions they had made. Their pink capes also made a difference.

In little ways and in big ways, Bonnefoux and his design team have heightened the wow factor in staging their spectacle. Just for the Tea segment in Act 2, a Chinese dragon drops down from the flyloft for a visit, and the Stahlbaums’ Christmas tree no longer stops it miraculous growth when its piney peak hits the ceiling. Now when Drosselmeyer cast his spell, that growth continued on the upstage backdrop until the entire upstage wall was filled with what we imagined was a wee portion of the fabulously gigantic tree. You need not worry that such awesome stagecraft at all diminishes the exploits of the dancers. Aided by their revamped costumes, Charlotte Ballet still measured up to the superabundance surrounding them.

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Rosie Morrison as Clara and Clay Houston as Fritz may be the most personable Stahlbaum kids I’ve seen. The precision and perfection of Sarah Hayes Harkins as the Sugar Plum Fairy will surely inspire little ballerinas who see Nutcracker for the first time. Harkins hits every beat with her elegant movements exactly on the nose, and her new partner, Drew Grant, is the picture of chivalry as her Cavalier, though the rookie needs to loosen up a bit. Chelsea Dumas and Ben Ingel were a similarly ideal couple at the premiere as the Snow Queen and King, and Alessandra Ball James was luminous in her musicality as Rose in the “Waltz of the Flowers.” Below tea green tops, Rose’s dozen dancing flowers sported frilly three-tiered skirts, each tier a different tint of pink or fuchsia. Even a child could recognize the stems and petals of the flowers for what they were.

Except for Fritz, who is merely doublecast, there’s a dizzying rotation of four dancers for each of the major roles I just named. It would take an astronomer to predict when, where, and if this exact alignment will occur again, so let me merely add the names of the other dancers who will figure in the dizzying mix: Jamie Dee Clifton, Elizabeth Truell, and Sarah Lapointe among the ladies, James Kopecky and Juwan Alston among the gentlemen.

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The athleticism of the Charlotte Ballet men did shine through during the Act 2 procession of divertissements, counterbalancing the dominance of the ballerinas. Newcomer Peter Mazurowski sparkled in the Gopak section and, under that dragon, Humberto Ramazzina from the II troupe served charmingly – and deferentially – in Tea. Both of these men are in a rotation of three men who will dance their roles. So will Ryo Suzuki, whom I wasn’t seeing for the first time as Candy Cane. I don’t think I’ve seen Ryo’s match in performing Candy’s joyously asymmetrical leaps, but I’m sure parents and children of all ages will be satisfied when Suzuki rotates to Tea and Gopak.