If Ballet Vero Beach artistic director Adam Schnell aimed to educate his audience last weekend, he succeeded.
Not so much in the sense of exposing dance lovers to a different vernacular. He can assume in a town like Vero, and a house filled with Ballet Vero Beach supporters, people weren’t necessarily expecting tutus or tap shoes.
What was unexpected, and broadening, was to see modern dance in the making. The young California-based company, L.A. Contemporary Dance has spent two weeks in Vero teaching modern dance to more than 40 auditioned students at Riverside Theatre’s summer dance intensive, the Riverside Dance Festival. Wrapping up the session, the Los Angeles troupe presented a program as part of Ballet Vero’s Beach second season, and it was filled with raw edged energy, breaking down stereotypes of beauty and body type and delivering on strong emotion.
The most light-hearted piece in the performance led the show. “I Ran,” choreographed by Kate Hutter, the company’s artistic director, was a choppy tale of teenage mood swings, with five dancers alternating between cheerleader-like conformity and tortured individuality. Dressed in school uniform-like costumes, they careened from perkiness to anguish, from parody (at one point they applauded themselves) to meaningful performance. The transitions were not always successful, with the audience unsure of when to take the dance seriously.
“I Ran”‘s final scene of slow-motion high-fives and victory signs, however, did capture the pent-up potential of youth, and it was a moment of introduction to the rest of the night’s dance which showed exactly that.
The evening’s dancers were a varied bunch, ranging from the powerful and polished Genevieve Carson, an Alaska native slated to become the company’s new artistic director in 2016, to four apprentices from the Riverside Dance Festival.
Carson partnered with company member Nicholas Heitzeberg in “Unravel,” a duet that premiered at the Kennedy Center two years ago and was as serene as “I Ran” was silly. The same piece was performed in Vero last spring at Ballet Vero Beach’s premier, and had the audience in thrall. Executed just as beautifully, it had to overcome the confusion left in the audience’s minds by “I Ran.”
It was nevertheless a strong lead-in to the explosive “Identity Theft” with the full company and the dance festival apprentices. Inspired by Hutter’s travels to the Middle East, the scene swirls as would a crowded marketplace to a sound track that included the music of the region. Hutter captured the culture’s esthetic while conveying an interdependence among the dancers. Particularly eye-catching was Camilo Rodriguez, Ballet Vero Beach’s ballet master, who nimbly partnered with both male and female dancers throughout.
“Catch and Release” opened with a row of neatly folded clothes set on the stage’s apron. The curtain rose to eight dancers in black tanks and briefs. Brilliantly lit, their musculature became part of their costume, particularly when it was masked beneath shirts, slacks and suit coats, pulled on in careful choreography. As props, the clothes are wearying reminders of daily routine. Generic in shape and in neutral colors, they strip the dancers of gender and unite them in mechanical movements. As the dance progresses, the very act of stripping off the garments becomes dance, as the company collectively undoes buttons and pulls off sleeves, first for themselves and eventually for others. On the body, the suits turned electric, lightning bolts as dancers contracted to thunderous music; piled on the stage floor, the clothes were enfeebled, detritus on a bleak set.
It was interesting to watch the audience reaction when the curtain fell the final time. Like the harshness of the house lights, the evening’s performance seemed to awaken more than entrance. It challenged Vero’s budding audience for dance to remain open to new movements, new ideas, new sounds – not all of it entirely pleasant, but nearly all of it interesting.
With more than 300 advance tickets sold, Ballet Vero Beach is breaking even at the least, Snell said the day before the performance, the first of the company’s second season. It is also breaking ground, exploiting Schnell’s connections in the dance world to test the waters here.
In its two prior performances, one a fund-raiser last summer, and this past spring’s company premier, modern dance was a clear favorite, drawing cheers from both young dance students in the audience and older followers of the tradition. Friday night, L.A. Contemporary Dance did not ignite the Riverside audience with the same fire – even though “Unravel” was a repeat performance from the company’s guest appearance last spring.
That program was made up mostly of classical ballet choreographed by Schnell and danced by members of Ballet Nebraska; Schnell and Rodriguez have classical ballet backgrounds.
Last weekend’s performances were a co-production of Riverside Theatre and the Riverside Dance Festival; both Schnell and Rodriguez teach ballet at Riverside Children’s Theatre, though the ballet company is a separate 501©3 nonprofit entity.
When Ballet Vero Beach performs in January and March of next year, it will have to fill more seats over three performances to pay for the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center rental, as well as travel for the dancers coming from Nebraska and elsewhere. To do that, Schnell is banking on ballet, but not entirely with a straight face: January 16 and 17, Ballet Vero Beach will perform not only Balanchine’s “Valse Fantaisie” and Schnell’s “Finch Concerto” but “Go For Barocco,” famed choreographer Peter Anastos’ ballet en travesti.
And March 27 and 28, the company stages an all-ballet program including “Paquita,” the classic work of Russian choreographer Marius Petipa; and by way of contrast, the pas de deux from “Flames of Paris,” the folk-dance derived ballet of Vasily Vainonen. It will also feature “Debussy Suite” by Samuel Kurkjian, who taught both Schnell and Hutter as teenagers at Massachusetts’ Walnut Hill School for the Arts, where the two first met.