BalletX: Ochoa, Del Cuore and Neenan (2nd review)

BalletX is on a roll. Now in its fifth year, the company has assembled a consistently talented cadre of strong modern ballet dancers, commissioning new work and tapping selections from a growing repertoire. The troupe is fortunate to have found a home at the Wilma Theatre, perhaps the best local venue to see dance: an intimate audience space facing a sufficiently expansive and in-depth stage.

The BalletX 2010 fall season program began with Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Still@Life, a sparklingly playful piece that premiered two years ago. Ochoa, who lives in the Netherlands, created a work in which the dance and the accompanying Bach music joyfully cascade together. Still@Life uses— and abuses— apples, a still-life icon that reinforces the playfulness of the movement but occasionally distracts as a tiresome prop.

Strong ensemble work characterized Still@Life, especially when the dancers were tightly grouped and appeared as a single animated organism. The duet and trio partnering had appealing moments of weight sharing, lifts and tosses of bodies. Through their visible expressions, the men embodied the joyful humor in the piece somewhat better than the women did.

The expert lighting of Drew Billiau and Martha Chamberlain's costumes added vibrancy to the dance. Chamberlain's black and then pastel-hued outfits made use of gender-bending skirts for all. Where is that Rocky dance award for Chamberlain's consistently right-on dance costume creations?

Del Cuore's daunting challenge

Filling a last-minute gap for this program, Ballet X recruited one of its outstanding dancers, Tobin Del Cuore, to create a new work. Del Cuore conceived of Beside Myself as a piece about consciousness within and outside of the self— a daunting challenge for a young artist. Although Beside Myself used an appealingly eclectic assortment of music, its inventive movement was limited; the characters, enacting various states of consciousness, lacked sufficient clarity or interest.

The piece came alive for me in just one quartet segment, well into the work, when discordant, individualized movement was keyed to a pitched, vocal soundscape that resolved as one dancer (Laura Feig) energetically wrote upon an invisible wall. All the dancers (Anitra N. Keegan, Colby Damon, Justin Flores and Feig) demonstrated their outstanding talents and commitment to a work that nevertheless failed to realize its lofty ambition.

Neenan the resourceful

Ballet X's repertoire includes excellent dances choreographed by its co-director Matthew Neenan over the past decade. This program concluded with Neenan's Frequencies, which premiered in 2001 with his predecessor company, the Phrenic New Ballet.

Although Frequencies is based on the Biblical story of Jacob, I preferred to view it apart from its stated narrative, since Neenan's work offers a broad, pleasurable palette of movement, rhythms and music. It doesn't get stuck in a movement phrase or a milked gesture.

Neenan is a dynamic, resourceful choreographer who maintains our attention, awakening our senses and preparing us for surprise and change. He may employ quirky gestures, or wringing funky un-balletic movements from his otherwise graceful dancers.

In the last segment, three characters don small wings like those of angels, only to move as if they were not angels but birds, while stationary dancers watch from the edges of the proscenium arch, as if they were repoussoir figures in a painting, positioned at the boundaries to increase the sense of depth.

Frequencies remains a satisfying work worth revisiting. It was doubly satisfying to see it as a member of a Saturday matinee audience that filled the Wilma, a rarity for any local dance troupe.♦


To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.