**** Recommended Ballet Chicago, celebrating its 30th Anniversary, presented Balanchine & Beyond at the Harris Theatre recently. By the way, although they’ve been around for 30 years, this is another ‘new to me’ company. The program included two Balanchine masterpieces, Serenade and Rubies as well as two pieces by Resident Choreographer Ted Seymour, his Dánzon! and a new children’s piece. 3 1/2 Spotlights
I thought both of the Balanchine pieces and Dázone! were perfectly executed. The children’s piece, on the other hand, was like attending my niece’s dance recital, with me, sitting there clenching my jaw, as all the parents in the audience were oohing over their darlings. There were just too many moving parts.
The first piece, Serenade, choreographed by George Balanchine to Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48, is a truly classical piece in the Bolshoi tradition. Wearing long, subtly shaded blue-green costumes, sixteen dancers simultaneously made the tiniest of graceful gestures. As the music continued, their movements became larger. As they began moving around the stage, they were joined by four male dancers. In a series of expressive pas de deux, pas de trois and pas de quatres, they moved through a day, ending with everyone facing the sunset.
Danzon!, choregraphed by Resident Choreographer Ted Seymour to Danzon #2 by Arturo Márquez, is a lively and fun piece which combines classical ballet with Latin ballroom dances like tango and samba. It features three female dancers wearing flirty black skirts trimmed with multi-colored stripes, and two male dancers all in black. It was totally fun to watch!
Ted Seymour also choreographed a children’s ballet called To Each Other, performed to music by an American composter, William Grant Still. It began with a huge group of dancers moving in concentric circles. As the circle broke, the spotlight turned to tiny girls in salmon colored costumes who were cute as they could be. Then the spotlight turned to a group of tween girls wearing teal colored costumes who were better dancers. Finally, a group of older girls demonstrated their skills en pointe. There a few male dancers wearing black mixed in. After each group had danced, everyone returned to the stage for a final group dance.
The pièce de résistance of the evening was Rubies, from Balanchine’s full-length abstract ballet, Jewels, set to Stravinsky’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra. Wearing jeweled red costumes with white tights, the dancers sparkled on the stage. Rubies featured an exquisite ballerina flanked by four male dancers. The corps were constantly on and off stage.
The Ballet Chicago dancers are: Alyssa Kantner, Brianna Moose, Mia Thompson, Ruby Sindelar and Brooklyn Winter. Kompagni B Dancers are: Claire Adrian, Sophie Anderson, Niclas Bech, Emil Eisted Hansen, Lukas Helt, Sylvester Jenson, Phillip Katsnelson, Wilma Li, Sarah Pedersen, Mads-Cornelius Ray and Herman Schultze.
Joel Hall Youth Dance Company: Lalah Brown Charles Coulter, Liza DeWhite, Niyah Ferris, Mariah Hackett, Talia Howard, Ruby Levin, Julia Multer, Bri Nourie, Georgia Powless-Martindale, Solveigh Preus, Lucy Shapiro, Sneha Shirhattikar and Darriea Wedgeworth.