Theater Review
Summer School Performance of Kristine's Academy of Ballet
Only Performance 22.07.07
I'm in Victoria, Canada, for my vacation this summer. And my very first Ballet Studio had a three week Summer School, with assorted work shops and courses. And the devoted group of dancers, who were going there every day were then put into a hour and a half program which they learned, (or created,) over the summer, and which was performed today. And this I went to see.
(I shall have to write more about my Ballet Studio, and what it's director, Christine, meant to me, and I think many others. And
I write that here.)
I'm a bit overly sleepy to remember clearly the order right now, so I'll skip from piece to piece, relating what comes to mind. Paul. Paul Destruper comes to mind. He's a professional dancer, (who has only now retired.) He's been puttering around with Carmina Burana, and making his choreography to this piece of music. He danced two sections of it, with two... different dancers; One is a powerful, flowing, elegant young modern dancer, (for lack of names, she's the "Red Haired Dancer." The other is the "Ballerina." She started truly late in her life for a ballet dancer, and has now been studying in Alberta Ballet. She was on pointe, and Red Hair was in bare feet. They each had one duet with Paul, and they were each expressing love. What made it then interesting was how different these two expressions of love were. It was the same costumes, the same choreographer, with the same style, and quite similar music. -Yet they expressed quite different dynamics between a man and a woman.
Those three were the most professional in the school. (They looked the cleanest in their steps.) Red Head Modern Girl had choreographed a couple pieces as well. The solo she'd done for herself was introduced very briefly, and it was explained that the stool in on the stage "is the studio stool." I took this to mean, particularly once the solo started, that it was about... the teacher's/choreographers isolation. They have to think about the steps that will come, and about studio policy, and about how much work the students can handle. And they have to be so strong; They can not show any weakness, or uncertainty, or vulnerability. It's a bit like the saying, "it's lonely at the top." Her dance expressed... uncertainty, fear, discontent, determination, disappointment in self, and dissatisfaction with self, (or if not with self, then with the situation of one's life.) And all of this was combined with great and absolute solitude. -The thing that made it yet more poignant, was the little Ballet student, sitting down, in point shoes, poking a head around the curtain behind to watch her. As a teacher, she was having a whole little life crisis which she could share with no one, -but which one devoted, quiet little ballerina saw anyhow. It was quite a touching scene. (Only slightly diminished when I found out it meant nothing about heading a school, and that the Ballerina wasn't meant to be watching.)
Another piece which caught my attention was the product of six hours of choreographic workshops with five of the students. In these six hours they found individual movements, put them into sequences, combined the sequences, and made an entire piece out of it. And they all looked between 15 and 17 years old. This, plus my personal reflections at the time, combined with the choreography to give the piece clear meaning for me; It was all about the passage from childhood to being an adult. They were all of just that age, and their movements were... somehow just "in between." They looked at times young, and carefree. And at others... aged, and full of worries, responsibilities, and maturity. They all seemed to have their burdens to carry, of their recently lost innocence. They all seemed to be in the middle of the struggle to redefine themselves. Anyhow, that's what the piece was to me.
Kristine tried something new for this performance: She chose three of her dancers, and taught each one separately six sequences of steps. She rehearsed each of them separately, putting different music on each time, and letting them improvise, using only material from those six sequences. And the performance was the first time that they all came together. It was the first time they heard the music. And the only thing which was set, was that every time a certain signal came in the music, (it came four or five times,) they were to go through sequence number One. The dancers didn't even know how long it would be, and they were all surprised to learn, afterwards, that it was 19 minutes of improvisation that they'd just done. I found that piece very interesting, and was so curious to see how things went, and fit together. (It felt to me, to go on for only seven or eight minutes.)
I can think of nothing else to say just now. So that's my review.