Dance Reviews

Jul 6, 2001 - Ballet Hispanico's Brilliance Ligths Up Reno's Artown Festival

By Jack Neal

Famed for its incandescent illumination of Hispanic culture through dance, Ballet Hispanico adorned Reno's month-long (July 2001) Artown Festival with five days of appearances culminating in two major concert performances Thursday and Friday (7/5 & 6/2001). Both presentations were at Reno's Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts.

What is evident and impressive at first glance is the streamlined look, exceptional choreography and stellar dance talent Tina Ramirez, the company's Artistic Director, has put on stage for the pleasure of serious and not-so-serious fans of dance.

The troupe of twelve are a perfectly matched set that meshes into an impeccably drilled ensemble for each of the program's three quite different ballets. Svelte, in spectacular shape and oozing with athletic skills and artistic sensitivity the members of the troupe are all stars who deserve to have their names up in lights on everyone's list of dance noteables. Pedro Ruiz, Hector Montero, Eric Rivera, Jae-Min Joo, Nicole Corea, Jennifer DePalo, Irene Hogarth, Solomon Bafana Matea, Natalie Alonso, Sonia Melendez, Yarden Ronen, Li-Yin Chen are exceptional individually and stunning collectively. Each imparts a radiance of expression that inspires.

As a curtainraiser "Club Havana" is more strictly ballroom than strictly ballet. And that's its charm. Utilizing some of the most popular elements of sophisticated ballroom dance from contemporary Latin culture - the mambo, cha cha cha, bolero, rhumba and conga - "Club Havana" is a dazzler. The flair and swirl of costume designer Emilio Sosa's elegant dresses, the sensuous body language of the dancers, and the exuberant movement choreographer Pedro Ruiz has designed as a visual expression of the music made for a presentation that was as thrilling as it was stylish.

"Eyes of the Soul" was created for Ballet Hispanico by Barcelona choreographer Ramon Oller to honor the great Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo on the 100th anniversary of Rodrigo's birth. Using selections from four of the composer's hauntingly beautiful scores and the blunt fact of Rodrigo's blindness (from a rare disease at age three), Oller has fashioned a ballet of yearning, poignancy and lyricism.

Oller's plot commences with a woman circling around a seated blind man. The young woman is intensely devoted to and protective of the young man and circles him in an attempt to will him out of his dispair. He begins to move ever so slowly dancing at first while still seated. When he finally rises entirely from the chair and reaches out for and touches his partner a most eloquent and expressive adagio pas de deux is the result. Pedro Ruiz was the blind man. Jennifer DePalo was his consort. Both were superb as were the other dancers who inhabit the world of the sighted in the piece and provide a subtle counterpoint that heightens the pathos of the young man's dark world.

"Ritmo Y Ruido," choreographed by Ann Reinking, was the program's final ballet. The stamp of Reinking's close associationship with the legendary Bob Fosse was strikingly evident in the posturing, snappy and sexy body movements and tricky hand and footwork that made "Ritmo Y Ruido" a bravura and quite sensational way to end.

But then, everything about Ballet Hispanico is sensational. Applause and cheers to all who make the company click with such verve and panache. Boo, however, to the Pioneer Center's air conditioning system which keeps the theater mostly hot during the summer and mostly cold during the winter. Now, isn't that a new concept?