Dance Reviews

Jul 25, 2009 - The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet dazzles a large Reno-is-Artown audience at the Grand Sierra

By Jack Neal

Artistic director Tom Mossbrucker brought his splendid Aspen Santa Fe Ballet to Reno Friday night (7/24/09) for an auspicious Nevada debut in the Grand Theater at the Grand Sierra Resort.

How interesting that this small dance troupe, just eleven dancers, should fill the world’s largest in-door stage with vibrant, expansive excursions into the wonderful world of contemporary movement.

This beautiful collection of dancers were radiant in three luminous dance experiences: Twyla Tharp’s classic “Sweet Fields,” Jorma Elo’s exuberant visualization of portions of Jean Sibelius’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor called “1st Flash,” and “Noir Blanc” an interplanetary cartoon by Moses Pendelton, who can lay claim to being the dance world’s wizard of extraterrestrial flights of fancy.

In “Sweet Fields,” set to Hymns by William Billings in the Shaker Tradition, Tharp’s precise vocabulary of movement radiate the music’s innate spirituality. Todd Elmer’s lighting designs of shadows and light, in contrast to Norma Kamali’s wispy white costumes, bring clarity to Tharp’s vision of the joyfulness of the human spirit in relationship to other imagined glories of nature. In a somber moment, four men carry a man’s body overhead, then distractions ensue from elsewhere on stage. The body comes close to being dropped, but is caringly passed down only to regain life anew via – perhaps - resurrection.

Tharp’s “Sweet Fields” takes the somber poignancy and joy of hymns (albeit, played somewhat too loudly here, as was all the music all evening long), then blends her sublime and instinctive creativity with the exceptional talents of ASFB’s dancers to make something electric, fresh and quite alive.

“1st Flash” is a revelatory work by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo. Elo uses the Sibelius Violin Concerto’s mix of modernity and romanticism as a springboard for merciless spasms and tics of movement set against the work’s Adagio movement, then its much more frenetic Allegro movement. It’s all very muscular, expressive, modern abstract - and quite hypnotic. Jordan Tuinman’s simple, affecting lighting and Joke Visser’s no-nonsense costumes provide “1st Flash” its clean-as-a-whistle ambiance without one hint of distraction.

Pendelton’s “Noir Blanc,” a black-light excursion into space, combines lots of angular posturing emboldened with dance, with an overlay of illusions, scrim projections and a universe full of weird manifestations. The black-and-white costumes based on Pendelton’s conceptions and designed by Phoebe Katzin are clever and allow for gravity-defying movement that launch dancers into the smooth-sailing freedom of space. Todd Elmer’s lucid lighting is basic to the success of the piece. Add to all those ingredients an accompanying musical collage of strange and attractive electronic sounds, and “Noir Blanc” is at once unusual dance, exciting theater and popular with audiences.

The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet is very much an ensemble company. As such it’s difficult to highlight individual dancers - as excellent as each one is. Credit dancers Lauren Alzamora, William Cannon, Eric Chase, Sam Chittenden, Katie Dehler, Seth DelGrasso, Katherine Eberle, Samantha Klanac, Nolan DeMarco McGahan, Emily Proctor and Stephen Straub for giving ASFB the legs and all the other necessary skills that help make this company an incredible addition to the world’s finest dance companies.