supercheesegirl

Been meaning to post about the ballet last Sunday. I figure, if I've got season tickets and I'm going to every show, I might as well write some sort of critique for each.

Company B
Sunday October 14, 2007, 2PM

There were actually three "acts" to this show, and Company B was the third act.

First was Concerto Barocco. The music was Bach's "Concerto in D minor for Two Violins". Choreography was George Balanchine. I know he's I guess a really big name in ballet, but I thought it was pretty boring. It was mostly chicks in little white outfits doing ballet: no sets, and very little costuming. I guess the intention is to keep the focus on the actual dancing, but I don't know much about ballet so I just wasn't that interested. It was pleasant, certainly.

Second was As It's Going. This was more interesting. Music by Dmitri Shostakovich, with the title from an Anna Akhmatova poem. This piece was more dramatic in terms of not only the dancing, but also the costuming and lighting. I noticed that the dancers' bodies looked very cold and hard, between their movements and the way they were lit, while in the first piece they looked a lot softer and more fluid. (I said that to Mom, and she said I should be like a critic or something.) Overall, I thought this piece was really neat at the time, but it was also pretty forgettable because I don't really remember too much about it. Oh, this piece was choreographed by Matthew Neenan, a member of the PA Ballet corps who is retiring from dance to do choreography exclusively. Sunday seemed to be his final performance. Looking at the program now, I think he was actually the choreographer of the Carmina Burana we saw last March, which I absolutely loved.

Last was Company B. This show was really cool! All the songs were the original recordings by the Andrews Sisters from the 1940s--songs like "Pennsylvania Polka", "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!", and of course "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)". The costumes were 40s-inspired skirts and pants and shirts that still allowed for a lot of movement. It was really neat to see them doing those 1940s dances--a ballet dancer is what she is, you know, and she's always going to move like a ballet dancer no matter what kind of dance she's doing. So it was neat to see them on the one hand confining themselves to, say, the jitterbug, but on the other hand pushing the boundaries of the style and incorporating ballet stuff into it. There was a lot of playfulness in the music and the choreography--the "Oh Johnny" song involved all the women chasing after one guy, and "Rum and Coca-Cola" had all the men in the cast drooling over one girl doing an almost flamenco-y dance. Very playful and fun. But then there were songs that were clearly about someone going off to war who wasn't going to come home, and those were interpreted really beautifully--I remember "I Can Dream, Can't I" and "There Will Never Be Another You" as being really moving. The lights went mostly dark for those, and the key players danced the love song while the other cast men did a slow soldier march behind a screen at the rear of the stage. At first I thought that was kind of corny, but the song was so heartfelt and the dancing so beautifully done that the whole effect was really moving.

Overall, a really good performance, and I really really enjoyed it. Our seats were great - this show was at the Merriam Theater, and most of the other ballets are at the Academy of Music, so we don't know what our seats there will be like, but at least we know we'll have good seats for the other show next spring that's at the Merriam. First balcony, right in the middle, in row J, which apparently is actually row I and which was very confusing. Also, one bag of swedish fish costs $3. Next time I will have to pack our own.