Two Ochoa world premieres highlight BalletX program
By Merilyn Jackson
For The Philadelphia Inquirer Published: July 22, 2011
Two impressive world premieres by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa set BalletX's summer season ablaze at the Wilma Theater on Wednesday evening.
Ochoa has choreographed for the company before, and Laura Feig and Adam Hundt danced her Bare with charming tenderness. In ordinary underwear, they languidly spill over each other, entwining and uncoupling as if drowsy with morning love.
Duets perpetually serve as studies of coupledom, and Amy Seiwert's It's Not a Cry explores the couple over the long haul. To Jeff Buckley's cover of Leonard Cohen's hallowed anthem to love gone bitter, "Hallelujah," Chloe Horne and Barry Kerollis appear in separate spotlights. If Kerollis pulls Horne along in a slide, she convulses in mid-glide and twists off in the other direction. It seems they'll never make it work. Yet by the final iteration of "Hallelujah," the two are coiled together, bathed in a single pool of light.
A Soliloquy Among Many, by Roger C. Jeffrey, opened the evening with costumes by Loris Doran that evoked a medieval theme - monk-brown skirts, flat suede boots. The group sections looked crowded at times, but Horne, as the lead, drew me in with her lissome solo.
En Dedans, a short film by Gabrielle Lamb, served as an entr'acte. Voice-overs reveal the individual thoughts of the company's dancers in rehearsal, making apparent the hardships, pain, and doubt artists endure to bring us the pleasure of their company.
But it was Ochoa's morbidly sad, yet freakishly beautiful Castrati that ended the program with an unexpected concept - a study of the "last seven castrati" who endured being maimed for life in order to acquire voices that could range over three octaves.
Along with Colby Damon, Jesse Sani, and Hundt, Ochoa smartly used four female dancers whose long, smooth limbs resemble those developed by boys after prepubescent castration.
Avid Arik Herman's golden masks and marquisette and faux brocade costumes recalled the foppery and excess of the era. Music by Friedrich Handel and David van Bouwel wrapped this gorgeous lot in the high-pitched voice that sounds as dismembered as the body. Various tics and exaggeratedly grotesque gestures expressed how damaged these performers were. Damon's overly courteous bows drew laughter. Hundt, extracting his voice from his yawning mouth as if it were a long silken scarf, drew pity. Tara Keating, lying leopard-like off to the side, surveyed the audience as if all this were our fault.
BalletX Summer Series
By Janet Anderson
For Broad Street Review Published: July 26,2011
BalletX’s summer program demonstrated just how accomplished this spunky company has become in a short time. Whether they’re creating their own work or bringing in intriguing experimenters from around the world, the Ballet Xers rarely produce anything that isn’t totally professional and usually excitingly new.
The BalletX formula: Compose seriously, dance joyfully
BalletX presented its season finale at Wilma with a dazzling program of new works from young choreographers who came from all over the U.S. and Europe with choreography that was seriously composed and joyfully danced.
This Summer Series program opened with A Soliloquy Among Many for nine dancers, created by Roger C. Jeffrey, a member of the New York Artists Collective, and performed to a music collage ranging from Questo Cazzo Voglio (eight lusty songs) to the Michael Nyman Band with Marie Angel. Dancers wore very little— white pants and what looked like white bandages or cloth wrapped around their bodies, giving them the appearance of abstract beings sailing around the stage.
A mysterious quartet of dancers showed up in long brown skirts and boots, mixing with the white-wrapped ensemble. Chloe Horne stood out in her featured moment, carried around the stage by the men; she managed to be elegantly agile even when she was turned upside down. The musical accompaniment was discordant and filled with odd sounds— perfect for this dance abstraction.
Undulating duet
The mood shifted with Bare, a duet for Laura Feig and Adam Hundt, who wrapped around each other beneath a single light hanging overhead. This was an undulating duet, accompanied by the layered sounds of Tazarine and Deportation/ Igusazu Gustavo Santaolalla. It was also the first of two new works from Belgium’s Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, who has contributed to the Xers’ repertoire in the past as well as to the Pennsylvania Ballet.
After this exquisite beginning, the troupe shifted into a different mode. A film, En Dedans (a ballet term that means “inward”), created by dancer Gabrielle Lamb, explored dreams that percolate through dancers’ minds.
This sepia film sequence was clever and funny, with dancers talking about the good and bad aspects of their profession. One guy says that he became interested in ballet after seeing The Karate Kid: “I wanted to kick like that, and I was told to look into ballet.” Another dancer explains, “There are so many ways you can use your body in dance; it’s a balance between strength and power.”
Changing relationships
The San Francisco-based choreographer Amy Seiwert contributed It’s Not a Cry, an exploration of the way relationships change with ups and downs. Chloe Horne, again excellent, was partnered by Barry Kerollis, who was equally good while dancing to Hallelujah, Jeffrey Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen.
The program ended with Castrati, a tour de force contribution from Annabelle Lopez Ochoa— a rare blend of theater and dance that explored the Baroque practice of castrating male singers in order to attain the desired soprano voice. The music included works by Handel; and others as well as Castrati, an original composition from the Belgian composer David van Bouwel. The musical accompaniment was assembled in such a way that it became an undercurrent suggesting something was amiss.
Seven dancers wearing gold masks, feathers and shimmery gold costumes performed steps and movements suggesting court dances of the period but performed in a looser 21st-Century manner. Soprano voices vibrated with bars of light hanging overhead. The dancers opened their mouths, but no sounds came out. It was a beautiful yet choreographically simple dance that integrated court dance and rows of interchanging figures with modern moves that seemed elegantly off-kilter. The piece contained moments of unexpected drama, as when the lights overhead dropped down and bathed the stage in light.
Three more years
This program demonstrated just how accomplished BalletX has become over a fairly short time period. This is the outfit that, during this spring’s Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, performed Proliferation of the Imagination, with a woman becoming a man and leaving the guy to raise the kids with all its attendant cleverness. Whether the Ballet Xers create their own work or bring in the most intriguing experimenters from around the world, they rarely produce anything that isn’t totally professional and usually excitingly new.
This program marked the end of this spunky company’s contracted three-year residency at the Wilma. Happily, the Wilma has re-upped the BalletXers for another three years.
For now, the company’s co-artistic directors, Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan, say they’re content to showcase the work of other experiments. “Being directors,” Cox explains, “our passion is finding new work.” Boy, do they find it.
BalletX Summer Series
By Jim Rutter
For Broad Street Review Published: July 26, 2011
Where Roger Jeffrey employed dance to explore dense metaphors concerning individuals and crowds, Amy Seiwert displayed dance at its most powerful for distilling the essence of remembered pain.
Night of the dense metaphors
Biologists and computer scientists alike employ a value-neutral conception that describes viruses as a type of information. These organisms approach new territory, anchor themselves to another life form and transmit a code that then programs the host to replicate that information again and again. Cells may or may not resist this process.
In A Soliloquy Among Many, the choreographer Roger C. Jeffrey takes this concept as metaphor to show the converse: that information can transform communities as it spreads virally. He weaves this idea around the Promethean story of an outsider (Chloe Horne) who is segregated from society by the force of her voice.
The fashion designer Loris Diran wound Horne’s body in white helical stripes, a stark contrast to the brown, full-body-length dresses and pants worn by the other dancers. In appearance and movement, Horne represents the individual— something dangerous to a tribe, because she could infect them with her ideas.
As the women dance in a ritual series of patterns, both genders thrust Horne away or throw her to the ground. The entire group forms a barricade of bodies against Horne’s every attempt at integration. In one of Soliloquy’s most powerful moments, the tide of humanity repels her advances and her face caves into desperate dejection.
Crowd vs. individual
But slowly, she begins to infect them. Here, Jeffrey’s metaphor resolves and gains power. As Horne finds opportunity to dance with isolated members of the mob— including a powerful duet with Barry Kerollis—the group slowly sheds its attire to reveal the proud, bold stripes that match Horne’s appearance. What springs the transformation— man’s desire for the outsider? Pure lust?— remains unclear and doesn’t matter; what matters is Jeffrey’s metaphor of crowd-vs.-individual.
Few Prometheus stories (David Mamet’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People is a rare exception) capture the full destructive force of a mob. Jeffrey too avoids the obvious in portraying such hostility.
But when the group finally adopts the appearance and action of Horne’s outsider, the dancers reach out to draw her still wary and lingering outsider back into the fold. Now they move like a sinister and revolting mass that swarms around her. Arms and legs reach out like spandrels in the opposite of an act of acceptance, appearing instead like a hostile mass of bodies, accreting one more layer of pus to their disease and decay.
Memory of shared pain
Where Jeffrey employed dance to explore dense metaphors, Amy Seiwert displayed dance at its most powerful for distilling human experience to its essence. Her It’s Not a Cry opens on Horne and Kerollis standing apart, revealed to the audience in the flash a lightning strike. As Jeff Buckley’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” begins to play, Drew Billiau’s lighting reveals each dancer standing in a separate pool of light before reuniting in the memory of a shared past.
Martha Chamberlain dressed the pair in the remnants of a formal night out: Horne wears Kerollis’ tuxedo jacket over a pair of pink panties while he keeps the pants and nothing else. To describe the next eight minutes— the length of Buckley’s song— as a type of emotional torture would debase both torture and Seiwert’s work.
Every relationship trudges through its moments of pain (why such moments so often occur on celebratory evenings out continues to baffle me). Whatever particulars spark the fight that Seiwert’s choreography presents seem irrelevant in comparison to the anguish she condenses into her short work. Kerollis pushes Horne away, only to rip her back against his chest by the lapels of her coat. Later, she drapes the jacket around his legs like a snare, to trip him to the floor.
Scratching at old wounds
Horne appeared in BalletX’s Fall Series last November, but this time— in both Seiwert’s and Jeffrey’s pieces— her performances marked her as the best female addition the company has yet made to its continually changing corps. She drenched It’s Not a Cry with a mature pathos that visceralized the shattered longing over lost love.
This sort of subject matter—a fight that maybe led to a breakup— could easily have been trivialized. Or a romantic comedy movie would have expanded eight minutes of heartache into 80. Seiwert instead brackets her piece in a framework of memory that lets us play this shared experience as if we’re putting Buckley’s song on repeat at night, perched in a chair with a glass of wine and a photo album. Seiwert understands that we scratch at old wounds or trace over the outline of a scar to remind ourselves of the hurt we suffered long after it’s past.
Castration conundrum
BalletX capped its 2011 Summer Series with Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Castrati, a work that explores— thematically, at least— the torn open bodies of adult male singers who traded their testicles for the eternal youth of a beautiful voice. Ochoa’s dancers— stripped of gender in Aviad Arik Herman’s spectacular shimmering gold costumes— amble across the stage in painful gaits. They peck, startle and congregate together like birds with clipped wings.
As fluorescent lights shone down from overhead, David van Bouwel’s original compositions blended industrial sounds of droning beeps and thumping tones into passages of opera arias and choral music. The music reflects the mechanizing of sound produced by surgical distortion. Unfortunately, Ochoa provides little exploration of her subject matter.
Castrati, after all, could view the damage inflicted on their bodies as a perfecting purification of their voices; any anguish they suffered only resulted in greater glory for God— or at least for the pope, God’s man here on Earth. Why, then, do BalletX’s dancers— or dancers anywhere— willingly undergo the same physical degradation? Unlike the illumination in Jeffrey’s and Seiwert’s works, Ochoa provides no answers.
Dancers, actors, and musicians unite - to hilarious effect
by Merilyn Jackson
For The Inquirer Published: April 15, 2011
Weather-wise, spring is returning to Philadelphia in fits and starts. But inside the Wilma Theater Wednesday night the stage bloomed with potted flowers, campy song, loopy dance, and ballooning boobies. In Proliferation of the Imagination, a featured event of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, those balloons actually popped - because the production is, after all, based on Guillaume Apollinaire's 1917 play The Mammaries of Tirésias. And this first-ever collaboration between the Wilma Theater and BalletX, its resident dance company, milks the show to a mirthful froth.
Walter Bilderback, the Wilma's dramaturg and literary director, and choreographer Matthew Neenan, who codirects BalletX with Christine Cox, pulled together a crack team of actors, dancers, musicians, stage and costume designers to pull off this contemporary version of Apollinaire's gender-bending, proto-feminist, antiwar play after which he coined the term surréalisme.
Mary McCool plays Therese/Tirésias, who refuses to bear children and grows a beard, while Luigi Sottile plays The Husband, in black-and-white-striped bustle skirt and heels. BalletX member Tara Keating, looking oh-so-sexy in a bowler hat and pinstriped leggings, shadows him. And dancer Matthew Prescott, in curls, ruffles, and bustier to match The Husband's, shadows Therese as she becomes more and more masculine.
All of this seems to be taking place in Zanzibar.
Dressed in costumer Maiko Matsushima's trench coats, Anitra Keegan and Jaime Lennon duel with cardboard pistols, kill each other, then rise from the dead. They wear only one pointe shoe each, pushing off on the bare foot for their relevés and falling forward on them. Neenan's use of these pas tombe preparations for a fall imbued the choreography with a good dose of comedic uncertainty and imbalance, especially when the dancer ultimately remained perpendicular.
The Husband, who uproariously manages to "bear" 40,050 children in a single night, spawns a nightmare child danced by Colby Damon. He jumps out of a hamper in a crumpled diaper rapping and parodying hip-hop dance, then soon pulls suspenders up over his shoulders and smokes a cigar. This leads to a trio dancing a rap-inflected salsa and then to a conga line leading the entire assemblage offstage.
New Zealand-based composer Rosie Langabeer wove her atmospheric music in with great humor and played accordion and keyboard on stage along with Josh Machiz (double bass) and Jesse Sparhawk (harp). Steven Dufala designed the whimsical set and Drew Billiau the lighting for this thoroughly enjoyable foray into the era of surrealism that flowed freely after Dadaism and World War I.
BalletX And The Wilma Theater Team Up To Present Proliferation of the Imagination
by Linda Haas
GPTMC/ Uwishunu.com Published: April 15, 2011
Part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA), Proliferation of the Imagination takes the stage at the Wilma Theater through April 24.
The collaboration between the Wilma and BalletX, the theater’s resident modern ballet troupe, is the realization of a many years-old goal of both distinctive arts organizations.
So how did it turn out? The performance will have you at sex reversal. The story goes a little something like this: Wife decides to be a man; for revenge, husband decides to be a woman and, obviously, pops out 40,049 babies. It’s just your run-of-the-mill family entertainment.
Inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les mamelles de Tíresias, Proliferation embraces the surreal movement that reigned in Paris during the early 20th century, per its PIFA involvement, without alienating less serious theater-goers.
Proliferation of the Imagination combines outrageous stories, folk-like music, modern ballet, hilarious banter and a good ol’ fashioned rapping baby. Need we say more?
BalletX and Wilma re-imagine Apollinaire
by Jonathan M. Stein
Broad Street Review Published: April 15, 2011
BalletX and the Wilma Theater team up for a riotous paean to the creative spirit and imagination based on a 1916 work by the daddy of surrealism, Guillaume Apollinaire.
BalletX/Wilma Theater: Proliferation of the Imagination. Choreographed by Matthew Neenan, based on Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les mamelles de Tiresias; Walter Bilderback, director. Through April 24, 2011 at the Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St. (at Spruce).
So you want surrealism?
Paris audiences may have rioted during the opening of the Stravinsky-Ballets Russes Rite of Spring in 1913, but a century later a Philadelphia audience was treated to a gloriously playful onstage riot for the opening of the BalletX production of Proliferation of the Imagination. If there were an award for the freshest, most original offering of the current Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, it might well go to this inspired, cabaret ballet-theater adapted from a seminal play by the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), known as the “impresario of the avant-garde.”
Fittingly, Apollinaire coined the term “surrealism” for the play on which this BalletX/Wilma joint production is based. Proliferation was written while Apollinaire was a soldier at the front in 1916, and first performed while he was back on leave. It’s a paean to the creative spirit and the imagination, cut loose from all its bourgeois moorings.
Joy amid war
The play begins with a gently mocking, poetic monologue by The Director (Luigi Sottile), who describes trench warfare to the audience. As he speaks, dancers enter along the Wilma’s side aisles, garbed with saucy and complex head and body bandages that both evoke frightful wounds and tease with their abundance of bare skin— the first appearance of Maiko Matsushima’s knock-out costumes. The dancers perform a Brechtian danse macabre as they join The Director on stage. Even given this reference to the grim realities of armed conflict, it’s hard to imagine how Apollinaire could create such a joyous theater piece in the midst of the “war to end all wars.”
You know you’re in for a roller coaster ride when Therese (Mary McCool), dressed in a fanciful, sculptural costume by Matsushima that sports outlandish, floral removable boobies, decides to toss off her Husband (Sottile). Right before your eyes they switch genders by adapting their garments and by donning new ones. Hilariously, Therese transforms into Tiresias as she relinquishes mammarial balloons.
Gender swap
Like her colleague Sottile, McCool is an actor who moves with ease among a cadre of topnotch dancers. Her Shadow is played by Matthew Prescott, a comically gifted, expressive male dancer who plays her in drag. As the central characters enact their gender swap, the dancing male Shadow also makes a transformation from the womanly Therese to the male Tiresias. The Husband’s Shadow is danced by the always impressive Tara Keating.
Having been defeated in my attempt to logically understand all that I saw on stage, I sat back to enjoy a variety of personages traversing the fluid continuum of gender identity and to accept an omni-sexual, omni-gendered universe. Just bring it on, Apollinaire’s world-view suggests.
Throughout, we are spirited along by a most eclectic array of music composed and played by the impressive New Zealander Rosie Langabeer, and accompanied by Joshua Machiz and Jesse Sparhawk. Evoking a Kurt Weillian air of joyful sadness, Langabeer taps into the fertile sounds of the early 20th-Century and composes music that sounds both vintage and contemporary— no mean accomplishment.
Don’t ask why
The plot, such as it is, advances with two gambler friends in noirish get-ups— Presto and Lacouf (Jaime Lennon and Anitra Keegan)— who pull off entrancing duets as if their precise, sharpened leg movements and body attitudes mirrored a pair of obsessed players at a poker table. This scene ends in duels over the location of the play (as the Brecht-Weill “Alabama Song” says, “Please don’t ask why.”).
The elegantly dancing Policeman (Gabrielle Lamb) falls in love with the Husband, the male actor now costumed in ruffles with a prominent tattooed shoulder. The inanimate springs alive when the Husband speaks to a friendly Kiosk (yes a Kiosk), a wonderfully inventive puppet-like construction designed by the multidisciplinary artist/set designer Steven Dufala. It is manned, so to speak, by the versatile dancer Colby Damon, who controls the Kiosk’s one hand, which grabs butts and cops feels when it can.
A husband gives birth
Rosie Langabeer’s music artfully carries us through this absurdist romp. Midway, as the musicians appear on stage to offer what sounds like an Eric Satie interlude, we begin to hear sounds of crying babies that gradually interrupt this music. After first checking out the audience to see if someone had brought offspring along, I soon learned that the Husband had indeed re-written the laws of nature behind the unfolding stage curtain.
The Husband demonstrates a birth for us: Out pops the Son (Damon), cum diaper, suspenders and cigar, belting out a rap song that gets dad and friends dancing to the beat. Tiresias/Therese returns to reconcile with the Husband with a refrain of “It can be fun to switch— just stay aware of it.” And off all go on a Conga line to a Latin beat.
Geometry amid chaos
Mathew Neenan, Ballet X’s choreographer, and Walter Bilderback, the Wilma dramaturg and literary manger, have captured the spirit of Apollinaire’s original play with a highly talented crew of dancers, actors and gifted visual, costume and music artists. Proliferation creates synergies among its performers as Ballet’s highly trained ballet and modern dancers inject formal geometries of movement (with Cubist allusions) into the jumbled chaos of the narratives, while also doubling as actors by way of their facial expressions and physical clowning.
The actors, Mary McCool and Luigi Sottile, who have shone on stage in past Wilma theater productions, were especially versatile in their narrative delivery, spirited movement and expressive singing, and were often indistinguishable from their dancerly co-performers.
Ballet X, the Wilma and their collaborators took a risky leap into venturesome, original art making here, where the mainstream of Festival performances have pursued more tried and true paths of work that they might normally present. With this grand success, they’ve lit up a few stars up there for Apollinaire.
The Surreality Of Popping Balloon-Breasts At The Wilma
Plus Wanamaker in Paris at the Arden
by Aaron Mettey
Philadelphia Magazine Published: April 15, 2011
The Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts—the city’s three-week centennial celebration of Parisian artistic expression—is in full swing. There are hundreds of events. Not only can you catch the lighting of the Eiffel Tower in the Kimmel lobby every night and take trapeze lessons from Fly City, you can also eat from a menu at a local Philly restaurant that was developed with a French chef.
Some things defy explanation—especially, a dance/theater/music piece based on a play written by the man, Guillaume Apollinaire, who coined the word “surreal.” So in Wilma and Ballet X’s Proliferation of the Imagination, you have: a woman changing her sex (by popping her balloon-breasts), a baby smoking a cigar, a dancer wearing a giant mouth mask, a man giving birth to thousands of children (in one afternoon), a duel, and a lot of groping.
I frequently had no idea what was going on. But it didn’t matter; I enjoyed every moment of this unique performance. (Looking around, the enraptured audience was filled with similar, slightly confused smiles). These dancers, actors, and musicians give everything they have for 60 minutes. They commit to every move, note and word, regardless of the ridiculousness. The vivacity of their performances was infectious.
The music and choreography are joyful, energetic and odd. Set designer Steven Dufala, costume designer Maiko Matsushima and lighting designer Drew Billiau create a dada/surrealistic world. Stage director Walter Bilderback creates an organized madness within this world. (I do wish some stage directions felt a little more natural, a little more spontaneous.)
Like Dada and Surrealism, this performance will not be to everyone’s liking. But if you are able to forget convention, you’ll find a blissful work of staggering oddness.
A Proliferation of the Absurd
by Lindsay Warner
Arts and Culture Blog Published: April 23, 2011
“Above all, theater must not be realistic,” the narrator intones during the prologue of the BalletX/Wilma Theatre collaboration Proliferation of the Imagination.
Consider yourself duly warned.
What unfolds is a joyful, absurd, funny and utterly ludicrous take on Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tirésius), whose plot, as described in the prologue, is as “simple as a periscope.”
Be warned in that respect, too. A dramatic non sequitur in execution, Proliferation of the Imagination follows no set rules of cause and effect. It revels in the execution, but, true to Surrealist edicts, exists to further the goals of the movement, rather than to present a holistic production (remember that Apollinaire first coined the term “Surrealism” in the preface of Les Mamelles de Tirésias).
However, in this adaptation by BalletX’s Matthew Neenan and the Wilma’s Walter Bilderback, the concept of performance as an artifact of the Surrealist movement backfires, as the performance trumps the agenda. BalletX — joyful, kinetic and dynamic — absorbs added elements of dialogue, vocals and a three-piece band and magnifies the effect threefold. The production uses dance shadows for Thérèse/Tirésias and the Husband (Mary McCool and Luigi Sottile, both delightfully animated), and the shadows (Tara Keating and Matthew Prescott) further enhance an already lively script.
A standoff between two gamblers (Anitra Keegan and Gabrielle Lamb) is danced in half-pointe (each dancer wears only one pointe shoe), and the appearance of Colby Damon as a whirling dervish of a rapping baby modernizes the 1917-era original, although it retains much of its original Surrealist aura.
Proliferation does little to showcase either McCool and Sottile’s acting skills or BalletX’s great artistic prowess, but as an exploration into the deepest levels of absurdity and fun, it does quite nicely.
The Sweetest Fruit
by Janet Anderson
Philadelphia City Paper
With a fantastic troupe, an influx — finally — of foundation money and three years as the Wilma Theater's resident dance company, BalletX has morphed from a local startup to an institution. With eight outstanding dancers from all over the country, everyone's a star, so co-founders/co-artistic directors Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox have plenty to be proud of.
Opening their 2010-11 season debut last week was Still@Life, a lively, lovely work choreographed in 2008 by Netherlands-based Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, whose inspiration came from Renaissance paintings and Michelangelo's sculpture. Bach and Von Wassenaer music accompanied the full company as they moved freely, stopping suddenly either alone or in groups, assuming newly formed shapes. Apples placed across the stage were taken and held by each dancer. Assuming still positions with many arms and legs intersected, the troupe became an assemblage. The apples linked them to still life, while the tangled bodies suggested a marble Renaissance frieze. Nibbling on the fruit, they romped off stage, tossing the cores in their wake.
Originally a local choreographer was slotted to create a world première for the company's fall show, but it wasn't ready in time. Neenan asked BalletX dancer/choreographer Tobin del Cuore to give his piece Beside Myself a go. And boy, did he go. Del Cuore set two women and two men moving in a beam of light; the women entered in the light while the men slithered around in the dark, and eventually the dancers broke off into two male-female couples, pulling the curtains together to end a uniquely stirring piece.
Neenan's Frequencies, which premièred in 2001, was both the finale and the evening's highlight. Based on the biblical story of Jacob, this piece had everything — great music by Will Gregory, Money Park, Jump Little Children and Pete Wyer included — stirred together by Neenan's fantastic choreographic imagination. Jacob climbed the ladder to heaven (and swings out over the audience), and wing-flapping angels appeared. Suddenly the stage went black and — pow — the show was over. Wildly imaginative, totally zonkers, always beautifully performed — this was BalletX at its finest.
BalletX is on a Roll
by Jonathan M. Stein
Broad Street Review
BalletX is on a roll. Now in its fifth year, the company has assembled a consistently talented cadre of strong modern ballet dancers, commissioning new work and tapping selections from a growing repertoire. The troupe is fortunate to have found a home at the Wilma Theatre, perhaps the best local venue to see dance: an intimate audience space facing a sufficiently expansive and in-depth stage.
The BalletX 2010 fall season program began with Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Still@Life, a sparklingly playful piece that premiered two years ago. Ochoa, who lives in the Netherlands, created a work in which the dance and the accompanying Bach music joyfully cascade together. Still@Life uses— and abuses— apples, a still-life icon that reinforces the playfulness of the movement but occasionally distracts as a tiresome prop.
Strong ensemble work characterized Still@Life, especially when the dancers were tightly grouped and appeared as a single animated organism. The duet and trio partnering had appealing moments of weight sharing, lifts and tosses of bodies. Through their visible expressions, the men embodied the joyful humor in the piece somewhat better than the women did.
The expert lighting of Drew Billiau and Martha Chamberlain’s costumes added vibrancy to the dance. Chamberlain’s black and then pastel-hued outfits made use of gender-bending skirts for all. Where is that Rocky dance award for Chamberlain’s consistently right-on dance costume creations?
Del Cuore’s daunting challenge
Filling a last-minute gap for this program, Ballet X recruited one of its outstanding dancers, Tobin Del Cuore, to create a new work. Del Cuore conceived of Beside Myself as a piece about consciousness within and outside of the self— a daunting challenge for a young artist. Although Beside Myself used an appealingly eclectic assortment of music, its inventive movement was limited; the characters, enacting various states of consciousness, lacked sufficient clarity or interest.
The piece came alive for me in just one quartet segment, well into the work, when discordant, individualized movement was keyed to a pitched, vocal soundscape that resolved as one dancer (Laura Feig) energetically wrote upon an invisible wall. All the dancers (Anitra N. Keegan, Colby Damon, Justin Flores and Feig) demonstrated their outstanding talents and commitment to a work that nevertheless failed to realize its lofty ambition.
Neenan the resourceful
Ballet X’s repertoire includes excellent dances choreographed by its co-director Matthew Neenan over the past decade. This program concluded with Neenan’s Frequencies, which premiered in 2001 with his predecessor company, the Phrenic New Ballet.
Although Frequencies is based on the Biblical story of Jacob, I preferred to view it apart from its stated narrative, since Neenan’s work offers a broad, pleasurable palette of movement, rhythms and music. It doesn’t get stuck in a movement phrase or a milked gesture.
Neenan is a dynamic, resourceful choreographer who maintains our attention, awakening our senses and preparing us for surprise and change. He may employ quirky gestures, or wringing funky un-balletic movements from his otherwise graceful dancers.
In the last segment, three characters don small wings like those of angels, only to move as if they were not angels but birds, while stationary dancers watch from the edges of the proscenium arch, as if they were repoussoir figures in a painting, positioned at the boundaries to increase the sense of depth.
Frequencies remains a satisfying work worth revisiting. It was doubly satisfying to see it as a member of a Saturday matinee audience that filled the Wilma, a rarity for any local dance troupe.
Don’t Miss BalletX’s Fall Series At The Wilma Theater Through This Sunday
by Sarah Thiebaud
Uwishunu.com/GPTCM blog
Emerging with passion and intensity, BalletX’s Fall Series 2010 launched this week with a world premiere and two revival performances at the Wilma Theater.
“Still@Life” choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa accentuates the beauty of still life, highlighting Michelangelo’s career as a sculptor and his completion of the Sistine Chapel. The dance revives religious paintings with an explosion of color and fruit, and the energy is contagious.
Tobin Del Cuore, a filmmaker, dancer and choreographer, introduced “Beside Myself,” a world premiere inspired by consciousness and the complexities of human nature. A captivating performance combining hip-hop beats and soulful rhythms creates a metaphoric journey through darkness and light. Cuore’s piece evokes strong emotions and a powerful awareness of our human existence.
Matthew Neenan’s “Frequencies” retells the Biblical story of Jacob with graceful lifts and a surprise twist in special effects. The combination of jovial moves and heavenly lighting makes this a truly enchanting piece.
BalletX’s unique performances definitely live up to their reputation, with exceptionally engaging dancers and their limitless endurance and ability. The Fall Series is a must-see!
Catch these performances this weekend only, through Sunday November 21st.
Wilma Theater's BalletX opens strong, gracefully
by Merilyn Jackson
For The Inquirer Published: Jul. 23, 2010
No matter how great the choreography, without the right dancers to breathe life into it, a dance can go flat as a souffle when the oven door is opened too soon.
No worries at the Wilma Theater Wednesday night when BalletX opened its summer run. All 10 of the company's current lineup whipped themselves to great heights and sustained excellence.
Guest choreographer Matthew Prescott set his airy opening number Journey of the Day (a world premiere) to Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer's Appalachian Journey.
The sensual Tara Keating has been with the company since it began five years ago, but missed the company's spring run due to injury. It was good to see her back doing little happy dances en pointe and being silly with Laura Feig and Jennifer Goodman in a girly gossipfest. Kevin Yee-Chan and Colby Damon traded twirls and cheery jumps to an Irish-inflected section of the music, ending in a contact-improv duet. The exuberant bluegrass-redux dance closed with all seven dancers crossing arms over shoulders, their backs to the audience and spinning off like tops.
For the other world premiere, The Last Glass , Matthew Neenan used eight songs from Zach Condon's Indie Beirut band, whose blaring brass has been described as a global mash-up of forged Gypsy and other musics.
Condon's voice is pitched somewhere between David Byrne and Rufus Wainwright , whose songs Neenan used in his wonderful 11:11 for Pennsylvania Ballet, where he is resident choreographer.
Neenan's choreography matched the music's mash-up, but even more globally with merengue, salsa, Balkan folk steps, and militaristic salutes alternating with soft balletic arm sweeps.
Martha Chamberlain's adorable costumes - ruffled panties, pantaloons, beribboned hair, and cotton candy-colored pointe shoes - evoked an era of youthful innocence.
Moodier tensions appeared with Anitra Keegan in a three-tiered skirt being spun in a death spiral. All the dancers at times stabbed at the floor with one toe while skipping playfully. But the dark element often underscoring Neenan's work here suggested the 1930s in old Havana or Weimar Germany. Alone outside the curtain as it falls on her friends, Chloe Horne leaves us with a sense of foreboding or nostalgia.
In Adam Hoagland's 2007 requiem-like Risk of Flight, eight shadowy dancers leaned toward hard light from the wings and broke into motion that at times felt mournful. Its difficult half-lifts and turns ended as if in stop motion. The somber relationship-study nicely bridged the two frothier premieres.
Summer Series @ Wilma Theater
Posted by Sarah Thiebaud
For uwishunu.com Published: July 23, 2010
This past Wednesday I was awe-struck by three amazing performances during the opening night of Ballet X’s Summer Series at The Wilma Theater. The ballet opened with Matthew Prescott’s vivid Journey of the Day piece. The music was both lively and symbolic as the characters presented a journey through life’s most charismatic, upbeat moments.
“The essence of the piece came from the music,” said Prescott, on the album Appalachian Journey by Edgar Meyer.
Risk of Flight by Adam Hougland electrified the stage with powerfully explosive movements and harsh lighting. As you become entranced by the music, take a moment to notice the muscle tone and intensity within the frame of each dancer.
The performance concluded with the world premiere of The Last Glass by Matthew Neenan, danced to using the playful melodies of Beirut.
This performance reflected emotions of joy, angst, and romance, and was a delight to watch with colorful costumes, multiple storylines and intertwined relationships.
It truly was a night of celebration and dancing, highlighting the heart and soul of every dancer. There’s still time to catch this performance. Ballet X’s Summer Series runs through Sunday, July 25th.
Summer Series
by Julia Askenase
For Philadelphia City Paper Published: July 22, 2010
At the premiere of BalletX’s 2010 Summer Series, the mood careened as quickly and often as the company’s agile dancers. The show, which also celebrated the company’s fifth anniversary, featured three stylistically disparate pieces, providing musical and emotional variety and a vivid snapshot of a maturing troupe.
The first performance, “Journey of the Day,” was choreographed by standout BalletX dancer Matthew Prescott to Appalachian Journey by Edgar Meyer, Mark O’Connor and Yo-Yo Ma. The female dancers wore pointe shoes and everyone wore smiles as they mimicked the buoyancy of the countrified string music with relevé upon relevé, jumps in attitude and chaîné turns with unraveling arms. Dancers repeatedly formed a “T”-shape with their upper arms, while letting their forearms dangle like playful marionettes. At times, the high-energy choreography felt stilted and lacking in cohesion, but it certainly showcased the company’s athleticism and technical ballet background. While the piece offered a light, effervescent opener, it would be eclipsed by the emotional weight and involved narratives of its proceeding numbers.
BalletX premiered its second piece, “Risk of Flight,” in 2007 when it began its residency at the Wilma Theater, and it was a welcome return. Choreographed by Adam Hougland to somber string music by Zoe Këating, the aesthetic was dark and sleek. Dancers wore minimalist black costumes and shifted from sharp stiffness to melting grace. The piece focused on a single couple — performed remarkably by Matthew Prescott and Tara Keating — who appeared to be reeling from some devastating loss or pain. From frenzied spasms to soft and delicate lifts, the couple attempted in vain to shoulder one another’s agony. They traded strengths and weaknesses — Prescott crawling to Keating one moment and catching her fall the next — evoking a resonant scene without need for context.
The third piece, ”The Last Glass,” called for a night of bohemian revelry. Choreographed to the cosmopolitan music of indie band Beirut, co-artistic director Matthew Neenan placed his dancers in a whimsical, if slightly inebriated world where they took on the joyous and tormented stories of several lovers. The twinkling keys of opening song “La Banlieue,” combined with the women’s dainty lace can-can skirts and coquettish demeanor, transported the audience somewhere between a fancy parlor room and a Montmartre cabaret. While Neenan seemed to zero in on the Parisian thread in Beirut’s music, he also hinted at Latin partner dancing with undulating hips and sensually charged lifts during “The Akara” (a song from the band’s Mexican-influenced EP). Yet the common instrumentation of most songs — typically ukulele, mandolin, horns and riotous drums — coupled with the unifying themes of flirtation and festivity made any sense of place or time feel irrelevant. The piece closed to “Elephant Gun,” whose triumphant chorus “Let the seasons begin!” culminated in celebratory ensemble dancing.
And it was certainly a triumphant series opener. With such a diverse show, you’ll want to come back for more–or as Beirut’s Zach Condon would say: Encore, une fois.
It’s all about movement
By Janet Anderson
For Broad Street Review. Review I published: July 26, 2010
BalletX celebrated its fifth anniversary with a program demonstrating just how sophisticated this small troupe of ten has become within a short time period. Utilizing the talents of visiting dancer/choreographer Matthew Prescott and repeat guest choreographer Adam Hougland as well as the ever-expanding skills of company co-artistic director Matthew Neenan, BalletX turned in a performance that legitimately deserved its huge ovation.
The program started late, for an excellent reason: A line at the box office of people still buying tickets.
Prescott’s Journey of the Day opened with the stage drenched in blue light. Nine dancers moved to the crackling sound of Appalachian Journey from the string trio of Edgar Meyer, Mark O’Connor and Yo Yo Ma. This brisk music manages to merge classical and country, just as Prescott’s movement blended square dance, a bit of Highland dancing and a hint of Balanchine.
As the dancers moved in abstract patterns across the stage, periodically a soloist or duo broke through. Laura Feig, Tara Keating, Anitra N. Keegan, Tobin Del Cuore and Ian Hussey were outstanding in an ensemble piece where each performer shone. At the end of the day, the dancers turned their backs on the audience and walked toward stage rear, which was drenched in blue light suddenly dotted with small bright gold lights; the day’s journey was over and they were walking off stage into starlit twilight.
Like football players
Adam Hougland’s Risk of Flight (2007) had a different feel and still looks brand new three years later. The avant garde cello music of Zoe Keating punctuates the movement with an occasionally menacing throb. The dancers are strung across the back of the stage in a darkly lit setting. Slowly, erratically, they move across the stage space to throbbing accompaniment, hunched forward like football players, intersecting mid-stage in slow motion or bursting into electrifying leaps and turns.
There was a sense of drama in this piece, although what the story line might be was left to the audience. Choreographer Matthew Prescott performed in this work, with Tara Keating as his perfect partner. Intriguingly, this outburst of sound and movement ends abruptly in silence.
Wiggly experiment
Matthew Neenan’s new The Last Glass, for five couples, closed out the evening with the entire BalletX ensemble performing Neenan’s choreography at its wiggly experimental best. This is a pure example of what has made Neenan such a successful choreographer, using complicated, challenging, emphatic popular music from a troupe called Beirut.
There were women wearing ruffled skirts, which just might be mistaken as ballet tutus, plus other women wearing toe shoes and occasionally going on pointe. Some dancers left the stage to lurk at the bottom of the theater steps. Were they taking a breath? Making a statement? Or simply inviting the audience to rethink their notions of dance movement?
While the tutu ladies circulated on stage, we saw dancers moving every which-way, some with bold strong moves and others in odd patterns, all to challenging and vigorous musical accompaniment. What should be pure mayhem turned into a dance both strikingly beautiful and amusing. The central pas de deux that punctuated this piece in odd moments was beautifully performed by Anitra Keegan and Matthew Prescott.
It was good to see Neenan being his movement funky self with the toe shoe ladies, the clowns, the super-focused odd performances and lively music, and no theme except to showcase how dance can make an audience member consider the many ways artists are able to express themselves in movement. No wonder people were lined up at the box office for tickets.
On a mission to redefine ballet
By Jim Rutter
For Broad Street Review. Review II published: July 27, 2010
Choreographers can please a crowd in one of two ways: Give the audience something everyone can relate to, or seduce them with a work that’s irresistible. The two world premieres in BalletX’s recent Summer Series provided one of each.
Dancer Matthew Prescott took the first approach in his vibrant, accessible Journey of the Day, a series of scenes set to songs from Edgar Meyer’s Appalachian Journey. The piece opened on Kevin Yee-Chan bathed in a blue light while seated at the stage’s edge, and proceeded through snippets of daily life in a backwoods town. A brothers’ rivalry pitted two dancers in lighthearted sparring; later, Tara Keating and Anitra Keegan playfully teased Laura Feig between them.
Soft, fluid balletic movements glided along the airy, soothing ambiance of the string trio, as Prescott teased the narrative threads of the bluegrass harmonies into the simple pleasures of a rural life. Throughout, his dancers communicated with an exchange of flirting and knowing glances— warm and emotive touches that only enhanced the piece’s ability to reach outward and captivate.
Drew Billiau’s lighting transitioned from dawn into day and dusk into night, and coupled with the tender hues of Reid Bartleme’s costumes, the piece breathed with the enveloping magic of a fairy tale. It ended with Yee-Chan again alone on stage, but by journey’s end, he had a much larger family to reflect back on his day with him.
Backstage at the carnival
Matthew Neenan’s The Last Glass also let us peer inside an insulated world. But unlike the warm arms of Prescott’s embrace, Neenan lured us inside with a series of bewitching vignettes.
Through eight movements, Neenan pulled back the curtain for a behind-the-scenes look at a troupe of vaudeville or carnival performers. Imagine DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, tinged with the haunting aura of Tod Browning’s Freaks.
Overly face-painted dancers bounded across the stage in Martha Chamberlain’s costumes of gaudy Junior Prom dresses over ruffled laced boy-shorts. Men in suspenders and white T-shirts, looking drunk or drugged, lingered about with vapid expressions. Every movement appeared intentionally heightened with flamboyance to give a sense of peering into a fantasy world.
Throughout, Beirut’s accordion grinder and tuba-driven music wafted into the crowd like an intoxicating vapor, lulling us into a hypnotic slumber so as to appreciate the bizarre, laconically intense world Neenan envisioned on stage. Revelries, rivalries and jealousies played out with a theatric flair, as if the dancers knew we were looking in on them and wanted to make sure we got our money’s worth.
Enviable output
With these two new pieces, BalletX only added to the productive output of its first five years. Since 2005, the company has achieved an enviable feat: It has performed more than 40 pieces by its own choreographers (Christine Cox, Neenan, and now Prescott) as well as by artists across the U.S. and Europe. Many of these works— including Journey of the Day and The Last Glass— can serve as staples in an evolving repertoire. Taken as a whole, the compendium of the company’s work illustrates the success of its creative mission: to redefine ballet and bring it into the new century.
Dance is defined by impermanence. After watching these two tremendous new works, I can only hope the company survives another five years so I can watch them again.
A 'Cat in Hat' dance, full of lovely Things
by Ellen Dunkel
For The Inquirer Published: Apr. 7, 2009
The sun had just set. The wind sure did bite. We went to the theater that blustery night. All we could do was to sit, sit, sit, sit. But we were rewarded with a charming little hit.
Saturday night at the Wilma Theater BalletX premiered The Striped Hat, co-artistic director Christine Cox's adorable tip of the hat to Dr. Seuss. A fresh-faced newcomer, Laura Feig, and Kevin Yee-Chan are featured as the restless home-alone siblings who get a timely visit from the fun-loving, trouble-making Cat in the Hat (Tara Keating).
Thing 1 and Thing 2 are the Cat's usual sidekicks, but Cox added Things 3 through 5 for an even more chaotic effect. The quintet are imps in red footie pajamas who slide across the floor, lead the siblings in little jump combinations, and leave toppled-over furniture and upset flower pots in their wake.
Meanwhile, the pet fish (Anitra Nurnberger) tries to reel everyone in. The inside-ballet joke is that while the rest look like they just stepped out of a cartoon, Nurnberger is a prima ballerina in a salmon-colored ruffled dress, pink tights, and pink pointe shoes. Feig and Yee-Chan encircle her with their arms, creating a human fishbowl.
Set to a selection of music from Elena Kats-Chernin, Debussy, Milhaud, and Mozart, The Striped Hat is a feast for the eyes and ears. Martha Chamberlain, a principal dancer with Pennsylvania Ballet, designed the costumes, Pedro Silva did the sets, and Denise Fike conceived the hat in question, a striped straw number.
Former New York City Ballet dancer Edwaard Liang created a second world premiere, the soothing Largo, for BalletX. Set to Bach, the plotless piece is a thinking person's ballet of shifting geometric patterns. Danced on several levels - the dancers spend lots of time on the floor - it focuses on the angles created by bent elbows and knees, the gorgeous long lines of stretched legs, and shadow puppets created by the dancers' bodies.
A particularly beautiful section is a long duet for Nurnberger and Gregory Brown in which she wraps her body around him over and over in various positions (and, at one point, slipped off him). Keating and Ja'Malik dance a sprightly duet, while Feig and Yee-Chan are again paired, experimenting with balance and the physics of pushing and pulling in their pas de deux. In the group portions, Feig was often a half-beat ahead.
The program closes with an emotional Wonder Why, which co-artistic director Matthew Neenan choreographed in 2004 to songs by Sinéad O'Connor.
The three-piece program is BalletX's most beautiful and touching yet. But a fourth piece - perhaps a short duet - would make the evening feel more complete. The program is just under two hours, including two 15-minute intermissions.
Power Play
by Janet Anderson
City Paper Published: Apr. 7, 2009
It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how." BalletX, now in its second spring season at the Wilma, follows Dr. Seuss' credo, pushing movement boundaries while taking their fun quite seriously. Co-artistic director Christine Cox's The Striped Hat cheerfully, cheekily starts off the program with a dance version of Seuss' childhood classic The Cat in the Hat. Two youngsters are stuck in the house on a rainy day when a saucy cat in a tall striped hat (pert, fleet-footed Tara Keating) shows up and turns everything upside down. The cat invites in friends, who tumble around the stage causing amusing, confusing movement sequences.
Nothing demonstrates more clearly how much BalletX has grown professionally than Largo, choreographed by Taiwan-born, former New City Ballet dancer Edwaard Liang, who was inspired by the serenity found in Jean-Honoré Fragonard's 18th-century paintings. Three couples, beautifully lit in deep blues and purples, quietly, sinuously perform to Bach chamber music. Odd, introspective, elegant moves, like a long-held bent elbow or a woman leaning on her crouched partner's back, appear organic to the musical phrase. All six dancers are superb - especially Gregory Brown dancing with Anitra Nurnberger. This is a sophisticated work in the Balanchine manner, with totally abstract movement intersecting perfectly with music to suggest a storyline when none is given.
The evening closes with a reprise of co-director Matthew Neenan's Wonder Why, set to Sinéad O'Connor. Eight members of the troupe romp through his signature work with guys partnering guys, dancers sliding around, being thrown, chased and banged on, until Neenan's quick hand gesture signals that the fun, like all good things, must come to an end.
BalletX Both Fanciful And Versatile
by Lindsay Warner
The Bulletin Published: Apr. 7, 2009
In many ways, a company’s maturity is measured by its ability to carry off a work of great playfulness. BalletX dove headfirst into silliness at this weekend’s Spring Series performance, debuting a new piece by Christine Cox, titled “The Striped Hat.”
Loosely based on a storyline from Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, Ms. Cox fits a new style of choreography on the spry young company, sending its members cavorting around the stage in pursuit of the fanciful fun found in a children’s book. Laura Feig and Kevin Yee-Chan set the tone as the two children who are visited by the mysterious visitor in a striped hat; Ms. Cox works in a series of modified pirouettes as she represents the children’s desperate search for entertainment on a lazy afternoon, countered by the nimble, jazzy dancing by Tara Keating, the Lady in the Hat, who provides a much-needed diversion on this rainy day.
The interaction between the children, the Lady in the Hat and the agitated Pet (Anitra Nurnberger), who worriedly oversees the Lady’s intrusion, is compelling, danced to music both classical and contemporary. However, the piece doesn’t reach its climax until the Lady in the Hat’s “Friends” appear.
Six characters dressed in red floppy unitards resembling those worn by Dr. Seuss’ Thing 1 and Thing 2 launch themselves onstage through a cleverly designed red box, setting in motion the barely restrained chaos that is enhanced by the imaginative fabric and set designs by Martha Chamberlain, costume designer; Pedro Silva, set design; and Denise Fike, hat and costume design.
Even as Ms. Cox works in the vocabulary of classical ballet, she also deviates into fun, flippant movement that works with a sense of inertia that seems to literally push and pull the dancers across stage with a magnetic force. The props magnify the effect, pushing the imaginative piece enjoyably over the top.
Edwaard Liang, a new choreographer for BalletX, channels the high energy of the opening piece into a more intensely focused, dramatic work, titled “Largo.” With a program bookended by works choreographed by BalletX’s co-artistic directors — Ms. Cox and Mr. Neenan — it’s interesting to see a guest choreographer’s vision for this highly athletic troupe.
And Mr. Liang does take the company into some uncharted waters, moving with a fluid, restrained pace that gives the dancers time to sink into their movements. At times, he stops the motion entirely, freezing a pose in fascinating profile with help from lighting designer Shelley Hicklin.
But while Mr. Liang’s work forces the company to fully support each position by slowing down the pace and phrasing, he also stretches them nearly to the limit, reflected in coupling that occasionally feels slightly shaky.
Mr. Neenan, on the other hand, knows this company intimately, and plays to each dancer’s greatest strength with an edgy reimagining of his “Wonder Why,” first premiered in 2004 with dancers from his previous company.
Recasting the work with BalletX dancers, Mr. Neenan works in the unsettled medium of Sinead O’Connor, whose jagged arrangements give the company an opportunity to work in equally dissonant movements. A pas-de-deux danced by Ja’Malik and Emily Wagner particularly captures the electricism conveyed by the music, moving in strong, sinuous harmony.
Rock ballads look equally as good on this company as the classical-contemporary movements premiered by Mr. Liang, and it’s particularly nice to see Mr. Neenan’s choreography unleashed after his string of classical works created for companies such as the Pennsylvania Ballet. However, most striking is the sense of precision adhered to throughout the program; whether inspired by Seuss, Sinead or Bach, the company performs with the carefully honed movements of dancers under the influence of two fine artistic directors, who maintain a fine sense of precision even when the company is working in giggle-inducing movements.
Moving and growing
Three-year-old BalletX surprises and delights with a mature depth at the Wilma.
by Ellen Dunkel
For The Inquirer Published: Nov. 8, 2008
Every time I see BalletX, I get a surprise.
And Thursday night at the Wilma Theater, the surprise was maturity.
Just since July, when the three-year-old company last performed here, it has grown into its own. The dancers look certain and strong, the ballets fresh and well-suited to the troupe.
Co-artistic director Matthew Neenan choreographed two of the three pieces on the program, and his work has come a long way, as well. Neenan sets his dance on many levels; the dancers spend a lot of time sitting or lying on the floor, standing or jumping, or balancing in the arms of another dancer, in a lift. He often plays with scenery, breaks the fourth wall of theater, and creates quirky movements.
But finally, Neenan moved beyond his pet steps and trusted that he could keep the audience interested without relying on every movement's being witty or unusual.
This is true in "Duet From Cali," which he premiered in April in Cali, Colombia. It is a folksy ballet performed first to silence and then to Mozart's Adagio for String Quintet. Rosalia Chann danced it with unforeseen power and confidence, along with a strong new company member, Colby Damon.
Neenan showed even more maturity in "Steelworks," a world premiere set to an industrial-sounding score, with voiceovers about factories, machines and steelwork. It explores the mechanics of people, working both in groups and alone. A plie accompanies the sound of a puff of air. Bourrees are set to a staccato beat. Little jetes are mechanical, quick and precise. When the music slows down, the dancers' center of balance is intentionally altered.
"Giselle's Room" also had its world premiere Thursday night. Created by Philadelphia-based choreographer Zane Booker to Meredith Monk's haunting "New York Requiem," it is loosely based on the classical ballet, with a ghostly cast of Giselles and Albrechts reliving the tale of love, betrayal, redemption and death. Even some of the steps play homage to the well-known Petipa choreography.
Neenan and co-artistic director Christine Cox are growing their company in the right direction. It would be even better, though, if they could maintain a roster of dancers. Admittedly this is difficult, as the company's seasons are short and the dancers work on other projects as well. The cast of women has remained fairly consistent. The men change more often.
A standout is new company dancer Avichai Scher, a small, strong man who can whip off impressive series of pirouettes. I hope he's still around when BalletX returns to the Wilma in April.
Searching for meaning in modern dance (without program notes, yet)
by Jim Rutter
Broad Street Review
Published: Nov. 10, 2008
I’ve long wondered what would happen if a modern ballet company didn’t provide any notes in the program. Could those in the audience discern a choreographer’s intent strictly from what they witnessed on stage? Ballet X’s fall opener— "Giselle’s Room" by Zane Booker, and two works by Matthew Neenan—gave me a partial answer.
At least I got a press release, which informed me that Booker intended to create a short work that “explores our attraction to the unattainable”. He set his "Giselle’s Room" to Meredith Monk’s New York Requiem—a good fit, as Monk’s grating voice clearly expressed my frustration.
Unfortunately, Booker’s choreography didn’t fare as well. The seven dancers in his ensemble ran from the wings to the center of the stage, performing pirouettes or leaps before quickly running off again. When they returned, they inspired a sense of longing in their striking poses and anguished expressions, and I found the classical movements quite lovely to watch, even if the entire piece lacks rigor.
Throughout, the dancers created tableaux of agony as they collapsed into one another’s arms; later, they moved in unison with their arms touching, snaking their way across the stage. This image brought to mind the universally felt frustration of desire; that, or the memory of watching elephants leading each other by the tail in the circus.
And that’s the problem. The entire piece felt like hearing poetry in a foreign language: It sounded pretty, and it even evoked emotions, but ultimately it conveyed little meaning. Booker titled "Giselle’s Room" after a ballet that everyone knows without offering any points of reference other than the “longing” to reconnect that anyone might feel after a young woman’s death. (Or was he referring to the unattainability of supermodel Giselle Bundchen?)
Buttressed by Meredith Rainey’s commanding performance, Tara Keating nearly saved this piece by herself; her features wracked, her movements all labored and yet still looking exquisite and strong, she almost captured Booker’s intent single-handedly. And the vision of Keating and Anitra Nurnberger lying on the floor, frozen with their backs arched upwards, like flowers stretched toward the sun, lent the piece one of its few moments of visual brilliance.
But "Giselle’s Room" became a “room” only in the last instants—and for that, Booker must thank lighting designer Shelley Hicklin.
X Goes Next Level
Though BalletX has been around since 2005, it seems with this production the company is truly coming into its own.
by Deni Kasrel
City Paper, Published: Nov 7, 2007
Even before anybody danced a step, the atmosphere bristled at BalletX's opening night show. Perhaps the crowd was stoked because the program consisted of three world premières — the good old excitement of the new. Whatever, a charge filled the air, and that sense of stimulation was reciprocated by the dancers who delivered an enthusiastic, well-executed performance that at times elicited audible signs of appreciation from the crowd — ahs, gasps and excited clapping in response to certain movement phrases.
Though BalletX has been around since 2005, it seems with this production the company is truly coming into its own. The roster features erstwhile Pennsylvania Ballet members Christine Cox, Matthew Neenan (the company's co-founders), Heidi Cruz-Austin, Tara Keating and Meredith Rainey; plus Corey Baker, Rosalia Chann, Anitra Nurnberger, Leyland Simmons and Emily Wagner, whose backgrounds include stints with Philadanco, American Repertory Ballet and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. All these outfits demand a high caliber of technique combined with a studious approach to dance and that surely benefits BalletX. All the better to pull off the eclectic choreography for the three premières, each of which placed particular demands on the cast.
Neenan's effervescent Once Again playfully toyed with classical steps to create a soft-textured ballet where one phrase often upended another. Neenan added plenty of twists to formal moves, such as feet tilting askew rather than in the traditional straight line with the leg, and exaggerated échappés (where both legs spring out sideways) that looked like spider-leg quadricep squats. There were even sight gags, such as a woman lying on the floor lazily twirling her finger while being pulled offstage by a male partner.
Cox has said that M.O.M. (My Own Memory) was inspired by her own and her mother's experience with aging. While the pensive work does contain phrases to suggest caregiving, that theme is not necessarily overt. M.O.M. — which occasionally inserts stylings from urban dance clubs — proves a dreamy ode to the passage of time and relationships that occur within that span.
The edgy finale, Risk of Flight by Adam Hougland, started off slow and gradually acquired momentum. A study in contrasts, it was both stark and full-bodied, dissonant and harmonious. The overarching push-pull theme was most fully embodied by a sensational duet by Rainey and Cruz-Austin who portrayed a pair of on-off-on lovers with dramatic brio.
BalletX succeeds in three premieres
By Ellen Dunkel
For The Inquirer
The beauty of a world premiere is that the steps are custom-created for the dancers you're seeing, meaning they're shown in the best possible light.
That could be why, for the second year in a row, I saw BalletX and wondered: Were the dancers always this good? This time only half the cast of 10 dancers was familiar – from this company and Pennsylvania Ballet. The other five were recent hires, but all looked powerful, both physically and emotionally.
BalletX presented three successful world premieres Thursday night at the Wilma Theater, where it is the resident dance company. Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox, co-artistic directors, each created a piece. The third was commissioned from Adam Hougland, a freelance choreographer who has also worked with American Ballet Theatre Studio Company and Limon Dance Company.
The evening opened with Neenan's Once Again, set to a lush score of trumpet music by Frederic Fasch, Giuseppe Torelli and others. It is a light, lively ballet with plenty of humor: A woman longs for a man, only to push him away at the last minute; one dancer does little massage-type karate chops across a partner's back; a woman lies on her stomach and raises her upper body in a remarkably flexible and stunningly beautiful arch.
Cox's piece, M.O.M.: My Own Memory, takes the audience on an emotional journey through time. Set to hauntingly sad music by Evelyn Glennie, with vocals by Björk and tribal rhythms by Beats Antique, it features Tara Keating as a woman facing a difficult phase of life – dealing with an aging parent. The beginning section is especially beautiful, with the six dancers almost swimming through primordial fluid.
Leyland Simmons was vibrant in his solo, whipping off multiple pirouettes on a flat foot. He and Corey Baker added powerful turns and jumps while remaining sensitive to the otherwise gentle ending.
The deep emotional tug continued in Hougland's Risk of Flight, set to cello music by Zoe Keating. The centerpiece of the dance is an anguished duet for Heidi Cruz-Austin and Meredith Rainey, about a couple on the verge of breaking up. They run to and away from each other, sink all their weight into their partner's arms and brush each other off. Occasionally the movement was difficult to see, though, as the right side of the stage was not well lit.
Nov 3, 2007
What The Critics Say about BalletX and its Co-founders. . . . .
BalletX's dancers better than ever
BalletX, the Wilma Theater's new 2007-08 artists in residence, staged a lovely coming-out party Wednesday night that raised it from being just some dancers' pet project to the status of contemporary ballet company worth watching.
Both BalletX's artistic directors, Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan, and all its dancers are current or former members of Pennsylvania Ballet. But interestingly, they looked better at the Wilma than they often look dancing with the better-known company.
Part of that is because Neenan - who choreographed all three pieces on the program, one in conjunction with Cox - knows the dancers very well and can cater to their strengths and accommodate their weaknesses.
But even then, BalletX, launched in 2005, looked much stronger than it did in September at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Has Francis Veyette always pulled off multiple pirouettes so easily? Did Amy Aldridge always smile so joyously through most of a performance? Did everyone always attack the steps with such confidence? That last one is a particular sticking point with me, and the dancers seemed far less cautious Wednesday than they sometimes have when performing in the past, whether with BalletX or with Pennsylvania Ballet.
The evening, which launched the closing week of the Wilma's DanceBoom! series, included a world premiere, "I like you different," choreographed by Neenan and Cox. Set to a selection of vocal music by James Brown, Ray Charles, Norah Jones, Nancy Sinatra and others, it's a ballet about many types of relationships, with a good dose of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll stirred in.
My favorite section was a witty duet the artistic directors created for themselves to Chaka Khan's "Tell Me Something Good." Neenan grabbed Cox by one leg, and she trotted along on her hands. He danced a short set of kicks, aiming playfully at her rear. He lifted her, and she almost immediately grew bored and looked at her watch.
But the highlight of the evening was the opening piece, Neenan's 2002 ballet "Die Menscheit," set to Mozart. The clever and sometimes humorous choreography, soothing music, dramatic lighting and gorgeous bodies hit all the right notes in the beautiful theater that will be BalletX's home for the coming year."
Ellen Dunkel
Philadelphia Inquirer, June 15 2007
“Neenan stands tall among the current roster of post-Ballanchine American choreographers. He has set six works on Pennsylvania Ballet, and he and Cox want to fill what they call a void for small ensemble, contemporary ballet.”
“Once Neenan’s About February took over, the evening crackled with bracing inventiveness and variety. To Lidia Kaminska’s live accordion playing, Cox and Rainey danced with Francis Veyette and other Pennsylvania Ballet colleagues. Milo Doi-Smith injected elegance with her long, trailing limbs and spiraling torso.”
“Swirling on her heels in ballet slippers, Tara Keating brought an “April in Paris” giddiness to the scene. Staying in the same romantically playful vein, Laura Bowman and Jermel Johnson sought to join or break up dancing couples who were oblivious to them.”
- Pointe (December 2005/January 2006)
“Matt Neenan and Christine Cox, disbanded their five-year old Phrenic Ballet recently to form a new venture. They call it BalletX. The company was introduced at the Arts Bank this week to an enthusiastic full house. There were only two works on the program -a great way to focus attention. One dance was by London-based choreographer David Fielding, the other was Neenan's.
“Fielding's Easy Living, is a fascinating working out of physical space set to Steve Reich's perpetual-motion score Electric Counterpoint. The seven dancers, most of whom also dance with Pennsylvania Ballet - performed its abstract motions smartly. Costumes, by Yumiko, were colorful and sporty. The performance was first-class by performers who in addition to Cox and Neenan include Laura Bowman, Jermel Johnson, Tara Keating, Miko-Doi Smith, Meredith Rainey and Francis Veyette.
“Neenan's piece is called About February. Music by Ole Schmidt and Rameau is superb and was played superbly by the accordionist Lidia Kaminska. The dance carries a story line of sorts -which I'm still puzzling out - it also references café dance history with a powerfully performed opening duet and variety of ensemble roles. It's worth repeating. . . .”
- CriticsPicks, WRTI.org (Sept. 7, 2005)
“Take one new company - BalletX, launched by Matthew Neenan and Christine Cox, two founders of the disbanded Phrenic New Ballet - and add composers from the Network for New Music, and the result is “Doubletake.” In this latest collaborative effort by The Dance Project, four short chamber music works were played alone and then as accompaniment to choreography. The musicianship and choreography were so strong that “Doubletake” wasn’t an experiment after all - it was vital dance theater.
“In Cox’s Dancepiece, a trio in swirling counterpoint set to music by James Primosch and danced by Neenan, Tara Keating, and James Ihde (all on loan from Pennsylvania Ballet), her deceptively simple movement patterns break away to intriguing lifts, phrasing, and interplay in a sort of deconstructed classical jam. She followed that with Amore Scaduto (meaning “love, trashed”), a smoldering tryst for herself and her frequent partner, Meredith Rainey.
. . . .
“In Neenan’s Vibrate, two songs by bad-boy pop composer Rufus Wainwright, “Vibrate” and “Oh What a World,” were used as springboards for a string quintet by Robert Maggio. Cox, Keating, and Rainey joined Neenan in quick-tempo, asymmetric movement that directly interpreted the music’s tonal drama. Neenan’s dervish-like spins to face the musicians joyously represented the creative intimacy here.”
- DanceMagazine.com (April 2005)
“Cox also created the dance to composer Lee Hyla's Amore Scaduto. Dancing with Meredith Rainey, she matched Hyla's intense violin-cello duet, marked by rhythmic symbiosis and pouncing phrases, with some inventive partnering that suggested extremes of intimacy.
“Composer Robert Maggio has worked before with choreographer Neenan, and their collaboration here telegraphed a happy comfort level. . . . The three dancers - Cox, Keating and Rainey - fell toward and away from each other with a louche humor that mirrored Maggio’s casual quasi-tonalities and loping lines.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer (March 11, 2005)
“If the new Pennsylvania Ballet triple bill, featuring works by Peter Martins, Matthew Neenan and Twyla Tharp, were a meal, Neenan’s 11:11 would be its sumptuous main dish. Its world premiere Wednesday brought cheers from a euphoric public. There are so many fresh ideas in the work that it made the rest of the program look dusty and tired.
“Dancing to Rufus Wainwright’s lush, yearning music must be a high because in 11:11, set to six Wainwright songs, the dancers are by far the fullest and most impassioned we see them all evening.
. . . .
“With ‘Oh What a World,’ Neenan pulls out all the stops, rendering garlands of fleeting geometries and finally constructing a giant carousel of dancers, the women rising and lowering like its horses. Breathtaking.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer (Feb. 4, 2005)
“[I]t’s sheer exhilaration to witness the way [Neenan] weds a choreographic idea with a musical score to make magic on the stage. . . . Whether he is making chamber dances with BalletX - an experimental playground for his ideas - or commissioned pieces for the big field players, this young man is at the top of his game.”
- Dance Magazine (Feb. 2005)
“Neenan’s choreography was innovative - showing off the company’s athleticism and individual strengths - as well as visually refreshing, with strong ensemble segments and wonderful use of space and movement patterns. Coupled with Wainwright’s intriguing lyrics, Neenan’s creativity kept me at the edge of my seat for the entire piece.”
- Ballet-Dance Magazine (2005)
“Phrenic New Ballet has some nerve presenting four distinguished and pulsating world premieres in the dog days of August, when so few dance afficionados are in town. But this four-year-old company is known for nerve. . . .
“Taking a deep breath, they placed their bets on a run that began Wednesday . . . and they came out winners.
“Phrenic cofounder and Pennsylvania Ballet dancer Christine Cox choreographed Tabula Rasa, inspired by her physically challenged sister, Barbara. Cox gave her a cameo in the first section, and like the trouper she is, Barbara played her role with charm and nerve.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer (Aug. 15, 2003)
“Ryan Brooke Taylor's Cantata blended jazz by Miles Davis and Joshua Redman with Chinese and Korean music. He and Cox alternated a steamy duet with Taylor's martial-arts solo and her bluesy solo. Cox, back to back on Taylor, pulled her crossed ankles close in and then, letting her feet flutter down, provided the best lift of the evening.
“Neenan’s thoroughly magnetic Frequencies . . . was a masterpiece.
“The lighting throughout the evening, by John Stephen Hoey, was some of the most original I've seen in years. To muted klezmerlike music, Neenan and the others flexed their feet folk-dance-style; Cox preened on pointe. All managed steps that could have looked silly. But the work’s innate classicism gave it a cool sophistication, with just a hint of sass.
“This is my 42d dance concert so far this year, and to people who ask if I don’t tire of them, I say: When dance is like this, it can make me feel as if I were in heaven.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer (Aug. 10, 2001)
