{"id":544,"date":"2012-02-29T11:02:26","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T16:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=544"},"modified":"2012-02-29T23:11:48","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T04:11:48","slug":"one-good-thing-about-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2012\/02\/one-good-thing-about-arizona\/","title":{"rendered":"One Good Thing About Arizona. . ."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The women of Ballet Arizona in Ib Andersen's Play<\/em>. Photo Kyle Froman<\/p><\/div>\n

Ib Andersen didn\u2019t move to Phoenix in 2000 to become artistic director of the Arizona Ballet. According to a recent interview, when he took on the job he was already in Arizona\u2014loving the clear light, open sky, and sere landscape, and painting in his spare time. He may not have much spare time these days. During his tenure, the company debt has been erased, the board has labored to raise money, and the number of donors has grown, along with the company\u2019s repertory and the level of its dancing. In August Ballet Arizona and its school will move into a renovated warehouse, with studios galore, plus a 300-seat black-box theater.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s New York debut attests to the perseverance of Andersen and his colleagues. The dancers\u2019 clean lines and unmannered performing derive in large measure from Andersen\u2019s experience as a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet from 1980 to 1990 (and possibly, too, from his previous schoolboy-to-star years in the Royal Danish Ballet). At the Joyce Theater, several apprentices and alumni of the school joined the 26 company dancers in Andersen\u2019s Play<\/em>, and while some of those onstage are less experienced than others, everyone dances with precision, fluency, and a quiet fervor. Ballet Arizona, like other companies directed by former NYCB principals (Edward Villella at Miami City Ballet and Peter Boal at Pacific Northwest Ballet), has built its reputation in part on its fastidious presentation of ballets by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Learning these works helped groom the dancers to be quick-footed, expansive in space, and musically alert.<\/p>\n

Andersen\u2019s 2007 Play<\/em> was clearly designed to introduce individual dancers to an audience and show that the company could master various styles. It\u2019s a smorgasbord\u2014albeit a well-assembled one\u2014building from classroom basics to the clever patterns and bright, rapid steps engendered by Igor Stravinsky\u2019s Suite no. 2<\/em> and Pulcinella Suite<\/em>. The hour-long Play<\/em> whetted my appetite. I\u2019d like to see the Arizona Ballet in its Balanchine repertory, in its Nutcracker<\/em>, and in Andersen\u2019s upcoming Topia<\/em>, a collaboration with the Desert Botanical Garden and designed to be performed in a space within the garden.<\/p>\n

The opening number in Act I of Play<\/em> is set to Mozart\u2019s Variations on \u201c\u00c0 vous dirai-je Maman,\u201d<\/em> aka \u201cTwinkle, Twinkle Little Star.\u201d In the course of its basic, clean-cut group passages, Andersen manages to display in short solos all five of the section\u2019s women (Jillian Barrell, Tzu-Chia Huang, Kanako Imayoshi, Natalia Magnicaballi, and Breanne Starke, and all its men (Zherlin Ndudi, Gleidson Vasconcelos, Michal Wozniak, Slawomir Wozniak, and Astrit Zejnati\u2014a number of the company\u2019s male dancers come from Eastern Europe). Here comes a shooting-star leap, here a slow unfolding of a leg into the air, here a spin, here a skimming rush offstage, here a sustained and controlled balance. It\u2019s a pretty strenuous section in a restrained way, and the performers lie down for a brief rest, letting Mozart play on before the final bout.<\/p>\n

Two aspects of the ballet become evident at the outset. One is that Andersen has a brilliant colleague in lighting designer Michael Korsch. Korsch keeps the lighting cool and clear during this opening for the ten dancers. Tiny suspended lights twinkle both behind and in front of the dancers, situating them in a starry universe. Throughout Play<\/em>, his contributions define space both architecturally and environmentally, never becoming flashy.<\/p>\n

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Natalia Magnicaballi and Astrit Zejnati in Act I of Play<\/em>. Photo: Kyle Froman<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s also apparent that Andersen knows music and chooses it well. When choreographing to Mozart\u2019s variations, however, he tends to wed every step to the rhythm proper of the musical passage\u2014rarely fitting in more or fewer steps than there are notes in a measure. That may have been a deliberate choice in the sweetly plain first section, but it carries over into the ensuing quintet to the Andante from Schubert\u2019s Octet in F major<\/em> and the section set to Benjamin Britten\u2019s Prelude and Fugue for 18-Part String Orchestra<\/em> (all heard in recordings at the Joyce). In the second half of the piece, when the choreography grapples with Stravinsky\u2019s complexities, Play<\/em> becomes more lively interchange between music and dancing.<\/p>\n

The Schubert piece engenders a charmingly flirty game for four come-and-go men (Ilir Shtylla, Shea Johnson, Myles Lavallee, and Roman Zavarov) and an alluring woman (Paola Hartley) wearing a sparkly fuschia dress (costumes by Andersen). Sometimes one man gets to date her; sometimes they all collaborate with genial nonchalance (you hold her leg this time, pal) and toss her high. Britten\u2019s music is fuller, darker, and more prone to discord. There\u2019s quite a bit of lying down in this section too, but its cast of 11 women also march and pose and show off their arabesques. Andersen seems often to work with simple means, plaiting an economical number of steps into attractive patterns.<\/p>\n

The last two parts of Play<\/em>\u2019s Act I are set to music by Arvo P\u00e5rt. The first, appropriately is the composer\u2019s Cantus in Memory of Britten<\/em>, and Andersen has chosen to grace it with two identical, simultaneous pas de deux, excellently performed by Huang and Shtylla plus Michelle Mahowald and Cavanaugh. Another of P\u00e5rt\u2019s dreamy, softly chiming scores, Festina Lente<\/em>, accompanies an earthier pas de deux for Magnicaballi and Zjenati, The expression borrowed for the title can be translated as \u201cmake haste slowly,\u201d but there\u2019s nothing oxymoronic about the sensual coupling of these two. Inhabiting a spot of turf under a warm light, they spend most of their time on the floor in slow, heated, almost somnambulistic foreplay. Their minimal clothing shows off musculature that glints as if oiled. This is one of those duets that hint ever so artistically at Neolithic matings (drag the woman along, check her legs for length, twist her around your manly body in interesting ways, slide her onto your bent back and lug her to your lair). Yes, the company can do that kind of stuff too. Magnicaballi is eerily gorgeous, and my eyes fasten on Zejmati every time he\u2019s onstage in Play<\/em>\u2014not just because of his technical expertise, but because of the way his focus enlivens the space around him.<\/p>\n

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Taking flight with Stravinsky. Photo: Kyle Froman<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s an intermission between Play<\/em>\u2019s two acts, and when the curtain goes up on the second, you can feel the audience\u2019s spirits lift. To Stravinsky\u2019s Suite no. 2<\/em>, Andersen plays around with eight women and four men\u2014the former in tangerine-colored outfits with flippy little skirts, their partners in tan tights and blue-green vests. How many eye-engaging patterns can the choreography pull them into? Three trios, a four-spoked Texas Star, lines, and more.<\/p>\n

Throughout the six sections of Stravinsky\u2019s marvelous Pulcinella Suite<\/em>, Anderson deploys his cast in all manner of designs and rapid steps\u2014 close follow-the-leader canons, hand-in-hand chains, perky little jumps\u2014 having no truck with the narratives lurking in the music. The \u201cTarantella\u201d for four couples and six women projects a little Neapolitan spiciness, and the \u201cGavotta con due variazone,\u201d is an enjoyably comradely trio for Barrell, Huang, and Zejnati. The choreography continues to bring various elements to the foreground\u2014here a duet for two men, here women entering to thread through a forest of men.<\/p>\n

Andersen manipulates his material adroitly, creating choreography that\u2019s seldom thrillingly original, but always very good to look at. As I said earlier, Play<\/em>\u2019s game-plan is to show what these dancers are capable of. It ends up making you want to see more of them. I count that a success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ib Andersen didn\u2019t move to Phoenix in 2000 to become artistic director of the Arizona Ballet. According to a recent interview, when he took on the job he was already in Arizona\u2014loving the clear light, open sky, and sere landscape, and painting in his spare time. He may not have much spare time these days. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[260,261,262],"class_list":{"0":"post-544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ballet","8":"tag-ballet-arizona","9":"tag-ib-andersen","10":"tag-michael-korschh","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}