BALLET CHICAGO
Strip away the elegance of a glamorous downtown theater, the distance and illusion created by a proscenium stage, and the power and resonance of a live orchestra, and you strip away much of the spectacle–and the entertainment value–of ballet. Yet the bare bones of classical theatrical dance–the character and caliber of the dancing, the qualities and structures of the choreography–stand out in especially sharp relief.
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Dances like George Balanchine’s 1956 Allegro Brillante can stand such scrutiny. Its fascinating spatial complexity–the eight dancers and two soloists arrange themselves in four-spoked wheels, concentric kaleidoscopic circles, great diagonals, and other shifting, weaving patterns–is all the more obvious in a small performance space. The intimacy of the space shifts the viewer’s attention from the dancers’ line to the dance’s steps; balances and positions are no more legible, no more important, than the transitions between them. Allegro Brillante flashes by in an instant no matter where it’s performed; as the title suggests, the dance embodies the qualities of speed and brilliance. But because Ballet Chicago’s dancers are so close to us at the Dance Center, they emerge as very real, very human individuals; the changed theatrical context undercuts the magic of the dance.
Artistic director Daniel Duell’s Verdi Divertimenti suffers sorely from the absence of live music. The relationship between the movement and the score is so very close–their accents and phrasing regularly coincide, and each instrumental entrance signals the beginning of another section or a reconfiguration, rearrangement, or repeat–that without the vagaries of live musical performance the dance is painfully predictable; only the last section of Verdi Divertimenti, a pas de deux occasionally performed alone as Pas Vivace, escapes leadenness.
