Mark Morris’ Deceptive Simplicity

As it has for perhaps two decades, Cal Performances presented the Mark Morris Dance Group in an annual appearance at UCB’s Zellerbach Hall April 19-20.  It was the occasion to wed a prior work to a world premiere and each work involved the death of highly influential men, one from the secular world of Greece and the other the prophet from which the Christian religion was inspired.  The Death of Socrates, originally premiered in 2010, preceded The Via Dolorosa’s premiere to the music of Mico Mubly’s The Street(14 Meditations on the Stations of the Cross). The premiere music was played on the harp by Parker Ramsey, whiile Erik Satie’s Socrate in three parts was interpreted by tenor Brian Grebler with Colin Fowler as pianist.  For both works super titles were available above the proscenium.

How to describe Morris’ danced narrative by his 17 member troupe [one is currently an apprentice]?  I find it difficult because it just follows a story line, minus any elaborate technical displays, but moves ahead according to the dictates of the music, the theme and Morris’ enviable capacity to wed the two with deceptively simple phrasing and movement with costumes that are diaphanous and, forgive the word, serviceable.  You would think the ensemble is off on a collective afternoon romp, but of course, it is not in either dance.

For Socrates, it opens with the news that he has been condemned to death, and the consternation is expressed with small rushes of movement by the dancers, in varying sized clusters.  The dancer playing Socrates is not identified in the program, but we see him in semi-profile accepting the judgment with remarkable calm consoling his followers.  The text has him ask the man in charge regarding the poison [I think it was hemlock] and he is instructed after drinking it, that he should walk around until his legs feel heavy at which time he should lie down.  When the poison reaches his heart he will die. This directive proceeds and after Socrates lies down the ensemble is around him at the curtain.

For Via Dolorsa, Howard Hodgkin has designed a swirl reaching across the breadth of the canvas with vibrant red and blue and ancillary colors in the center.  It does change color at various points as the harp places the fourteen stations of the Cross. Elizabeth Kurtzman’s costumes place the women in off-white to cream knee-length dresses, their quality reminding me of pleasant summer dresses, while the men’s costumes veer on cotton fatigues, although when it comes to Jesus bearing the cross, his garments approximate the minimal seen in crucifixes.

The music by Nico Mobly titled The Street (fourteen Meditations on the Stations of the Cross) was played by harpist Parker Ramsey.  The music has text but was not sung at the premiere.  A striking photograph in the program depicts the Via Dolora (bereft of its clutter of makeshift shops, sellers and shawl covered shoppers I remember from my one visit in 2007.) 

The first station is clearly one of accusation, and the dancers move across the stage resolutely, finger pointing with the man standing for the prophet with slightly winced posture.  For someone unfamiliar with the specifics of the station the progression is absorbing, movement appropriate, unfamiliar.  It is when the dancer bearing the cross appears that the historic and religious converge for someone never raised in this particular Roman Catholic Christian ritual. Bearing the cross, Jesus stumbles three times, One station includes an interval with his mother. He is stripped and nailed to the Cross [A Roman form of punishment, and not Judiac.] The final station, Jesus taken down from the cross, and then the curtain descended.

The audience was utterly quiet save for someone yelling, but after the initial silence, the applause was thunderous with many standing up in tribute. A white-haired Morris came on stage after the dancers had made their initial bow, this time in a grey jump suit, no Indian shawl this time.

His musical acuity to which he has choreographed those evocative steps even now leave me moved at the depth and acuity of his choreography.

Some Interesting Ballet Company History

When Dennis Nahat was ousted from his position as artistic director of Ballet San Jose, the Bay Area lost one of the most energetic, agreeable and willing contributors to its dance scene, never mind his acumen brought the company to the area and managed to make the company a San Jose entity when the Cleveland half of the original enterprise collapsed. He returns on occasion to stage manage performance events in the South Bay, but he now resides in Las Vegas and, typical of his energy and magnanimity, devotes much of his time to the Donald MacKayle Legacy.

Dennis was recently called upon to recount details of the company he co-founded with Ian Horvath in Cleveland. And he has shared his memory of the events with me.  Providing this information may cover two or three different postings.  Here goes.

A History of Major Events

Dennis Nahat and Ian [Ernie] Horvath visited Ruth Prior at her Masonic Temple studio in Cleveland in 1972.  Prior, a one-time Horvath teacher, founded the Ballet Russe Academy in 1950. Because Prior wished to retire, Nahat bought her enterprise amd he expressed to Prior his desire for its future.  Horvath and Nahat then established The Cleveland Dance Center and hired Charles Nicoll to lead the fledgling organization. Horvath’s mother, Helen, became executive manager.

Retiring from dancing with American Ballet Theatre in 1974, Horvath returned to Cleveland.  A new Cleveland Ballet was established and a Board was created with Maria Guillia as Chair. The period 1972-1976 provided training for dancers and the enlistment of community board members.  Nahat though still with ABT, was commuting weekly. And making sure bills were paid. Since its inception the aim of the mission was to provide Cleveland with a fully professional ballet company, performing and producing to equal standards, contributing to Cleveland’s cultural needs and to the broadest possible audience.

In 1976, Cynthia Gregory, American Ballet theatre’s principal artist, and often considered the U.S.’s first ballerina assoluta, danced with the company as Cleveland Ballet’s permanent guest artist.

With standards set high, in 1977, The Cleveland Dance Center became the Official School of Cleveland Ballet with a new orchestra formed under Dwight Oltman as its Musical Director and Conductor. The School and company moved to Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, constructing four studios for the company, school, administration and warehouse out of the Stouffer’s Foods Corp. Building.

In 1978, Nahat created The Gift, a two-act holiday spectacle was with new score by Loris Chabanian, a local composer, which proved an immediate success with capacity audiences.  In 1979, building on this success, Cleveland Ballet’s Nutcracker was created, creating national interest, performing in the Public Square Music Hall, with its 3000 seats totally sold out, Cynthia Gregory appearing as Tsarina/Tatiana. Its success required the company to add four additional performances in early 1980.

Following this success, Nahat queried the board whether it was ready for the effects of the company’s success. 

Major funding from The Cleveland Foundation enabled the preservation and renovation of the Playhouse Square.  While the State Theatre was to become Cleveland Ballet’s official home, the city wanted the ballet to occupy the Music Hall, particularly at Christmas, since it encouraged the citizens to come to downtown Cleveland.  The company was offered the Music Hall and adjacent buildings for $1 a year if it moved the school and operations to the area.

Then mayor of Cleveland George Voinovich said he wished Cleveland Ballet’s move into the city’s buildings would create what Nahat and Horvath called “a Theatrical Institutional Hub,” for the City’s benefit.

Touring the entire underground and all the buildings out to Lake Erie, the two men created a complete plan on paper regarding the use of the buildings.  Learning of the exploration, members of the Ballet Board, the Playhouse Square and the Cleveland Foundation made an ultimatum to Horvath and Nahat. “If you sign with the City, funding will cease from major foundations. The City is filled with crooks.”  Horvath and Nahat reluctantly withdrew from the Playhouse Square scheme.

With Nahat primarily focused on the studio, Horvath worked closely with planners on the rebuilding of Playhouse Square theaters.  The two directors were concerned could raise sufficient collateral or receive enough funding to grow into the new home.  Instead it was burdened with yearly expenses for renting the company’s offices, school facilities and theater while it became the Playhouse Square’s largest tenant with its performances each season.

Cleveland Ballet was firmly committed to providing arts education to children and adults through a professional school and free outreach programs. Expectations and demands were high to fill the State Theatre each season. To help sustain the artists and keep up with the demands the Company created its own dancers’ union, American Alliance of Northeast Ohio, Local One. Nahat and Horvath continued to seek endowment support for the 1984 move and opening into the State Theatre with its 3200 seat capacity. Cleveland Foundation leader Homer C. Wadsworth informed Nahat, “Listen here, the success of Playhouse Square does not depend on the success of Cleveland Ballet.” 

A Total Confection

The winter cold visitation prevented me from seeing the opening night of San Franicsco Ballet’s production of Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, but I made the March 21 and 22 performances featuring the differing charms of Nikisha Fogo and Sasha Mukhamedev, along with de la Croix designs apparently borrowed from the Paris Opera.

Some miscellaneous comments, the foremost of which was the wonderful tutus given the women with the graduated layers below the top tutu, so graceful and so unlike the skimpy finish created for so many American productions, which seem preoccupied with the cost of yardage in creating that staple to ballet wear on stage.

The originial Balanchine version dates back to 1982 when Melissa Hayden was Tatiana, Edward Villella Oberon and Arthur Mitchell as Puck.  That meant that NYC Ballet was still at the 55th Street Theater.

It seems to me some measure of those physical restraints remain in the current production, mainly a sense of breadth but shallowness in depth.

Balanchine’s sense of the comic seems extremely broad when I think of Ashton’s version of the Shakespeare comedy. Tab Buckner and I, recalled Alexander Grant’s skill as Bottom and Bottom’s gesture remembering the physical charms of Tatiana.  In addiiton to Keith Martin as Puck, the special physical suppleness of Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley as the fairy monarchs has yet to be replicated or surpassed; Fogo’s physique comes a remarkable second, making me want to see her in Ashton’s version.  As I remember Ashton’s reading, there is a consistancy where Mr. B’s verges on froth.

When it comes to the mortal quartet of lovers, the action is pretty standard theatrical mime of who loves, who wants and isn’t getting it, until the magic potion gets properly distributed.  I remember in the British version there was a touch of the slightly stiffish, “I say old chap” quality in the behavior, both antagonistic and reconciliatory.

What is surprising in the Balanchine version is the substitute cavalier when Tatiana appears in front of her pink shell bed.  It shows her off, but makes of her cavalier a bit of a cipher, however skilled his partnering.

I thought Mukhamadev’s Tatiana very queenly in her response to Wei Wang’s Oberon’s request for the young child.  Wang was both striking in the Oberon solo and knowing in his handling of Tatiana, Bottom and ultimate magnanimity, royals in encounter and behavior.  While Fogo was both fey and queenly, Conley was not quite up to regal status. 

It also seems the production allowed Balanchine to use as many dancers, whether regular members or apprentices, as possible, and a means to generate NY audience enthusiasm.  Certainly it provided that chance for  Rojo to manifest San Francisco’s dance force.  Katy Warner remarked on the warmth and said, “It’s all healthy.” 

Skipping onward to Act II, a totally Balanchine concoction, a vehicle for utilizing the full company, Frances Chung and Isaac Hernandez were the  couple interpreting the roles created by Violette Verdy and Conrad Ludlow.  It is one of Mr. B.’s most felicitous creations, mounted on two special artists. The effect of the original and current couple was marked by a special audience hush I witnessed for both performances, a rare and memorable moment in the theatre experience.

Rojo is to be congratulated for this inclusion of company, the apprentices and students, with such a focus on the delivery of memorable froth.

The Tall and the Small; Three more Swan Queens

I was privileged to see all four Odette-Odiles and their Siegfrieds, plus the nasty von Rothbarts of Alexander Reneff-Olson and Nathaniel Remez in the company to Tab Buckner, and dance professionals Carlos and Carolyn Carvajal, intensifying my pleasure. Standing ovations, at their conclusions,  nice and deserving, given the recent announcement of three imported artists to dance in the final week of the company’s season. None of the principal artists need feel they take a back seat for the guests. The company doesn’t need imports.

Ballet’s production of Swan Lake as presented by Helgi Tomasson. It was most gratifying. At the outset, let me record the fact that all four interpretations contributed to solidify either its reputation or the calibre and accomplishments of its dancers.  Guest artists should merely supply the finishing touches, a tad more sheen.

Frances Chung was partnered by Joseph Walsh, Wona Park by Wei Wang and Sasha de Sola by Isaac Hernandez.  I would characterize the three casts as sweet, dramatic and elegaic in that order, all thoroughly engulfed by the story with its technical demands, all handily met by the three sets of dancers. Foettes did travel, but had their fair share of doubles in the beginning of those vaunted 32.

I registered Nathaniel Remez as the von Rothbart for Park and Wang, Reneff-Olson for de Sola-Hernandez. Reneff-Olson by this time has inhabited the role enough to provide nuance with Remez rapidly on his way.

Sasha Mukhamadev doubled as one of the two principal swans and as the Spanish contender for Siegfried’s hand in Act III.  An interesting and promising note on casting was the inclusion of Jacey Gailliard as her partner swan, size wise. Matching Sasha, Jacey clearly has the limbs and carriage of a Balanchine dancer in contrast to Sasha’s Russian training but they paired well.  Jacey needs work on her rond de jambe en l’air, but otherwise was fully on target.

In addition to their pleasure, the Carvajals made some interesting observations. Carlos observed the costuming was mostly on the autumn and winter palette.  Carolyn observed that the lighting on the ACTs II and IV mountain was quite oppossite to where the moon could be seen in the sky.