Magical transformations are afoot at the Sarasota Ballet.
In Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, Puck’s elixirs alter affections and give a man the head of a donkey, as in the source material, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In David Bintley’s “Still Life” at the Penguin Cafe, dancers in animal heads frolic amongst the humans, but with a somber subtext; these animals — from the Great Auk (the Atlantic’s original penguin) to the Texas Kangaroo Rat to the Southern Cape Zebra — are all endangered or extinct. The Dream whisks you away into a world where it’s entirely possible to believe in wooded glens and fairy mischief. In “Still Life” (note the pun), a Utah Longhorn Ram can dance elegantly in an evening gown with a jazz-handsy entourage of men in white tie and tails, and a Brazilian Wooly Monkey in a ringmaster’s outfit can lead a group number, but it’s human mischief we’re subtly but firmly reminded of — particularly by a stunner of a closing tableau which I won’t reveal here.
Together, the two dances — both company premieres — make up a program the Ballet is calling Dreams of Nature, which has one more performance tonight at 7:30 at the Van Wezel.
Magicians can make mistakes. In The Dream, Oberon, King of the Fairies, sends Puck, his trusted sprite, on a mission to punish his queen, Titania, after she bests him in what amounts to a custody battle. Puck does succeed in dropping love potion into a sleeping Titania’s eyes just as Oberon ordered, leading to her sudden infatuation upon waking with the donkey-headed Bottom. But the king’s decision to meddle in the troubled love affairs of two mortal couples makes matters worse when Puck misunderstands who’s supposed to fall in love with whom.
Ashton shaved off some of Shakespeare’s scenarios — the Athenian royals, the disgruntled parents, Bottom’s play within a play — but the central story is made surprisingly clear by the choreography and the company’s vivid performances; you don’t have to have read the play to understand the proceedings. In fact, there’s something about seeing the story told in dance, not dialogue, that elevates the level of enchantment. Plus, of course, there’s the glorious score, Mendelssohn’s concert overture to Midsummer — the one with the wedding march — and it’s played well here by the Sarasota Orchestra under the baton of Ormsby Wilkins.
It helps that the king and queen of the fairies wear their regal bearing so naturally. Guest artist Friedmann Vogel, principal dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet, is an elegant Oberon, his charisma evident from the moment he enters, his movements precise and commanding. There were some opening-night technical difficulties — headgear troubles (he finally flung the whole thing emphatically into the wings); a shaky landing or two. And note to designers: Maybe it’s not a good idea to fill the stage with smoke when your danseur noble is about to exit so close to a stage boulder. But his reconciliation pas de deux with Titania (Victoria Hulland) was lovely; Hullan, at once imperious and fragile, was exquisite throughout both in her line and in her facial expressions, as when it registers on her that she’s been enamored of an ass.
Ashton’s treatment of the mismatched lovers — Hermia (Amy Wood), Lysander (Jamie Carter), Helena (Kate Honea) and Demetrius (Ricardo Grazinano) — is a masterful display of push-me/pull-you comic/romantic dance. I especially liked Honea’s Helena — the most hapless of them all, scorned by Demetrius at first, then finding herself adored by both men and loathed by her friend Hermia — leaping into embraces she simultaneously tries to escape. The prim, Victorian-esque garb (including Graziano’s gigolo mustache) were also a joy. The costumes and the moonlit forest set were both brought in from the Birmingham Royal Ballet courtesy of David Bintley, its director.
But the star of this Dream, by my eye and the applause of the audience, was Ivan Duarte as Puck. A corps member, compact and quick, he appears born to the role. His leaps stay airborne long enough that you think this Puck really can fly, and his demeanor is the very definition of puckish: happy to be making mischief and tickled to make us, the audience, co-conspirators in the fun.
It’s hard to dance in an animal head, particularly when you’re one of three penguin butlers carrying trays of cocktails; something’s gotta give. Something did during the first section of “Still Life” at the Penguin Cafe — one of those plastic cocktail glasses. But a penguin retrieved it, effortlessly maintaining the high style and attention to detail that made Bintley’s ballet such an entertaining, wacky but serious homage to the animals we claim to care about.
A horrific bit of penguin lore inspired the choreographer, according to a program note: In 1844, three fishermen in Iceland clubbed to death the last remaining mating pair of Great Auks, and as a final fillip bashed in the auks’ single egg. A lone Great Auk (Ryoko Sadoshima) enters the stage first, an echo of that sad story, but as her butler pals join her in serving the human guests they all become downright jaunty.
There’s that tension throughout; the animals (that is, the animal-headed dancers) are charming, but there’s a subtle inherent critique, that we cutesify and anthropomorphize these animals at the same time that we’re letting them die out. The Ram (Kristianne Kleine) is glamorous in her gown, but trapped by her entourage. Humboldt’s Hog-nosed Skin Flea (kinetic Katelyn May, in orange leotard and bugged-out helmet) is all over her fellow dancers — a group of men dressed as if for an English Morris dance — but she's their target, too.
The Texas Kangaroo Rat (a virtuoso comic turn by Logan Learned) is all alone, self-sufficient, making up new ways to skitter around the stage, but you know he’s also prey. And in the most visually stunning segment, the Southern Cape Zebra (an amazingly agile Nicolas Moreno) is all but ignored by a cadre of chilly-chic women dressed, like him, in black and white.
Bintley borrowed from ballroom, folk, even square dancing in creating the ballet, in fine synergy with the late composer Simon Jeffes of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, whose score ranges from oompah tuba to Phillip Glass-ian hypnotics (again, played well by the Sarasota Orchestra). Bintley was present for the performance last night — present and prescient, as it turns out: He created the ballet in 1988, when environmental concerns were perhaps not as front-and-center as they are now. The ballet's relevance, and its sheer inventiveness, make it a worthy addition to the Sarasota Ballet repertory. I’d see it again.
