May 28, 2003
By WENDY HOWER; Staff Writer
The News and Observer
Some of us are ballet-impaired. We know who we are. Sure, we see “The Nutcracker” most every year -- it’s a family tradition. But we do not venture out during the rest of the Carolina Ballet’s season. We shy away from those cutting-edge, psychological ballets. We probably wouldn’t get them, anyway.
Artistic director Robert Weiss has something to show us: “The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen.” A starter ballet. A baby-steps ballet. Original adaptations of three classic stories: “The Nightingale,” “The Shadow” and “The Ugly Duckling.” They are at the same time intriguing and easy to follow for adults and children.
Of course, universal appeal is one reason Weiss chose “The Fairy Tales” to wrap up Carolina Ballet’s season. His goal is to more than double the company’s audience base to 10,000 subscribers -- the same size crowd that sells out the Durham Bulls Athletic Park for one night.
Weiss is engaging in a simultaneous dance of sorts -- with all of us nonballetgoers. The idea is that we buy tickets and walk into Raleigh Memorial Auditorium with an open mind, and he rewards us.
“I’m not doing anything to popularize ballet -- I’m doing the work I want to do, which is art on the highest level,” Weiss says during a break in teaching his ballet class one morning. “But art on the highest level is accessible.”
Last chance
A few good arguments could coax us into “The Fairy Tales” this weekend. It is in the Triangle and nowhere else for four days -- and will never be performed the same way again. The 2 1/2-hour length is reasonable to sit through, with two intermissions. Tickets as low as $15 fetch pretty good seats.
World-renowned stars and New York-based choreographers have come to Raleigh to put it on. Ballet dancers don’t hide behind stunt doubles or computer animation: Their athletic feats are live on stage.
This is the last chance to catch an original ballet in the Triangle this season.
But perhaps the best reason to see “The Fairy Tales” took place in private, in the Carolina Ballet’s North Raleigh studios all day Sunday. Thirty or so dancers squeaked across the gray floor in ballet slippers and toe shoes, sweating in stretched-out leotards and holey tights. They come from nine countries, among them Cuba, Uruguay, China and Jamaica.
Without the help of costumes, lighting, scenery or orchestra, Melissa Podcasy, the company’s principal ballerina and Weiss’ wife, came to life as the mechanical nightingale. She swooped around the dying emperor, who jerked up from the floor as if attached to her by a string. She was killing him. The music by an accompanist on piano in the corner put knots in onlookers’ stomachs.
Down the hall, in another studio, Lynne Taylor-Corbett sat with costume designer A. Christina Giannini beside a giant fabric “nest,” slowly stitching the seams of a pinkish-beige eggshell costume. Taylor-Corbett came from New York for the fourth time as principal guest choreographer, this time for “The Ugly Duckling.” She choreographed the films “Footloose” and “My Blue Heaven”; her Broadway credits include “Titanic” and “Swing”; she has created moves for Dana Carvey and Ray Charles in commercials. And there she sat, sewing costumes because someone was out with a family emergency.
Taylor-Corbett is full of reasons to come to the ballet.
“It says these are other ways in which life can be beautiful,” she says. “If they’re just exposed to the arts there’s such a better possibility for cultural expansion.”
Influences
Even if we show up unprepared to “The Fairy Tales,” we are in capable hands.
The ballet was born in Raleigh with a solid pedigree. New York City Ballet principal dancer Damian Woetzel choreographed “The Nightingale.” He has choreographed ballets around the country and two years ago won the Dance Magazine Award. As late as Sunday, Woetzel was away in New York dancing the part of Frantz in George Ballanchine’s ballet, “Coppelia.”
“The Ugly Duckling” is in the care of Taylor-Corbett, who collaborated with composer Michael Moricz in New York and by phone. He is former music director for the PBS show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” and dedicated his new score for “The Ugly Duckling” to the late Rogers.
Weiss brought “The Shadow” to life. He was artistic director of the Pennsylvania Ballet in the 1980s and has won critical attention for the Carolina Ballet in the past five years.
Ballet for newbies
Expect rather straightforward adaptations of the three fairy tales. Arrive a few minutes early and read the notes in the program to figure out what’s going on. During the show, a narrator gently leads us through “The Ugly Duckling,” the tale of a duckling rejected by others until she grows into a beautiful swan.
Silent movie-style cards offer clues throughout “The Shadow,” the story of a man whose shadow becomes flesh and blood, and then becomes master of the man.
“The Nightingale,” a story about the rivalry between a real nightingale and a mechanical bird, is conveyed through pantomime and dance.
It doesn’t hurt to prepare for a fairy tale ballet by finding the stories and reading them before you go, suggests Raymond Lukens, a ballet master with the Boston Ballet.
It works, he says, “if you totally understand the story without having to read the notes.” The ballet is probably not successful, however, Lukens says, “if it doesn’t move you and you’re falling asleep.”
Reprinted with permission of The News and Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina.
|