Kids
Only
Company
C
Cowell Theater
September 5, 2003
reviewed
by Rachel Howard
When can a children’s ballet charm grownups, too? When
the music is as layered and complex as, say, Prokofiev’s
“Peter and the Wolf.” Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale”
also fits the bill, but although it was composed as
a ballet in 1918 it is rarely performed as one. The
fiendishly polyphonic music, for a small ensemble, is
surprisingly folksy, danceable, and memorable if not
downright catchy. Combine that with a dramatic reading
of C.F. Ramuz’s rhymed story about a military man who
sells his fiddle—and with it his soul—for corrupting
knowledge, and you’ll have audiences of all ages paying
attention.
Which is not too say that Charles Anderson’s new production,
premiered at the Cowell Theater Friday, succeeds.
A
former New York City Ballet dancer and the son of two
well-connected East Bay ballet teachers, Anderson returned
from the East Coast a few years ago and, after a stint
at the helm of Moving Arts Dance Company, founded his
own troupe. His choreographic forays for the whimsically
named Company C, as well as Oakland Ballet, have been
dismal. Never have I seen so few ideas attached to so
much thankless petite allegro as in Voiceprint,
premiered at July’s Summerfest. At least Anderson then
had the humility to remove it from The Soldier’s
Tale’s shared program, which also presented a work
by James Sewell. But while this setting of The Soldier’s
Tale had potential for adult appeal, the choreography
proved juvenilely thin. Company C may have a children’s
matinee and school outreach hit on its hands, but adults
looking for a Friday night entertainment surely left
disappointed.
This production’s key strength is a fabulous recording,
uncredited in the program, led by conductor Kent Nagano
and dividing the narration between Sting, Ian McKellen,
and Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave’s performance as the
devil, especially, is so rhapsodically snarling that
you could have closed your eyes and found your imagination
still fully engaged. Which you might as well, since
only the blandest and most perfunctory miming acts out
the long passages of storytelling.
If
you kept your eyes open, it was probably because of
Sharon Booth. Anderson has had much better luck finding
interesting dancers than crafting interesting dances,
and Booth is his pillar. A recent Juilliard grad with
a refreshingly womanly figure, radiant skin, and a space-eating
jeté, Booth revealed serious stage presence beneath
pounds of theatrical makeup while mugging, Cruella DeVille-fashion,
as the devil. The other MVP in Anderson’s eight-member
company is the elegant Ashley Flaner, who took on the
work’s most difficult choreography (including a brief
passage of partnered turning) as the princess who helps
the soldier rediscover the deeper meanings of life.
Former Smuin Ballet dancer Charles Torres, in a guest
appearance, dispatched the military man’s classroom-combination
jumps and turns (a pirouette with a flexed foot held
at the ankle and hand raised in salute was about as
distinctive as the material got) with aplomb and an
appropriate air of naiveté.
Unfortunately, after the long mime sections, most of
the interesting music was left to a six-dancer chorus
in black tights and white masks. The mono-monikered
costume designer Vincent, who never met a pair of pointe
shoes he couldn’t glam up with sequins, contributed
well-constructed but often overly busy costumes. Matthew
Antaky’s excellent lighting enhanced Sedley Chew’s admirably
simple set designs.
Minneapolis-based James Sewell’s Appalachia Waltz,
disturbingly indistinguishable from Anderson’s choreography
in its blandness, opened the evening. The music was
by Edgar Meyer, whose homey Americana has been used
to more nuanced effect by the likes of Twyla Tharp and
Brenda Way. Six dancers, three wearing trousers and
suspenders to play the boys, skipped-to-my-lou through
a countryside where the occasional torso contraction
or angled arm counted as choreographic invention. The
cross-dressing was unconvincing (and unnecessary, since
the work really had no sexual content) but the dancing,
by Booth, Flaner, Laura Sefchovich, Katherine Orloff,
Lizabeth Saenz, and Amy Malepeai, was solid.
Photos:
first : Ashley Flaner and Charles Torres.
second: Sharon Booth as the Devil. Photographer:
Susan Vogel
copyright 2003 by Rachel Howard
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