A scene from Miami City Ballet’s staging of Bugaku.By Jan Engoren
The Miami City Ballet is nothing if not synonymous with the name Edward Villella, the founder and artistic director.
Villella’s second act, after a long and distinguished career dancing with George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, was the creation of Miami’s world-class ballet troupe, which he has grown and nourished over the past 25 years.
His philosophy, like Balanchine’s, of making the dance preeminent over the storyline and bringing with it real-life elements and an economy of movement, is evident in his staging of classic Balanchine works of particular significance to his own dance career.
For the 25th anniversary, Villella has selected these meaningful works, and more important, two works that Balanchine created with him in mind.
The first is the exotic Bugaku, a tribute to the refined elegance of Japanese music and dance, evoking imagery of the Japanese imperial court, in which, in 1963, Villella danced the male lead. The second selection is the expansive Theme and Variations – where, again, Villella left his signature in the demanding lead role in the 1960 New York City Ballet revival.
These pieces, along with Jerome Robbins’ Fanfare, were part of MCB’s first program of the season, which played Miami and Fort Lauderdale and concludes its run this afternoon at the Kravis Center.
The first piece of the program is Fanfare – a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II that premiered on the night of her coronation in 1953.
Fanfare, choreographed to Benjamin Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, opens with a breathtaking tableau of ballerinas against a sky-blue backdrop, dressed in sherbet-colored tutus poised in a moment of stillness (a Balanchine signature) before they pirouette into action.
Villella appears onstage as the narrator, Major Domo.
Dressed as instruments in the orchestra – the woodwinds in blue, the brass in yellow, the strings in muted two-toned orange, and the percussion in whimsical stripes and sombreros – the show is lively and lighthearted, with dancers responding to the orchestral cues.
In particular, there is a comic exchange between the brass instruments and the percussion cymbals and drums as danced by principal dancers, Isanusi Garcia-Rodriguez, Renato Penteado and Carlos Miguel Guerra, husband of statuesque principal dancer, Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg, whose graceful and expressive harp lends an elegant and refined sensibility to offset the more jovial antics of the men.
The live orchestra (reinstated through 2013 thanks to a $900,000 Knight Foundation Arts Challenge grant) under conductor Gary Sheldon, plays an integral role in the piece and it could not be staged to this kind of effect without the live music. The music seamlessly integrates into the dancers’ performance and becomes a counterbalance to the story of the dance.
Bugaku, considered shocking when it first premiered, opens to the minimal sounds of string instruments (the score is by Toshiro Mayuzumi) setting the stage for the five female dancers, dressed in white parasol-inspired tutus, with geisha-white makeup waiting the arrival of the men, dressed in white samurai-inspired tunics.
Principal dancer Haiyan Wu, who danced with the National Ballet of China before coming to Miami in 2003, is both austere and sensual as she aloofly woos her bethrothed and the audience. Mimicking traditional Japanese modesty, with subtle movements of her head and countenance, she entices and beguiles her suitor, danced with aplomb by principal dancer Garcia-Rodriguez.
Representing a marriage ritual, the two dancers engage in a highly stylized mating imagery that begins as delicate and sensual and ends with the lovers entwined in an erotic and acrobatic pas de deux.
The choreography leads the extremely flexible Wu to contort her body in angular and unfamiliar shapes and to position her arms, hands, and feet in often awkward-looking geometric configurations.
The third act, George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, created in 1947 to Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 for American Ballet Theater, opens with a lavishly ornate blue-and-gold Russian-inspired backdrop.
The dancers, spotlighting Kronenberg, Guerra and the corps de ballet, are likewise dressed in blue and gold, like Russian porcelain.
The piece consists of a set of 12 variations, through which the complexity and beauty of classical dance is celebrated. Unconnected by a storyline, the focus is purely on the dance and gives Kronenberg and Guerra an opportunity to shine; his strength and agility highlighted by her grace and poise. (The minimal costumes are by Haydée Morales.)
Although staged with considerably less fanfare than one might expect for a 25th anniversary celebration, all three of Villella’s programs received standing ovations at the Broward Center on Nov. 12.
Miami City Ballet presents Program I at 1 p.m. today at the Kravis Center, West Palm Beach. Tickets range from $19-$169. Call 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org; or, call the MCB at (305) 929-7010 or toll-free at (877) 929-7010, or visit www.miamicityballet.org.