The Trey McIntyre Project in Ma Maison.By Tara Mitton Catao
The Trey McIntyre Project reinvented itself Friday night with an evening of fabulous dancing to the music of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Roy Orbison.
What made the high-speed and energetic dancing in Friday’s performance at the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth so engaging is something subtle and quiet. Perhaps it’s all captured in the word “project”: This company does not call itself a company, but a project. It’s a long-term, dedicated undertaking to developing the artistry of the performers and choreographer Trey McIntyre.
The breeding ground for this artistic project for the last two years has been in Boise, Idaho, where the team works long and hard to perfect the dances that will tour. But when they are onstage, things really synthesize. You can feel the project’s collective freshness as they hit every movement nuance with verve and passion, and you can appreciate McIntyre’s outstanding talent as a choreographer.
The music of New Orleans is the source and inspiration for the first and last works on the program. McIntyre choreographed Ma Maison in 2008 and last week premiered his second commission for the New Orleans Ballet Association, The Sweeter End, at the Mahalia Jackson Theater with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band performing live.
Ma Maison is a ghoulish but lighthearted celebration of death and life in Mardi Gras style and with a quirky flair. With a deceivingly unstructured look that is highly choreographed, the expertly executed, fast-paced movement literally danced around the sparse notes of the music in the funeral marches. The wonderfully zany costumes were worn with a full skeleton mask that completely hid the face so that the body and movement quality of the dancers were accentuated.
Chanel DaSilva gave a strong performance of clarity and sheer energy. An upbeat ensemble section included a polished duet with DaSilva and her pirate harlequinade partner Brett Perry, as well as a striking moving tableau of street -fair revelry. Ilana Goldman and Annali Rose also gave strong performances. The tall John Michael Schert had amazingly fluidity in his movement and has beautiful legs and feet.
The second work was a premiere by the Project that originally was choreographed by McIntyre for Ballet Memphis in 2007. In Dreams is an outstanding work set to a collection of Roy Orbison songs and it nicely balanced the program. A quintet, performed on pointe by the ladies, was a never-ending combination of unusual gliding steps and grounded skips. In one beautiful section, surprise lifts evolved out of a string of five dancers working their way across the stage.
Lauren Edson was spectacular in her solo, and in the stop-and-start duet with Dylan G-Bowley, a terrific partner.
The last work, The Sweeter End, took another look at New Orleans but this time in a more urban post-Katrina view though it still pulled from the city’s heyday, interspersing some period costumes and movement motifs from the Charleston. It began with DaSilva as a graffiti artist throwing herself into athletic lifts with three men.
Perry was simply amazing, Rose was beautiful, and Jason Hartley’s solo was striking. Schert looked like he didn’t have a bone in his body, and Ashley Werhun’s duet with Perry was excellent. Every dancer had his or her moment to move and each one moved so differently, like one musician after another highlighting their instruments by improvising during a jazz performance. It looked totally spontaneous, but was precise and technical.
Like Ma Maison, The Sweeter End finished with a series of choreographed bows that delighted the audience. McIntyre then surprised them with an ensemble encore before the curtain closed on the party, where by now we all wished we were.
The Trey McIntyre Project repeats this program tonight at the Duncan Theatre on the campus of Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth. Tickets for the 8 p.m. concert are $37. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.