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REVIEW: Tulsa Ballet Anniversary Gala
Published: 12/21/2008 4:01 PM
Last Modified: 12/21/2008 4:01 PM

Today is the final performance of Tulsa Ballet’s “The Nutcracker” for this season. I’m not sure who will be dancing the principal roles, but after watching the ballet company’s “Anniverary Gala” Wednesday, I’m of the opinion that it could be anybody in the troupe.
The gala, held in the ballet’s Studio K/Kivisto Hall, was at once a look back, a look ahead and – given the fact that the program included a section from the company’s “The Nutty Nutcracker” – a look askew at what this company is capable of doing, and the depth of talent it has.
For example, the second half of the show opened with Ke Da and Mikhail Ovcharov in a vigorous, Russian-style male solo called “Gopak.” It’s designed to look improvised, as if the dancer is showing off by doing every wild leap and multiple turn he can imagine, and Da and Ovcharov flung themselves gleefully around the Kivisto Hall stage with abandon.
What made this performance even more impressive was that Ovcharov wasn’t supposed to dance the piece. He stepped into the role when Mugen Kazuma was injured the night before during rehearsal.
That is one of the strengths about Tulsa Ballet that perhaps we don’t comment on as much as we should – that, while the company has a hierarchical structure with principal dancers, soloists and corps de ballet members, there the talent is spread more or less evenly throughout the troupe.
Therefore, what might seem to be a gimmick – like having the women of the company perform sections from Robert North’s all-male piece “Troy Game” – in fact is a powerful demonstration of what these women can do. They also gave the piece a different dimension. When men dance it, “Troy Game” is a testosterone-fueled competition. When the women of Tulsa Ballet performed it, the atmosphere is more collegial.
The evening also included several pieces by dancer-choreographer Ma Cong – an excerpt from his version of “Carmina Burana” danced by Rene Olivier and Wang Yi; the male solo “Crash,” a powerful, wrenching piece that Cong performed; and a section from “Melodia,” a piece created for Des Moines Ballet that again gave one the chance to see some dancers in new ways – such as Serena Chu, whose dancing in this piece was nothing short of breathtaking. Chu brings a unique passion to roles like this, dancing with a fervor that imbues even the most abstract choreographer with palpable emotion. Her dancing in “Melodia” wasn’t deliberately showy – she was very much a part of the quartet that performed this piece – yet she commanded the attention from start to finish.
The pas de deux from “Don Quixote” featured principals Alfonso Martin and Karina Gonzalez – when they weren’t being comically upstaged by Yi and Da, and Ashley Blade-Martin and Kate Oderkirk, respectively.
It showed that any of these performers are able to perform this difficult dance well – and that they all possess a nice sense of humor (Gonzalez’s sidelong glance at Blade-Martin and Oderkirk as they took their bows was a priceless moment of “diva attitude”).
The evening also included the final pas de deux from Young Soon Hue’s “This is Your Life,” a work that I’ve now seen performed about six times, and each time I see it I am more convinced that it may well be a work of genius; and a preview of one of the ballets that will have its world premiere this spring as part of “Mediterranea,” Tulsa Ballet’s series of creations. This work, by Tony Fabre, featured Cong and Chu in a ballet of extreme physicality and arresting visual poetry.
Several former members of the company returned to perform. Daniela Buson, now one of the company’s ballet mistresses, joined Martin for the pas de deux from Nacho Duato’s “Rassemblement,” while Serkan Usta and Lori Grooters performed a duet Usta choreographed for the company they run in Des Moines, Iowa.
And Buson and Wilson Lema re-created one of the funniest things Tulsa Ballet has ever done – the Snow Scene from “The Nutty Nutcracker,” with Buson in full Snow Queen regalia and Lema in a full-body suit that made him look like a bodybuilder gone to seed. Of course, some of the most hilarious moments – Lema seeming to stagger and lose strength during a lift, only to raise Buson up again – were also some of the most physically demanding things as well.
This was followed by men in tutus turning the snow scene into a mock football game, with Ricardo Graziano as the orange-haired referee doing some impressive pointe work in the course of his duties.
Some of the company’s dancers were in the audience, and afterward one of them, Alexandra Bergman, said, “At first I was disappointed that I wasn’t dancing. But now I think I had more fun watching it than I would have had being on stage.”

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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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