Tulsa Ballet offered those who came to visit them on Halloween a stage full of treats, in the form of three extraordinary performances of ballets by some legends of contemporary dance.
“Legends,” the mixed bill program the dance company presented this past weekend at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, had the Oklahoma premieres of ballets by Jiri Kylian, Paul Taylor and Nacho Duato — three choreographers whose works are coveted by just about every major dance company in the world. These artists are also notorious for being extremely picky about the companies they will allow to perform the dances they make.
That Tulsa Ballet can have works by these three dance makers in a single program is a coup in the dance world in and of itself. But what is important is how well the company performs these ballets. And on that scale, Friday’s opening night performance was a triumph.
It started with an almost unbeatable high — Nacho Duato’s “Gnawa,” the 10th work by this choreographer Tulsa Ballet has added to its repertoire. Supposedly the inspiration for this ballet was the life and culture around the Mediterranean Sea, especially that of some Morrocan tribes. One could see some of that in some of the ensemble segments, as the dancers gathered into a writhing, spinning mass of humanity, with individual dancers erupting out of the scrum as if thrust skyward by a surge of irresistible ecstasy.
But the real subject of this ballet was speed and rhythm, with dancers whipping about the stage (at times, some of the dancers were moving so quickly that their arms and legs were practically a blur) to an insistent score of Morrocan music, the sinuous rhythms and driving beat perfectly embodied in the choreography.
And at the heart of the piece was a pas de deux between Alfonso Martin and Karina Gonzalez that was one of the most sensuous, erotic dances we’ve seen. Nothing about this piece was obvious or crude. Rather, it was an exercise in strength and tenderness, a battle between desire and control, with Martin endeavoring to entwine Gonzalez in a series of sinuous contortions from which Gonzalez always easily slipped free. Imagine a very teasing battle of the sexes, with the woman in delicate command of the man in passionate pursuit of her.
The third section began with a dozen dancers bringing candle-lit pots to the edge of the stage, which led to some stunning performances — Ma Cong and Serena Chu; a trio of Ricardo Graziano, Ashley Blade Martin and Ke Da; Rupert Edwards; Alexandra Bergman.
Tony Fabre, Duato’s assistant who set this piece on Tulsa Ballet, described “Gnawa” as one of Duato’s “happy ballets.” It certainly was a happy experience Friday night — it was one of those ballets that you can imagine watching and enjoying again and again. Duato’s best work has always had a visceral quality to it, and “Gnawa” had that in spades — it’s a ballet that gets under your skin in the best kind of way.
Kylian’s “Petite Mort” is another ballet about the way men and women act. It opens with about three minutes of silence, as the six men enter each balancing a fencing foil on the end of an extended finger.
This moment is balanced later, when five of the women enter, gliding around behind surprisingly solid evening gowns — a nice dollop of pure silliness, but also a way of addressing what is at the center of this piece: how the public facades people hide behind (aggression and power, beauty and aloofness) must fall away for there to be a true connection between a man and a woman.
These facades are hard to give up — a flourish of black silk occasionally must wipe the stage clean. But once the foils and dresses are out of the way, “Petite Mort” gives way to a series of duets that showcase Kylian’s unique style of choreography — combinations that start out at high speed, then shifting suddenly to slow-motion, creating an ever-increasing sense of tension.
The pas de deuxes also follow a kind of arc, from the violence of Albert Montesso and Megan Keough to the exquisite dance of trust between Graziano and Gonzalez, the tenderness between Wang Yi and Alexandra Bergman.
Taylor’s “Black Tuesday” closed the evening. Set to songs from the 1930s, Taylor crafted a series of vignettes that evoke the Great Depression. The costumes are ratty remnants of natty duds — Nathan McGinnis sported a battered top hat and cutaway coat, but no slacks, as he and Graziano cavorted with forced good humor to “Underneath the Arches.”
That veneer of happiness continues with Joshua Trader and Ashley Blade-Martin in “There’s No Depression in Love,” and in Deng Mi and Rupert Edwards prancing to “Slummin’ on Park Avenue,” and in the outrageous comedy of “Are You Making Any Money?”, in which a cigar-chomping Montesso dallies with Kate Oderkirk, Leah Gallas and Rene Olivier, and Keough’s impish urchin happily making her way through the world in “I Went Hunting and the Big Bad Wolf Was Dead.”
Taylor’s choreography looks simple; in these dances, it looked almost like generic Broadway hoofing. But there is a lot of detail in the movement — detail that is designed to reveal character, to show that underneath that determinedly happy exterior is a black core of despair. This starts to emerge in Marit van der Wolde’s solo as a single pregnant woman in “Sittin’ on a Rubbish Can,” and reaches its poignant depths in a pair of solos, both stunningly performed.
Olivier’s performance in “The Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was at times almost painful to watch — a woman on the street, whose spirit is slowly broken by the violence inflicted on her by the men in her life. And Martin’s solo to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” was an expressively athletic demonstration of the human spirit, bowled down by unseen forces again and again, yet always managed to rise one more time to hold out a beseeching hand.
