The first time a ballet set to Igor Stravinsky’s score “The Rite of Spring” was performed, it caused a riot.
Ninety-nine years later, Tulsa Ballet staged its first-ever production of “The Rite of Spring,” as part of its “A Ballets Russes Evening.”
No fisticuffs occurred among the audience during Friday’s opening night performance at the Tulsa PAC. The music, with its complex yet primal rhythms, its juxtapositions of lyrical calm and harsh angularity, elicited no boos or catcalls from the crowd.
But Adam Hougland’s 2009 ballet accomplished something very similar to what Vaslav Nijinsky’s original work achieved.
It looked nothing like what had come before it. It showed that ballet is able to create an atmosphere of dread and terror as effectively as it can evoke beauty and humor, that it can tap directly into man’s primordial emotions as well as his loftiest ideals. And it was absolutely thrilling to watch.
Tulsa Ballet presented “A Ballets Russes Evening” as a tribute to the company’s founders, Roman Jasinski and Moscelyne Larkin. The Jasinskis were stars in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, one of the companies that grew out of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes – the company that staged that original “The Rite of Spring.”
The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was primarily a touring company, performing classical and contemporary ballet throughout the Western Hemisphere. And when it ceased operation, many of its dancers settled in America, started teaching and ultimately formed dance companies.
The Jasinskis were pioneers in this, when they formed Tulsa Civic Ballet – the forerunner of today’s Tulsa Ballet – in 1956. And from the beginning, they worked to maintain the Ballets Russes philosophy.
And that philosophy could be seen in a nutshell in the three ballets that made up “A Ballets Russes Evening.”
Michel Fokine’s “Le Spectre de la Rose” is a short piece, really a bravura solo for male dancer, that could be mistaken as an excerpt from a traditional story ballet. It has a simple plot – a girl falls asleep and dreams the rose she is holding comes to life. And that’s it: a fellow decked out in a red-petalled headpiece and leotard springs in through one window, spends the next eight minutes or so endeavoring to defy both gravity and physics with leap after leap and pirouette after pirouette, then launches himself out the opposite window.
Yet, as an example of the energy that the Ballets Russes brought to the purely classical repertoire, it was excellent, with soloist Yoshihisa Arai in excellent form as the hyper-kinetic Rose. It’s an extremely taxing role, yet Arai maintained a feeling of lightness and lyricism throughout, making that dramatic final leap for an exit into a real triumph. Principal dancer Soo Youn Cho danced the role of the debutante with a nicely subdued sweetness.
(Beatrice Sebelin will dance the part on Saturday with Rodrigo Hermesmeyer as the Rose.)
George Balanchine, perhaps the greatest choreographer of the 20th century, got his start with the Ballets Russes (and collaborated with Roman Jasinski in the famed, if short-lived Les Ballets 1933).
“Apollon Musagete” was his first major success as a choreographer, and while it was not as completely free of narrative as his ballets would become, it pointed to the development of the plotless, or abstract ballet.
This is a ballet that uses stillness as effectively as movement, dance reduced to its essentials, so that the scenes have the effect of ancient Greek sculptures coming to life – although the ballet includes some surprising moments of impish humor.
Principal dancer Wang Yi was very good in the title role, going from full-grown child to a stately, almost regal presence as the ballet progressed. Principal dancer Sofia Menteguiaga and corps de ballet dancers Erin Pritchard and Alexandra Christian made for a lyric trio of muses. (Saturday’s performance will feature Alfonso Martin, along with Cho, Gabriela Gonzalez and Alexandra Bergman.)
Then came “The Rite of Spring.” No more beauty, no more myths. Instead of some pagan ritual designed to ancient deities, we have an industrial nightmare, a dystopian place of pipes and pillars and people, all colored in dull tones of beige and gray.
The basic scenario of Hougland’s “Rite” is the same as the original: a woman (Menteguiaga) is chosen out of the group to serve as a sacrifice. Yet the purpose is very different – here, the death is not a gift to the gods, but a punishment for stepping out of line, for being different, for being too human for this inhuman place.
Hougland’s choreography retains a touch of classical technique – there is a sense of grace in all the violent action – but force of the movement is always down rather than up: stomping, writhing, running. Asymmetrical lines are everywhere – in the stances of the individual dancers, in the way they come together and break apart. The ensemble numbers build to explosions of mass malevolence – when a circle of dancers forms, you don’t want to be the one in the middle.
As the Chosen One, Menteguiaga is mesmerizing. She goes at this punishing role full-out, so that the character’s emotions – fear, desperation, defiance, resignation, even the occasion glimmer of hope – are palpably expressed. And the climactic moment – as a steady cascade of harsh light and sparkling water falls on here – just about stops the heart. (Alexandra Bergman will dance the role Saturday – if her performance will be like the one we saw her give in a rehearsal last week, it should be equally compelling.)
The entire company is excellent throughout – the men’s ensemble dances were especially fine, with every dancer is perfect sync, no matter how extreme the movement required.
“A Ballets Russes Evening” continues with performances at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. For tickets, call 918-596-7111 or go to
tulsaworld.com/mytix.
