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Waltz with the animals Zoo station
Tulsa Ballet takes on 'Carnival of the Animals'
Tulsa Ballet's staging of "Carnival of the Animals" will feature a number of guest artists along with the company's dancers, including former dancers Megan McKown-Miller and Daniela Buson and Alessandro Angelini as Oliver (all pictured here with principal dancer Karina Gonzalez). Michael Wyke/Tulsa World
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Published: 3/22/2009 3:34 AM
Last Modified: 3/22/2009 5:20 AM
Words typically have no place in a ballet.
But then, there is little that is "typical" about Christopher Wheeldon's ballet of "Carnival of the Animals."
For one thing, it began as a result of a Broadway show, "Sweet Smell of Success." Wheeldon was the choreographer for this stage musical version of the classic film, which starred John Lithgow. The two men struck up a friendship, and Wheeldon asked Lithgow — who has written several books for children — whether he would be interested in creating the story for a new ballet based on Saint-Saens' zoological fantasy.
"What he came up with," said Ben Huys, who travels the world setting the ballets of Wheeldon, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins on major dance companies, "was a poem about a little boy who goes to the Museum of Natural History in New York City and gets locked in the place over night.
"He falls asleep, and when he wakes up, all the animals in the place come to life. And all the creatures he encounters resemble people in his life."
Huys spent several weeks in Tulsa setting "Carnival of the Animals" on Tulsa Ballet, which will present this comic story ballet as part of its mixed-bill performance opening Friday at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.
The program, titled "Carnival," features a trio of light-hearted ballets. Two are Oklahoma premieres — Wheeldon's ballet and Kenneth McMillan's "Elite Syncopations," a series of duets set to music of Scott Joplin. The other is the world premiere of Massimiliano Volponi's "Amade," set to music by Mozart.
Huys said Wheeldon's "Carnival" is "the perfect family ballet."
"Think 'Nutcracker,' only a lot shorter and a whole lot funnier," he said. "It's a series of short vignettes — some of them are only about a minute long. And the costumes are something to see, as the dancers have to appear as fish and chickens and turtles. We also have a narrator on-stage who becomes an elephant at one point."
In the original production, and later when the ballet was produced at Houston, Lithgow served as narrator. For Tulsa Ballet's production, guest artist Paul Hope will take that role.
The English-born Wheeldon is considered one of the most in-demand choreographers working today, whose works are a part of most of the major dance companies in the world. Tulsa Ballet has performed one of his ballets, the full-length "A Midsummer Night's Dream," in 2004.
Huys was a longtime member of the New York City Ballet; his tenure with the company as a dancer was coming to an end about the time that Wheeldon became NYCB's resident choreographer in 2001. However, his work for the foundations that oversee the legacies of NYCB's iconic leaders — George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins — led Wheeldon to approach Huys about setting some of his ballets on new companies.
Setting "Carnival of the Animals" on Tulsa Ballet, Huys said, turned out to be a relatively easy process.
"It's always a little easier when the dancers have a character to portray," he said. "It gives them a little more substance to what they are learning, something they can hang on to.
"It also gives them a chance to use their imaginations. With some dancers, you don't need to give them a lot of instruction — they take the idea of a character and just run with it."
Huys was impressed at how quickly the Tulsa dancers took to Wheeldon's choreography, which belies the comic simplicity of the story with its technical challenges and complexity.
He was even more impressed by the international quality of the company.
"Usually a company in the United States may have about 10 percent of its dancers from other countries," he said.
"But there in Tulsa, the company is like 60 percent from other countries. Personally, I find that inspiring. It's very rare to see, but it gives the company a unique quality because it brings so much color and variety to everything the company does."
CARNIVAL
mixed bill by Tulsa Ballet
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m.
March 29
Where: Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa Performing
Arts Center, 101 E. Third St.
Tickets: $20-$70. Call 596-7111, or online
at tulsaworld.com/mytix.
James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
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