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• Edward Stegge, dancer
• Frederick Wiseman, film director
• Robert Heindel, painter
• Jamie Bell, actor, and Stephen Daldry, film director

New and Cues

Ballet San Jose's Company Premiere Another Crowd Pleaser

Michael Phelan, April 14, 2012

In another of this season's company premiere performances, the clear audience favorite was choreographer Jessica Lang's unique and fascinating Splendid Isolation III. Danced eloquently by Maria Jacobs-Yu and Ramon Moreno, and set to Gustav Mahler's Adagietto, Splendid Isolation III is Lang's expression of the story of composer Mahler's terms of marriage to his wife Ada, a successful composer in her own right. Gustav insisted that Ada forgo her career as a composer in order to devote her life to him. To express Ada's letting go of one life's passion for another, Lang has choreographed a stunning couple partnering, centered around and symbolized by an enormous, pleated, flowing, white gown designed by Lang herself.

Ada's distance from her husband is expressed physically in putting her at the center of the gown, the pleats spreading out across the floor at least ten feet. At first her husband dances around her in confident strides, leaving the audience to wonder how she could move in such a restricting contraption, let alone dance. But Ada gathers and picks up the folds around her, revealing her legs, to dance with her partner. The dress becomes an active metaphor for her relationship as she enfolds and embraces her husband, she glissades alone, he hides underneath it. For a moment he supports her as he lies on the floor. Ada removes the skirt and covers herself with it. She emerges to walk with him and dance a solemn pas de deux. Eventually she puts the skirt back on, gathers the folds to her again and embraces her husband. As a metaphor the meaning of the performance was apparent and the affect was riveting and compelling. Splendid Isolation III is as well conceived and accomplished as any ballet I have seen anywhere, and a jewel in the repertoire of Ballet San Jose. I hope it returns next season.

Choreographed by George Balanchine, Allegro Brillante was first performed in 1956 by New York City Ballet, with Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallenes in the lead roles. Set to Tchaikovsky's unfinished 3rd piano concerto, opus 75 in E flat, this piece lives up to its name, allegro, as a quick and lively ballet with difficult, quick leaps and turns. Corps dancer Junna Ige and Principal Maykel Solas danced the lead roles, Ige in pink, while Solas was attired in blue along with the corps paired dancers. Although this is one of Balanchine's more difficult works to perform, with rapid movements such as déboulés and sauts, Ige and Solas rose to the technical challenge while making it look easy as well as fun.

Clear, choreographed by Stanton Welch to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, was the most abstract piece of the evening and harder to follow in terms of meaning. Eight men dance to express the thoughts and feelings of one man, danced by Soloist Jeremy Kovitch, with successive movements and combinations of dancers conveying emotional states: sadness, ego, doubt. A woman, danced by Principal Alexsandra Meijer, occasionally enters and leaves, sometimes dances alongside the men, at other times is lifted and supported by them. The program notes state that Welch originally intended Clear to have an exclusively male cast, but was inspired to add the role of the woman after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The role did not give Meijer much to do, and it seemed a waste of talent for a dancer of her caliber. In a performance art dominated by women, Clear gives male dancers an opportunity to strut their stuff, and bare chested, too. Exuberant and powerful performances were danced in a duet by Corps dancers Damir Emric and Joshua Seibel; in a pas de trois by Corps dancers Akira Takahashi, Francisco Preciado, and Principal Ramon Moreno; and also by Soloist Rudy Candia as the Last Man.

Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, choreographed by Clark Tippet to Max Bruch's title concerto, was staged by David Richardson, ballet master of American Ballet Theater (ABT). Clark had originally set this work on favorite ABT dancers, the women expressing the moods of ballet prima donnas, with four couples costumed in colors expressing the moods. Richardson chose the Ballet San Jose dancers whose personalities suited the moods: Amy Marie Briones and Maximo Califano in the role of the fiery Red Couple, Junna Ige and Maykel Solas as the cool Aqua Couple, Alexsandra Meijer and Jeremy Kovitch in the role of the gentle and elegant Blue Couple, and Mirai Noda and Ramon Moreno as the perky Pink Couple. Highlights were Moreno's tournee solo and Ige's pirouettes. The whole cast joined in a vibrant finale.

The evening's performance was another example of the success of the new direction taken by the new leadership of Ballet San Jose, bringing ballets new to the company that bring a refreshing new face and vitality.

Sascha Radetsky to Perform Prince Charming in Ballet San Jose's Cinderella

Sascha Radetsky, Santa Cruz native and star of the dance movie Center Stage, will dance the role of Prince Charming in Ballet San Jose's upcoming Cinderella. Radetsky will dance opposite Alexsandra Meijer’s Cinderella in the Stevenson version of the fairy tale.

Radetsky began ballet when five years old. At the age of 15, he received an invitation to join the Russian Bolshoi Academy. He later studied in the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington D.C. Radetsky went on to study ballet in the San Francisco Bay Area with Damara Bennett and Ayako Takahashi. He joined American Ballet Theatre as an apprentice in 1995, became a member of the corps de ballet in 1996 and ultimately a soloist in 2003.

Since he began rehearsals at the Ballet San Jose studios in late March, students in the ballet school have been lining up for autographs and photos.

Ballet San Jose presents Cinderella on May 4-6 at San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. Sascha Radetsky will dance the role of Prince Charming on Friday, May 4 at 8:00 pm and Saturday, May 5 at 8:00 pm.

(Note: BayDance.com ran the Bay Area promotion of the movie Center Stage in 2000. See the production notes and photos.)

ODC Theater Announces Walking Distance Dance FestivalS

ODC Theater is launching the Walking Distance Dance Festival - SF, a three-day, fringe-style event including a dozen dance artists, including ODC/Dance, guest artist Maya Dance Theatre from Singapore, past and present ODC Theater artists in residence, as well as SCUBA guest artists from Minneapolis, Seattle, and Philadelphia. The Festival will run from June 29 to July 1, 2012. ODC Theater will present a total of 16 performances and use all of the performance spaces on ODC's two-building campus.

Ballet San Jose To Host Teacher Training in the ABT National Training Curriculum

American Ballet Theatre (ABT) will hold National Training Curriculum Teacher Training Sessions at Ballet San Jose, to certify Ballet San Jose’s school faculty and professional dancers. The sessions will be led by the curriculum’s creators, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School Principal Franco De Vita, Director of ABT’s National Training Curriculum Raymond Lukens, and Susan Brooker, National Training Curriculum Development Committee Member, Artistic Board of Examiners & Instructors Member.

Session #1 runs from May 30 through June 6. Session # 2 runs from August 12 through 17. Enrollment in these intensive training programs is open to all dancers and dance educators. Candidates must have reached an advanced or professional level of ballet training. The tuition deposit deadline for Session #1 is April 16, 2012. The registration form for Session #1 is now available to download on ABT’s website at http://www.abt.org/education/nationaltrainingcurr.asp. Information regarding registration and tuition deposit deadlines for Session #2 will be announced.

Helgi Tomasson Honored by Dance/USA

The national service organization for professional dance, Dance/USA, will award San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson the organization's “2012 Honor” award at a conference to be held in San Francisco from June 27-30. Awards will be given on Thursday, June 28 during the Dance/USA Honors Celebration. An annual award by the Dance/USA Board of Trustees, the Honor award goes to an individual who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership in the dance field through artistic excellence and/or for force of vision.

Barishnikov Stars in Berkeley Repertory Theater

Ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov will perform in the play In Paris, a love story set in 1930's Paris and told in French and Russian with English supertitles. Directed by Dmitry Krymov, the play co-stars actress Anna Sinyakina and the Dmitry Krymov Laboratory. Based on a story by Nobel Prize–winner Ivan Bunin, the play is billed as mixing "movement with a romantic story and spectacular design". In Paris runs April 25 through May 13 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.