NCDT's season: From Neverland to D.C.

N.C. Dance Theatre has finally unveiled its schedule for next season, which will conclude with a preview of the company's summer 2013 visit to the Kennedy Center. 


The season most notable ingredients include a revival of Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's "Peter Pan," a second look at Twyla Tharp's "The Golden Section," and a new work by Jiri Bubenicek, the Czech choreographer NCDT introduced to Charlotte last year. If those sound familiar, it may be because I mentioned them here a few weeks ago, before NCDT's plans were complete. 


Some new details: 


The season opener will include artist director Bonnefoux's "July's Delight," based on Strauss waltzes and other bubbly Viennese music. Premiered at the company's summer home, the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, it will now get its Charlotte premiere.  


The annual "Innovative Works" will have four weekends of performances in the compact theater at NCDT's home on North Tryon Street. The company has been moving towards multiple weekends, when the market for a given program will bear them, partly in the hope that word of mouth will have time to boost ticket sales. "Peter Pan" will run for two weekends. 


The season finale will include "Rhapsodic Dances" by Sasha Janes, NCDT's rehearsal director. The work, premiered last fall, is an elegant showpiece based on Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini." Washington's Kennedy Center has picked it for NCDT's appearance at a dance festival there in June 2013.  


Here's the season's full schedule: 


Oct. 25-27: Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's "July's Spirit"; new works by Dwight Rhoden and Sasha Janes. Knight Theater. 


Dec. 8-9, 14-16, 21-13: Bonnefoux's "Nutcracker." Belk Theater. 


Jan. 24-26; Feb. 1-2, 8-9, 15-16: Annual "Innovative Works," new choreography by Rhoden, Janes, Mark Diamond and David Ingram. Bonnefoux/McBride Center, 701 N. Tryon. 


March 7-10 and 15-17: Bonnefoux's "Peter Pan." Knight Theater. 


April 25-27: New work by Jiri Bubenicek; Janes' "Rhapsodic Dances"; Twyla Tharp's "The Golden Section." Knight Theater. 


Subscriptions are on sale now. Single tickets go on sale in August.  


(Photo of Miami City Ballet in "The Golden Section": Kyle Froman Photography) 

Beethoven and Ailey, kindred spirits

Beethoven and Alvin Ailey came from different centuries, cultures and races. But they had a common goal. 


That hit me after an interview with the leader of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which comes to the Knight Theater next week. Robert Battle, the company's artistic director since last fall, never met its late founder. But Battle's familiarity with the company since he was a boy, and more recently his immersion in it, taught him about Ailey's ideals. One of those is: 


"As Mr. Ailey said so eloquently ...  'Dance comes from the people and should always be delivered back to the people,' " Battle said. "Mr. Ailey wanted this company not to be elitist. He wanted the audience to feel they were a part of what is happening on the stage -- either spiritually or just by the sense of openness and humanity in Mr. Ailey's work." 


Battle mentioned that in connection with a work the company will perform in Charlotte. At one point in "Minus 16," by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, dancers go into the auditorium and cajole members of the audience into coming onstage and kicking up their heels. To Battle, that brings Ailey's philosophy to life. 


Ailey's words made me think of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis," which the Charlotte Symphony and Oratorio Singers of Charlotte perform Friday and Saturday. Beethoven attached to his manuscript  a dedication: "From the heart -- may it go to the heart." 


Beethoven wanted his music to unite the performers and audience, just as Ailey wanted dance to do. Beethoven proclaims his vision even more clearly in the Ninth Symphony, with its climactic hymn to human brotherhood in the "Ode to Joy." 


The "Missa Solemnis" and "Revelations" -- Ailey's most famous work, and the finale of every Charlotte performance -- are both spiritual journeys. In the "Missa," the trumpets and drums cut loose in battle scenes that set off the singers' cries of "Have mercy on us!" and their final prayer for peace. In "Revelations," the dancers show us trials and turmoil before their troubles are washed away.  Only a few days apart, Charlotte will get to see the world as    Beethoven and Ailey imagined it. 


"Revelations" photo: Miami Herald









  

A night on the town with the Charlotte Symphony

I can't say how much it counted toward qualifying Charlotte as a world-class city, but South Tryon Street was alive Friday night. 


The outdoor tables at the new restaurants helped set the scene, but the Charlotte Symphony generated most of the action. The orchestra drew a healthy turnout to its KnightSounds concert, which meant that hungry people started converging on the Knight Theater around 6:30 p.m. for the pre-concert food. Thanks to the balmy weather, the mingling spilled out onto the plaza.


Everyone went indoors at 7:30 for an hour or so of French music.  Christopher Warren-Green and the orchestra brought on a nimble pianist, Swiss-born Louis Schwizgebel, who zipped through the solo part of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G. Some of the quiet spots sounded dim, no doubt because the stage had no acoustical shell to help project the sound. If a shell goes in this summer as planned, next season's concerts should fare better.  


For the concert's finale, the orchestra played Ravel's "Bolero" in tandem with a video by New York artist Matthew Weinstein. The star of Weinstein's show was a koi whose face was dolled up with a human woman's features. Since this was animation, realism didn't crimp her style. For instance, a couple of golden skeletons obligingly administered her makeup and lipstick for her. Then she went out and caused trouble, as befits Ravel's roaring conclusion. 


Then the concert was over, but the evening had more to go: The orchestra threw a street party on the closed-off Levine Avenue of the Arts. 


The trio slated for the next morning's Lollipops concert played on an outdoor stage. A woman on stilts wafted through the crowd as entertainers did their routines. Warren-Green, Weinstein and the musicians chatted with the concertgoers. Vendors offered dessert. Well after the entertainers packed up, people were still chatting and delaying the trip home. 

Even though the supermoon was 24 hours away, the orb hovering over the Green was so eye-catching that camera phones came out of pockets and purses to preserve the moment. Celestial phenomena aren't to be missed. If the Charlotte Symphony can  get on its feet once and for all, the phenomenon on South Tryon doesn't have to be so rare. 


Photos: John Graham 

A conductor looks at Sinatra

Since Frank Sinatra's singing is the driving force in "Come Fly Away," let's get another look at Sinatra the musician from Christopher Warren-Green -- yes, the leader of the Charlotte Symphony. 


"If he had been a conductor, he'd have been one of the best," Warren-Green said. 


That wasn't just talk. Warren-Green watched Sinatra in action. 


As a young freelancer in 1970s London, before he went into conducting, Warren-Green played the violin in the orchestra at the Palladium -- the theater that showcased generations of show-business greats. Of all the big names who came during Warren-Green's time, "Sinatra was the one one you could learn from," he told me in a 2010 interview. Sinatra's most conspicuous qualities: 


"His tremendous charisma and his professionalism. And most importantly, his musicianship." When Sinatra sang, Warren-Green said, "the way he turned phrases was spectacular." But Sinatra was more than a singer. 


Even though he brought along a music director -- Don Costa, who made some of the arrangements heard in "Come Fly Away" -- Sinatra led the rehearsals,  Warren-Green said.  


"He had slight body movements he'd direct at the orchestra -- very slight gestures. But they had a powerful impact," Warren-Green said. With Costa mainly observing from out in the theater, Sinatra even handled housekeeping chores like giving out the order of musical numbers in the show. 


"He came across as very humble," Warren-Green said. "He was different when he was performing. But in rehearsal with the musicians, he was like just another musician rehearsing in a professional way." 


(Photo of Sinatra in 1979: Associated Press) 

Making dancers at home in Charlotte

N.C. Dance Theatre gave four departing dancers a warm goodbye after the last performance of "Dangerous Liaisons," but it was of course a bittersweet occasion. 


At the end of the curtain calls Saturday night, artistic director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux came out and paid tribute to dancers who give more than choreographers ask. Then he called to center stage each of the four: Alessandra Ball, Rebecca Carmazzi, David Ingram and Justin VanWeest. Photos of them flashed onto the video monitors that had figured so prominently in "Liaisons." 


"They're going where love takes them," Bonnefoux said. Carmazzi will focus on being a mother of three. Ball and Ingram will join spouses in other states. VanWeest will join his girlfriend in California. 


When I wasn't reminiscing about their performances with NCDT, I thought back to an interview with Doug Singleton, the company's executive director, last summer. He lamented the fact that the budget cutbacks brought on by the recession were making it hard for the company to hold onto dancers. It was on him mind because of three dancers who left at the end of last season. 


NCDT's belt-tightening reached the point that the dancers only had 30 weeks of work in a year. In the wake of the recession, even that was more work than some people had, sad to say. But it sure hasn't helped NCDT hold onto talented people -- especially since dancers'  careers are so short that they can't afford to sit around. 


So, last year, NCDT's Dustin Layton, Sarah James and Kara Wilkes took off. Layton took a job with a Las Vegas show. James moved to be with him. Wilkes joined Lines Ballet, the San Francisco company founded by choreographer Alonzo King, a sometime guest of NCDT. (In case your memory needs a boost: Layton starred in NCDT's "Dracula." James was one of two blonde Sarahs. The long-limbed Wilkes looked about 7 feet tall on pointe.) 


It's to join Wilkes that VanWeest is leaving now. Between last season and now, the turnover is seven people. Comings and goings are a given in a dance companies, because of those short careers. But in a small company, seven people in two years is a lot of disruption. Bonnefoux and NCDT's other leaders have to spend time poring over prospective dancers' videotapes and holding auditions -- time that comes out of cultivating the company they have. 


Next season, when the newcomers arrive, the NCDT will offer 35 weeks of work, Bonnefoux said recently. Will that be enough to  keep dancers here? 


(Photo of Carmazzi, from left, Ball, Ingram and VanWeest by Peter Zay.) 

Violins of Hope: A welcome guest

Beyond what it had to say about the Holocaust and humanity, the Violins of Hope festival added breadth to Charlotte's music scene. 


Alongside Vivaldi and Beethoven came music of a sort that Charlotte rarely hears. Strictly speaking, it was modern music. But thanks to the context the festival provided, it became  meaningful music. 


Take "Acho't Ketana'a" -- "Little sister" -- by the Israeli composer Betty Olivero, from the festival's closing concert. It combined a soprano singing a Rosh Hashana prayer, three violinists playing fragments of J.S. Bach's Chaconne, and a string orchestra's tense, mostly dissonant background. I don't know if Olivero intended it this way, but to me it came across as a musical picture of the Holocaust's tragic collision of cultures. 


The festival also gave us two works by one of today's most powerful musical figures, Estonia's Arvo Part. Actually, Part's "Spiegel im Speigel", or "Mirror in the Mirror," a soulful piece for violin and piano, had turned up previously in Charlotte -- but through N.C. Dance Theatre, not a musical group. Just as Uri Sands' choreography expanded on the music's elegiac tone, so did the slideshow of concentration-camp photos that accompanied it this time. Part's "Fratres," or "Brothers," was a version of work that had been performed by the Charlotte Symphony -- in 2004. Playing off the title, the festival gave the anxious music  a "Band of Brothers" resonance by showing photos of the Normandy invasion. 


Violins of Hope also brought notable musicians to share the spotlight with the instruments. Unfortunately for me, I missed the return to town of Chad Hoopes, who played the Mendelssohn concert so compellingly last winter with the Charlotte Symphony. But Julia Hwang, a young Korean who studies in England, gave a compelling performance of Part's "Spiegel im Spiegel." 

And Shlomo Mintz, one of the most prominent Israeli violinists of the generation after Itzhak Perlman, took part in a series performances. In recent years, Mintz has been more active in Israel and Europe than in this country, and I hadn't heard him since the 1980s. So I was glad for the concert-hall reunion. He closed the festival by bringing out the grandeur, richness and nobility of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Christopher Warren-Green and the Charlotte Symphony, meanwhile, added their own shadings: tenderness in the slow movement, jubilation in the finale. Beethoven summed up the hope in the festival's title. 

4 dancers prepare to bow out

Get ready to say goodbye to four of N.C. Dance Theatre's leading members at this weekend's performances. 


The four dancers -- Alessandra Ball, Rebecca Carmazzi, David Ingram and Justin VanWeest -- have combined 30 years' experience with NCDT. Their decisions to move on from the company show how  dancers feel the pull of families and relationships. After all, they may play fairy-tale characters onstage, but they're still human. 


Alessandra Ball:  After the career milestone of starring in "Sleeping Beauty" in March, Ball has a personal milestone. She's s getting married and joining her new husband in the Northeast. This is her eighth season with NCDT. "I came here when I was 19," Ball said in a statement, "so I grew up here. I learned everything I know about being a professional dancer here." 


Rebecca Carmazzi: Her decision can be summed up three words: Jaidyn, Taurin and Rykar. Those are her three children with NCDT's Sasha Janes. "I have been a professional dancer for 20 years, and now I am ready to concentrate on my kids and become the best mom I can be," Carmazzi said in a statement. "Being a professional dancer is very demanding physically and you have to be in  amazing shape to do it. ... That's really hard with 3 kids." This weekend, closing her 10th season with NCDT, she plays the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in Janes' "Dangerous Liaisons." 


David Ingram: He's moving to Indiana to rejoin his wife, Alexis, who last year took a teaching post with the Fort Wayne Ballet. Ingram will teach there, too, but he'll visit Charlotte next season to choreograph a work in NCDT's annual Innovative Works program. He said the highlight of his five season with NCDT was working with NCDT's Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride in Balanchine's "Apollo." In "Liaisons," he'll play the other main schemer, Valmont. 


Justin VanWeest: He's moving to San Francisco to be with his girlfriend, former NCDT dancer Kara Wilkes. A native of Mebane,  he's one of several NCDT dancers raised in the Carolinas. "This company and city have been my home and ... will always be close to my heart," VanWeest said. He'll wrap up his seventh season by performing in "Liaisons" and the other work on the program, Dwight Rhoden's "Artifice."