Young Chang Using what they call a...
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Young Chang
Using what they call a “vocabulary of movement,” choreographers
and dancers at Ballet Pacifica will communicate about everything from
relationship struggles to arranged marriages through dance.
The 2002-03 Contemporary Ballet Series will open today with the
feature premiere of Dominic Walsh’s “Love Intr-fear.” Also on the
program are Paul Vasterling’s “Saltimbanques, Antony Tudor’s “Jardin
aux Lilas” and George Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante.”
“It’s an eclectic mix of pieces,” Ballet Pacifica’s artistic
director Molly Lynch said. “And I would say, in a way, it’s sort of a
broad look at relationships.”
The four pieces are mostly abstract, without a clear story line,
but still with essential characters that drive the flow and
interaction of dance. “Allegro Brillante” and “Jardin aux Lilas” are
what Lynch calls 20th-century masterpieces. “Love Intr-fear” is a new
piece developed for Ballet Pacifica’s Pacifica Choreographic Project
2001 and makes statements on relationships between people -- on the
compromises, dominance issues and intimacy between a couple.
The last piece is about clowns.
“They kind of have a good, slap-happy good time doing it,” Lynch
said. “It’s also kind of about relationships.”
Walsh’s “Love Intr-fear” was inspired by Franz Schubert’s Four
Impromptus. His pieces are almost always inspired by music and
created around it.
The eight-dancer piece is not a literary ballet, but there is an
intimate story between the two main dancers about moving forward in a
relationship yet remaining independent.
“I’m really trying to provide a visual explanation of the music,”
said the six-year principal dancer for the Houston Ballet. “Usually
my story sort of unfolds through that. This was very much an example
of that. I would say that the music gave me a vocabulary for
movement, as the movement develops on the specific dancers I had to
work with.”
Walsh said that any more information had by a choreographer when
starting to create a piece can be limiting.
“You’re not always open to development,” he said.
But when you leave a work illusive enough to allow audience
participation, in terms of attitudes and perspectives in receiving
the piece, “it ends up coming from an honest and humble place,” the
choreographer said.
Lynch said she finds Walsh’s work interesting, movement-wise,
while Tudor’s dance is psychological and dramatic, Balanchine’s is
musically dynamic and Vasterling’s is spotted with heavy character
development.
“I think that’s what sort of the beauty of a mixed repertory
program is,” she said. “It’s sort of like going to a museum and
seeing classical and contemporary work as well as a modern piece, I
guess. I like the variety.”
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