"new, amusing, and ingenious..."

July 9, 2003 performance reviewed by Jocelyn McGrath

The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet is a dance company that is ambitiously and successfully redefining the fusion of classical ballet and contemporary dance. They go beyond the current boundaries of these two forms and present a fresh style based on the classical repertoire of movement. This company performs the works of various choreographers, both the classic ballets and modern pieces, and has an enormous outreach organization, which includes The Aspen Ballet School and the Aspen Dance Festival.

The company is not founded on the choreography of one person or small group of people or a single style, but is created with the aim to perform work by many choreographers of a variety of styles. One commonality among the pieces they performed at Jacob’s Pillow this season was that all the pieces were abstract in meaning, and they eschewed the more conventional expression of emotion through dance.

Throughout the evening the precision, athleticism, grace, and extension of ballet were applied to the full palettte of a modern sensibility. It was a pleasure to see the longer line of en pointe put to new imaginative ends.

Sections from Vertical Dream choreographed by Nicolo Fonte, demonstrates the possibilities of such strong technique and control. A female dancer slowly extends one leg upward in a stunningly high, straight, forward lift while her upper body seems to drape and ripple backwards and downwards from her pelvis. Or, a female dancer leaps onto one arm of a male dancer, where she is caught and held still, without the man moving anything but his arm. Moves like these are spellbinding and seem supernatural.

The first two pieces of the performance, sans detour by Dominique Dumais and Ave Maria by Dwight Rhoden, repeatedly demonstrated the company’s virtuosity. sans detour had a dramatic aspect, and was the most conventional of the evening’s work, despite a strange score that included works of JS Bach and Phillip Glass.

Then the sensibility changed dramatically as the audience was treated to new, amusing, and ingenious effects created by choreographer Moses Pendleton in the piece Noir Blanc. Moses Pendleton, co-founder of the Pilobolus and founder of Momix, has created a wonder.

Using a combination of relatively low-tech devices — a scrim showing projected visual images, body suits divided vertically, half white (which glowed in dark lighting) and half black — the dancers became at times utterly abstract, and at times thoroughly human, but able to appear to do things that really are not humanly possible.

The choreography of the piece was relatively simple (though may not have been easy to perform). The "magic" of Noir Blanc hid in costume and lighting which created a kind of whole body shadow dance. We were literally "oooh-ing" and "aah-ing" as the dancers appeared to be levitating and flying across the stage.

Considering the facility and virtuosity of the dancers of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, I can only imagine that in the future there will be many more choreographers who will want a chance to play with and extend their skills.