New works feel the sting. - Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre - dance review

Dance Magazine, Sept, 2002 by Steve Sucato

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Benedum Center for the Performing Arts Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania May 9-12, 2002

The music of rock icon Sting provided the soundtrack to two of three newly commissioned works on Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's season-ending program, "Brand New Day."

The contemporary dance program opened with choreographer Kevin O'Day's Sting/ING Situations, a marvel of intricate, densely layered choreography that had PBT's dancers undulating, bouncing, leaning, and flowing into positions that metamorphosed out of O'Day's improvisation-influenced movement.

Set to seven of the British composer's songs, the work used various combinations of PBT's dancers within its segments to test limits of balance and explore the creative impact of common gestures such as nods, waves, and karate-chop motions.

Although Sting/ING Situations's segments did not portray literal interpretations of Sting's lyrics, some imparted a decidedly dark take on a song's lyrics. In "Every Breath You Take," an intense love song became the backdrop to a man stalking a woman, and in the upbeat "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," an affirming message of hope was transformed into a tension-filled and violent sexual image that dancers Lauren Schultz and Dmitri Kulev executed with calm brilliance. Despite its complexity, the work lacked sufficient variety in its phrasing and at times became tedious to watch.

A collage of jazz music from the 1930s through the 1970s, played impeccably by Pittsburgh's Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, accompanied PBT's dancers in choreographer Robert Hill's jazz ballet Corcovado. Spiced with hints of vintage jazz dances and a healthy dose of cliched jazz attitude, Hill's ballet served as a joyful interlude between the two Sting-themed works.

Corcovado blended ballet bravura with the carefree antics of a living room romp to a favorite jazz record. Nowhere was that dichotomy more evident than in a section set to Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia." Daisuke Takeuchi shone in bravura aspects of Hill's choreography and, dancing the same role in a different cast, soloist Terence Marling brought forth the choreography's jazzy, playful seductiveness.

The least technical of the three works on the program, Canadian choreographer Matjash Mrozewski's Lost and Found, turned out to be the most compelling to watch. Mrozewski wove patterns of movement that expressed drama, longing, and hope around five of Sting's songs.

The ballet began with "Why Should I Cry for You," a solo introducing a pensive female character who acted as a thread linking the ballet's five segments together. Alternating in the role, principal dancer Ying Li and soloist Erin Halloran moved elegantly within Mrozewski's choreography, seeming to throw embraces into the air around them and then melting into a tightly clutched self-embrace, which they maintained from then on.

The lost-and-found theme was present throughout each segment of the ballet, including "Fields of Gold," in which a group of male dancers and a pas de deux couple evoked images from Sting's lyrics about a barley field in which two young lovers playfully hid from each other.

Mrozewski's keen sense of movement grace and poignancy in Lost and Found culminated in the ballet's final scene, when the hopeful message of Sting's song "Brand New Day" was transformed: Several of the ballet's central figures became lost once more as a succession of curtains were lowered, one by one, separating them from each other.