Hartford Ballet. - The Bushnell, Hartford, CT - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, Feb, 1996 by Robert Greskovic

Mood Swings, the title of Hartford Ballets fall repertoire program, wasn't meant to apply to the audience. Arriving late from New York City for the triple bill after transportation vicissitudes, however, put my mood in low gear. The disappointment of entering the theater at the intermission following the program's opener (Balanchine's The Four Temperaments) was nevertheless immediately eased by the vivifying buzz of the milling crowd. It's not often these days that audiences seem as eagerly engaged as this Hartford crowd was.

The program's centerpiece, Graham Lustig's 1987 Paramour (danced to Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos), kept interest keen. Set in a salon, marvelously indicated by Nadine Baylis's design scheme set around a divan, Lustig's soiree nods toward Antony Tudor and winks at Bronislava Nijinska. Four socially and physically gracious couples frame a more dramatically prominent fifth pair - Jeanette Hanley and Timothy Melody, almost recklessly abandoned. A still grander dame initially oversees all from the sofa, and eventually stirs up the dancing couples with knowing moves and a dashing escort of her own.

The role of the leading lady was danced by guest artist Eva Evdokimova; her soigne and drop-dead partner was Hartford's own tendrilly twenty-one-year-old, the impressively gifted Carlos Molina. Lustig's affair of couple dancing climaxes in a swirl of changing partners and delicately wrought emotions. It ends enigmatically by pairing one leading lady with the other and one leading man with his counterpart.

Hartford's strong and comely men dominated Choo-San Goh's inconclusive In the Glow of the Night (to Martinu's gushy Symphony No. 1). Hanley whizzed through a bout of brazen fouette turns amid the unitard-clad workout with its indications of the passing light of day. I returned to New York thinking about the bright lights on Hartford's ballet scene.