Recharging the company batteries - Hartford Ballet - Cover Story

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1996 by Muriel Topaz

There's renewed excitement about Hartford Ballet. The company is stirring and starring on several fronts. It is enriching the local cultural scene and becoming a respected national resource; it is a storehouse of the classics, a whirlwind of choreographic activity.

Founded in 1973 by Joffrey principal dancer Michael Uthoff, the company is an outgrowth of the School of the Hartford Ballet, which has from the start concerned itself with training at a professional level. The structure of the organization is unique; it has always been led by a triumvirate: the artistic director of the company; the school director, Enid Lynn, and the executive director, currently chief executive officer Pauline R. Kezer. In spite of the odds against it, the structure seems to work.

Under Uthoff, Hartford Ballet became one of Connecticut's leading cultural institutions, a company that first gained national recognition, then international repute from tours to the People's Republic of China in 1988 and nine Latin American countries in 1991. After Uthoff moved on to become director of Arizona Ballet, Hartford engaged in a careful, yearlong search which finally yielded the fortunate choice of current artistic director, Kirk Peterson.

Thoroughly qualified for the job, Peterson is a former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, Harkness Ballet, London Festival Ballet, and National Ballet in Washington, D.C., and a Varna competition bronze medalist. He is also an accomplished choreographer and a much-sought-after teacher. Even during his days as a star performer, he cultivated his interests in choreography and teaching. For a time he was resident choreographer and then company teacher and assistant to the artistic director of San Francisco Ballet. He has also choreographed for Broadway and spent some time as resident teacher at David Howard's highly respected New York City school. Lila York, director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Offstage series, who commissioned Peterson's Amazed in Burning Dreams, says he has "a command of the language of classical ballet . . . a quick, disciplined method, and a cooperative spirit. Soft-spoken, articulate, decisive, and unpretentious, Peterson, I believed, could work amiably, professionally, and expeditiously with the company dancers and elicit their best performances. But I was unprepared for the extent of Peterson's creative facility . . . With Burning Dreams, Peterson has accomplished one of the most difficult tasks in choreography--to make classical ballet look new again."

That is exactly what Peterson aims to do with Hartford Ballet--make classical ballet look new again. "I wish to have Hartford Ballet recognized as a company and an organization rooted in the classical tradition yet on the cutting edge of ballet choreography, concepts, and fresh approaches to tradition. Our diversity of repertoire should primarily reflect and be an outgrowth of the technique of classical ballet. The full-length classics, although representative of ballet's tradition of grandly scaled story ballets, are only one example of the choreographic manifestations of classical ballet technique. We should also strive to balance the repertoire with the periodic addition of ballets from the great masters of the twentieth century [while becoming] a hotbed of creativity whose goal is to excite Hartford, the nation, and the world." This is a man whose thinking isn't small!

Thus far, Peterson is succeeding admirably. During his initial few seasons he has (of course) choreographed a new Nutcracker, this one set in the 1 840s California Gold Rush. He has mounted Giselle and restaged and newly created several shorter pieces for the company. In rehearsal for next season is Peterson's full-length Coppelia, which is chock-full of authentic vocabulary and the old French steps; he hopes at some point to add Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, perhaps cooperating with another company in order to have a full cast. Added to the repertoire have been works by twentieth-century masters George Balanchine and Antony Tudor, and a stream of newer works by Colin Conner. Choo-San Goh, Jean Grand-Maitre, Monica Levy, and Graham Lustig. This season will get off to a glorious start on September 26 with the program, "A Tribute to Russian Ballet," featuring Bronislava Nijinska's Les Biches, Balanchine's Apollo, Michel Fokine's Le Spectre de la Rose, and the world premiere of Peterson's new staging of the Diaghilev classic, The Firebird.

As if one new Nutcracker weren't enough, Peterson will choreograph yet another for Christmas 1997, with an even more ingenious twist. Entitled The American Nutcracker, it is being underwritten by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, which has pledged $500,000 to cover the costs of mounting the ballet and providing all new sets and costumes. This new version will be set in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Giant Sequoia National Park. The Act I party scene will feature historic figures such as Mark Twain as guests; one of the Act II variations will include a Native American scene. After playing Hartford the work will be presented in ten performances over four years in the tribe's southeastern Connecticut reservation. Says tribal chairman Richard A. Hayward, "Dance is a significant part of tribal culture, and this agreement is a winning proposition for everyone."