State Ballet of Missouri, Midland Theater, April 23-26, 1998 - Kansas City, Missouri

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1998 by Jim Williams

MIDLAND THEATER, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI APRIL 23-26, 1998

Ending his first full season in the State Ballet of Missouri driver's seat, artistic director William Whitener steered prudently through a program of two new works of his own choreography. The result was a safe trip with pleasant scenery, but no tire-smoking thrills.

First stop was Songs in the Open Air, a work in fifteen sections set to German art songs by Felix Mendelssohn. Frankly, that's a lot of lieder for one ballet, and the music's stylistic uniformity seemed to dominate.

The dancers maintained a fresh, uplifted atmosphere throughout. But the dances, though pleasant enough individually, often looked overly similar in movement quality and emotional tone. A pared-down and pumped-up Songs could be a very good thing--but as it stood, there was just too much of it.

The pace was more varied in A Midsummer Night's Dream, accompanied by Mendelssohn's music plus voice-overs of readings from Shakespeare's play. Here Whitener's approach was almost Broadway-like, alternating balletic production numbers with danced-mime sequences that advanced the plot.

The result seemed a bit choppy at times, but it got the job done: the story was crystal-clear, the dances were expansive, and the central figures of Titania (Kimberly Cowan) and Oberon (Sean Duus) had plenty of scope for characterization.

Whitener gave the play's human characters relatively short shrift, and even his Puck (Christopher Barksdale) was mostly a comic foil--although an exceptionally athletic one. Instead, the emphasis was on atmosphere. Whitener defined his fairies with quick, forward-carrying steps and wrist-flicking arm movements that evoked images of winged creatures flitting through the night; later, an extended pas de deux for Titania and Oberon used a graver, more dignified style to convey a sense of natural order restored.

Although it reached success, Midsummer took a decidedly conventional route to get there. Whitener's predecessor Todd Bolender, was, at his best, both faultlessly balletic and exuberantly quirky; by comparison, Whitener seems to be keeping cautiously to the middle lane so far. It remains to be seen what he can do with this versatile and assured company when he feels ready to step on the gas and peel out.