Barre Band
Nashville Ballet teams up with local belter Jonell Mosser
By Lisa A. DuBois
Nashville Ballet’s Spring Series
8 p.m. Apr. 23; 2 & 8 p.m. Apr. 24
TPAC’s Polk Theater, 505 Deaderick St.
$15-$27; for information call Ticketmaster, 255-ARTS
It isn’t that Jonell Mosser has forsworn the crowded dives and smoky nightclubs where her throaty, hellzapoppin’ vocals have always been appreciated. And it isn’t that one of Nashville’s earthiest and most popular chanteuses has gotten above her Kentucky raisin’. It’s just that sometimes a girl likes to dress nice and go uptown.
Which is exactly where Mosser is heading this weekend, her bluesy songs in tow, when she stars in the world premiere of a new ballet at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. On Friday and Saturday, the Nashville Ballet is ending its year of recovery from last season’s tornado with a blowout repertoire of dances, including Trey McIntyre’s “Like a Samba”; George Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes Pas de Deux”; the first company reprisal of artistic director Paul Vasterling’s “Remnants of Light”; and the world premiere of Vasterling’s “Pop!,” which features Mosser singing live onstage with her band Enough Rope.
Last summer, when Vasterling was named artistic director of the company, he went searching for Mosser. He’d seen her perform in Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s production of Tapestry several years before and longed to choreograph to her rockin’ music. Vasterling sat in on Mosser’s concerts at her regular haunts like 3rd & Lindsley and The Bluebird Cafe, scribbling notes on his napkins about the songs he liked and thought he could use. One night he walked over and asked her if she’d appear with the Nashville Ballet.
“I did a doubletake and said, ‘A ballet?’ ” Mosser remembers. “He was so nervous. I could tell he thought I was going to say no—and I didn’t. I was just stunned because I knew he was legitimate. I’ve worked in bars long enough so I can tell the loonies, and he wasn’t one. He was too nice a boy to be in that bar anyway.”
In fact, “Pop!” will be the second time that Vasterling has mined talent from the local music community for an original ballet. He first tapped Nanci Griffith to perform live onstage to “This Heart,” which has been one of the company’s most popular dances; the Ballet showcased the work last month in Switzerland as part of the Tanz Ensemble.
If Griffith sings country-tinged folk, however, Mosser delivers pure soul. Vasterling has plucked the following tunes from her repertoire: “Slaying Dragons,” “Parasite,” “Even If You Go,” “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” “Ordinary Splendor,” and “What You Did to Me Last Night.” While the dancers leap, pirouette, shimmy, and slink to the music, Mosser will be folded into the action, like a singing narrator who moves in and out of the performance, at times joining her band on a platform at the back of the stage.
Inspired by a “popular culture” exhibit in Atlanta that included Andy Warhol’s famous soup cans, Vasterling began to ruminate on how images of popular culture have leeched into our daily lives. Each of the songs in “Pop!” contains some reference to those images. In “Slaying Dragons,” for example, the dancers conjure up Richard Nixon, Marilyn Monroe, and Madonna as they cavort around the stage. The number “Even If You Go” finds dancer Alexei Khimenko as the resident hunk chugging a Diet Coke and weaving among the office steno pool. And in “Parasite,” Vasterling’s tribute to the Bob Fosse style, the dancers flaunt their pretty faces and pretty bodies, all facades. Vasterling says his concept for this piece was inspired by the relentless Ava Harvey/Dan Walters Toyota commercials.
The song “Ordinary Splendor,” on the other hand, has dancer Anna Djouloukhadze flirting with a herd of men before realizing that the guy committing little acts of kindness is her true Romeo. “It’s the ordinary splendor we miss so often,” Mosser explains.
In other dances, Erin Spindler will tackle the lead role in “Remnants of Light,” and Russian-born Khimenko and Japanese-born Mayumi Hanabusa will star in the American salute “Stars and Stripes Pas de Deux”—a purposefully ironic casting decision. The Spring Series will also mark the swan song for six-year veteran Marcus Bradford and for Nicole Johnson, who is retiring after a decade of dancing with the Nashville Ballet.
The cast and crew of Nashville Ballet have journeyed a long distance in a single season—largely attributable to Vasterling’s unswerving ambition and belief in his dancers, and his dancers rising to the challenge. They’ve all exhibited the kind of hardscrabble resilience that Mosser writes about in her songs.
Jonell Mosser...the Nashville Ballet...maybe it’s not such a farfetched relationship after all.
Jonell Mosser...the Nashville Ballet...maybe it’s not such a farfetched relationship after all.
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