Nashville Ballet presented a rewarding challenge to its audience last weekend at TPAC’s Polk Theater. Bluebird Cafe at the Ballet 2 provided a lot of dance. But when you’ve also got first-class artists onstage providing music, just where do you rivet your attention?
The evening opened with the soulful, smoky-voiced Jonell Mosser delivering torchy renditions of a half-dozen hits by famous Nashville songwriters. With pianist Jeff Steinberg as accompanist, Mosser didn’t fail to deliver. Yet it became a chore not to gaze her legendary way instead of focusing on the choreography of artistic director Paul Vasterling, who nevertheless mounted wonderful duets for each number. The highlights were a salsa-inflected “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” featuring Chris Stuart and Kate Kastelnik, the latter executing an elegant batterie; the cat-fight physicality of Christine Buttorff and Kimberly Torcivia in a jazz-flavored “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man;” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” with the married team of Matthew Christensen and prima ballerina Jennifer McNamara working through a series of stirring turns, lifts and body-bending adagios. The Bluebird Cafe is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary as Music City’s premier performing spot for songwriters. So the Act 2 presence of in-the-round tunesmith Gary Nicholson brought the overall show theme into clearer focus. Less a visual pull than Mosser, Nicholson is no less her equal at what he does best—playing guitar and Dobro and powerfully declaiming five of his favorite compositions in a segment called “Cryin’ Out.”
Gina Patterson’s choreography spotlighted the ballet’s large-ensemble work, mostly successful on the precision front and adroitly capturing the folksy spirit of Nicholson’s “More Love,” the slower blues of his “Shadow of Doubt,” and the comical impulses to be found in his “One More Last Chance,” essentially a three-chord rocker, probably best known to country fans through Vince Gill’s signature recording. Linda Coulter’s colorful costumes added visual appeal to this set.
Act 3, titled “Sunday, Sunday,” featured The Princely Players, a veteran gospel choir of 10 performing chantlike, a cappella versions of nine genre staples. The dance, choreographed by Robert Philander-Valentine, was a mix of variations, duets and ensemble pieces, with the ethereal Christine Rennie excelling with Jon Upleger in a haunting version of “Amazing Grace.” Allison Zamorski also distinguished herself in the solo “I’ve Been ’Buked.” Clad in Aubrey Hyde’s rich, blue-and-burgundy costumes, dancers McNamara, Kastelnik, Torcivia and Kimberly Ratcliffe deftly enacted “Birmingham Sunday,” memorializing the 1963 bombing deaths of four young African American girls in a Birmingham church.
Despite its high points, this series of dances failed to soar in cumulative effect, with the admirably achieved but dolorous vocal blends of the singers threatening monotony as sustained dance accompaniment.
The major artistic achievement of the evening was the Act 1 closer, “Ploughing the Dark,” a gut-check of a ballet piece choreographed by Sarah Slipper and featuring Sadie Harris and Upleger in a strikingly emotional and acrobatic pas de deux demanding both the tools of classical dance and an instinctual contemporary approach to raw, earthy expression.
Conceived originally as a single movement in a larger trio composition, Vanderbilt composer Michael Kurek’s music embraced the sonata form and indulged the synthesized shimmering harmonies and daring rhythms of Ravel, Debussy and Rachmaninoff. As pure music—and as pristinely played by pianist Melissa Rose, violinist Carolyn Huebl and cellist Felix Wang—Kurek’s piece is a dazzler. But it’s also fabulous program music for dancers, eliciting all the passionate romance and sadness of its inspiration: the love shared—often through a stream of poignant letters—between Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and his wife, noted actress Olga Knipper.
There was certainly nothing “Bluebird Cafe” about Kurek or his talent, but his work fit nimbly into this celebration of the eclectic Nashville music scene while showcasing the ballet at its best.
