Nashville Ballet
The Rite of Spring With Repertory
8 p.m. Feb. 8; 2 & 8 p.m. Feb. 9
Polk Theater, TPAC, 505 Deaderick St.
Tickets available through Ticketmaster, 255-9600 or www.ticketmaster.com
Nashville Ballet has built into its company logo the phrase, “Ballet: the athletic art.” Seeing a rehearsal validates that label and lends credence to the claim that ballet dancers are among the finest athletes on the planet. What they do demands sustained exertion that soaks their rehearsal togs with sweat as they exhibit strength, flexibility, stamina and leaping prowess most people can only dream of.
But their athleticism serves a purpose beyond itself. This kind of dance is an expressive art and, more importantly perhaps, a narrative art: It tells emotionally powerful stories that range in manner from sophisticated formal poise to rowdy hayseed high jinks. It does this mostly without the aid of words. It is, in essence, a kind of mime—a distillation of gesture into cogent utterance. In many cultures dance is sacred liturgical ritual—used in celebrating momentous events such as marriages and births, preparing for war and coming to terms with inevitable death. But for most Americans, dance does not serve these purposes. Thus, dance as mime is a foreign idiom, requiring effort to be understood.
That effort's rewards may be great—and quite unexpected. For instance, last December Nashville Ballet artistic director Paul Vasterling choreographed some portions of Handel's Messiah, music that for some has become as much a part of the Christmas season as “Jingle Bells.” Vasterling said his intent was to make the music visible, to translate it into body language. At first blush, the idea seemed almost sacrilegious. But as realized, it was delightful—and revelatory. Handel's chorus “All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray” commonly sounds like dutifully performed and somewhat somber banality. Vasterling's dancers portrayed it as a light and joyful scherzo. Handel's all too familiar music was suddenly as fresh as it must have been when first heard in Dublin in 1742.
Ezra Pound repeatedly said the authentic function of art is to “make it new”—“it” being the drab actuality of our lives. Under Vasterling's direction, Nashville Ballet is doing that now with dance in Music City. Vasterling himself is abubble with energy and inventiveness. He clearly enjoys what he does, and his rapport with his dancers is good. His Messiah is an emblem for the promise of his company and the very form of ballet: It shows that dance may rescue us from foggy inattention and fill us brimful with delight.
Fourteen talented dancers have gathered around Vasterling, and he is putting their gifts to good use. They come from all over—from Soviet Georgia to the Philippines, from Southern California to Connecticut, from Utah to Virginia. Like talented string players in the Nashville Symphony, they are not likely to stay long before moving on to more prestigious places and better pay. But they may be followed by other talented performers. The situation is rather like a college athletic program, where no athlete can remain for more than four or five years: Continued success demands constant renewal. Right now, Nashville Ballet is fielding a talented team. And this weekend's program will let them strut their stuff.
The evening's culmination is Salvatore Aiello's embodiment of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, whose 1913 Paris premiere caused a near riot, so uncivilized did it seem at the time. Subtitled “Pictures of Pagan Russia,” the music “struck listeners as the culminating point of primitivism” (according to music historians Grout and Palisca). Jean Cocteau called the premiere “a pastorale of the pre-historic world.” In these days of hip-hop and heavy metal, The Rite of Spring no longer sounds catastrophic, but its urgent jagged rhythms and snarling dissonances do not remind one of Martha Stewart. Aiello's translation of Stravinsky's music elaborately mimes the irresistible urgencies of the human heart's molten core. Even in early rehearsal, this marriage of music and dance was lava in motion. The program's press release correctly warns that this Rite is “recommended for mature audiences.”
It is preceded on the program by two well-chosen shorter pieces. The opener is George Balanchine's “Allegro Brillante,” a bodying forth of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 3. Featuring five couples, the ballet emulates what the original prima ballerina Maria Tallchief called the music's “expansive Russian romanticism.” That music's rapid tempo makes difficult steps more difficult, even as it adds to the dazzling effect of strength combined with precise timing and gestural breadth. About this piece Balanchine said, “It contains everything I know about classical ballet in 13 minutes.” Though quite a bravura piece, it is as civilized as Rite is savage.
This is followed by a piece that blends civility and latent savagery into a sophisticated cocktail—Vasterling's own “Ballet: Tango,” choreographing music by Astor Piazzolla. Drawn by the many cultural layers comprising this Argentine dance, Vasterling set out to translate the tango's soulful energy, melancholic mood and sexual tension into the ballet idiom. His interpretation sees in the tango some pervasive paradoxes. Before dancing with the women, Argentine men practice and compete with one other. When they dance with the women, that becomes also a kind of competition. Though scions of a patriarchal society, the machos and hembras dance together as equals, and this ephemeral equality sizzles with conflicts: There is intense sexual attraction at work; but there is, on both sides, anger and resentment at vulnerability. In Vasterling's words, “The dance is in essence a kind of struggle for power.” His “Tango,” scored for four men and one woman, crackles with ominous intensity.
And it perfectly leads up to the volcanic tumult of The Rite of Spring. All three of these dances have at their core the same primal energy. Each dance uniquely transfigures that energy; each dance is uniquely and beautifully powerful, the two briefer and less densely textured works at once preparing for and counterbalancing Rite's seismic implacability. If this weekend's performances keep rehearsal's promise, they will be unforgettable.
