Nora Smith & Cody Englander
Staff Writers
Prior to tonight’s collaboration between Chautauqua’s School of Dance and the Music School Festival Orchestra, Director of Ballet Studies and Principal Repetiteur Patricia McBride emphasized the importance of becoming one with the music.
“George Balanchine’s work is always astounding when you figure it’s been done for many years and companies all over America, probably in Europe, but there is a challenge,” McBride said. “You need the musicality when you dance Balanchine. You have to be at one with the music.”
At 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater, the School of Dance will perform an evening of pieces, including Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations,” accompanied by the MSFO, guest conducted by Dean Whiteside and Michelle Bushkova, the 2015 Chautauqua conducting fellow and current David Effron conducting fellow, respectively.
“[The performance is] expressive, emotional storytelling for music and dance. I was so eager to hear and see what they would do with the symphony, because it’s an abstract symphony,” Whiteside said, concerning Resident Faculty Member Kara Wilkes’ piece. “In this case, the scenario is quite interesting, because it’s a dreamscape, a journey into the unconscious. It adds a new perspective to the music.”
The School of Dance students first took the stage July 19, performing “Raymonda Variations” staged by McBride, followed by a contemporary piece titled “Dreamscape” from Wilkes and a neoclassical contemporary ballet style piece by Bonnefoux McBride Artistic Director of Chautauqua School of Dance Sasha Janes titled “One.”
Tonight, marking a little more than two weeks since their first performance, they will grace the stage to perform those same pieces, putting their growth and artistic development on full display.
McBride danced with New York City Ballet for three decades and became the company’s youngest principal dancer in 1961; she worked closely with Balanchine and he staged numerous roles on her. Now, McBride brings this firsthand knowledge to the School of Dance students. This season McBride staged Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations,” created in 1961, in which she danced the principal role following Patricia Wilde.
“I feel blessed to be able to pass on what I’ve done, even the ballets I’ve never danced. I feel such an affinity with Mr. Balanchine,” McBride said. “He used to teach our class every day, two-hour classes. He was such a genius.”
Now, staging these variations, McBride passed on exactly what she said Balanchine wanted from the dancers.
“He was very definite with how he wanted us to hold our hands, our fingers, everything,” McBride said. “He wanted us to look alive, beautiful and musical and not dance stiff. It had to have a life, the breath in the arms and the strength in the legs.”
McBride said the key to this liveliness is the music.
“If you hear the music, it inspires you to look a certain way, and you can’t look the same in every single ballet you’re doing,” McBride said. “You have to change like a chameleon. You have to be in the spirit of the music.”
McBride said Balanchine used to say, “I have a garden full of beautiful flowers and they’re all different,” because he admired dancers who would take the choreography and make it their own.
In choreographing the “Raymonda Variations,” McBride said Balanchine imagined all the different solos because he originally wanted to show off the dancers in the company at the time.
“So, I have a vision of them in my mind,” McBride said. “How they danced it. I still remember how great they were. So, it helps me when staging a ballet.”
During the first week of the season, McBride taught the students all eight variations from “Raymonda” and before picking who would do which one, she asked them, “Which variation do you love to do?”
“I love them all, and they work so hard, and they come from different schools, so it’s very exciting for me to discover their talent,” McBride said.
McBride said she loves passing on the knowledge from Balanchine and helping the students discover how good they are and feel confident. She also said she is always amazed at how much the students progress from the start of the season to the end.
“I just want them to feel the beauty that they all have, and I hope to bring it out, so they can enjoy what they’re doing,” McBride said.
However, McBride said the challenge with the “Raymonda Variations” is the cues for the solos, because some solos start exactly on the note, making it hard to time correctly. Yet, she said she’s excited to see the performance with the live orchestra and said there’s nothing like it, which was emphasized by both guest conductors.
“There’s a wonderful spirit of seeing such talented young people come together to create this incredible, synthetic art form,” Whiteside said.
Accompanying the choreography of Balanchine is a piece by Alexander Glazunov, followed by largely contemporary American works by Michael Torke, choreographed by Janes and Philip Glass, choreographed by Wilkes.
“Musically, I would say it’s a very eclectic work. Only one of the pieces is a traditional ballad, the Glazunov,” Whiteside said. “But the other pieces are so different, they’re contemporary American works, not conceived as ballets. One is a symphony inspired by David Bowie’s “Heroes”, and then the Torke pieces, written at different points but then consolidated under the guise of ‘Color Music.’ ”
Bushkova will conduct “Purple,” traditionally the shortest of the “Color Music” (6’).
“I would say the choreography to ‘Purple’ [from the dancers] struck me the most,” Bushkova said, concerning Janes’ piece. “It adds so much to the movement that I hadn’t envisioned before. It also means we have to switch really fast between [conducting] during the ‘Purple’ and ‘Green’ pieces.”
The Glazunov is one of the most exciting pieces for Whiteside because, at its core, the piece brings out a spirit of artistic collaboration, one of the most exciting aspects of the Chautauqua community for the composer. The collaboration is one of his reasons for returning to guest conduct.
“To work with such talented people from different disciplines, to have such a great dance school in addition to the incredible music school we all love, that’s totally unique. I think it was mostly the experience of being back here in this community [that brought me back].”
Seeing the talent of the dancers sets an exciting scene for what Monday night is going to look like for Whiteside.
“How much we gain as musicians from seeing and experiencing how dancers see and express music, especially the relationship to a physical sense of pulse that they have. Pulse is not abstract for dancers. For musicians, sometimes we see [three beats in a bar]. It’s very technical. For them, they have to embody it,” Whiteside said. “There’s a lot [musicians] can learn from how they do it.”
