Staged as a three-person drama, Kabaniaev’s latest work offers an abstract, capsule view of inner turmoil – a meeting in Purgatory of the three lost souls of one of Shakespeare’s most oft-cited tragedies.
The arrangement is simple, like a severe ikebana. Three lonely figures -- who start out sitting primly on black, coffin-like boxes -- each dance one by one in Expressionist, almost emotional solos. Lauren Main de Lucia, in a blood-red dress, devours the stage with deep Martha Graham-like stretches; Tina Kay Bohnstedt, in white, ripples as she pours backwards over the edge of her box; and as the central man of inaction, Edward Stegge turns his solo into a continuous throw of momentum with pulses of movement that seem to ripple outward through his limbs.
There is, nevertheless, some room for refinement in this production, which uses an atmospheric mix of music by Dmitri Shostakovich combined with vibrating basso sounds created on a metal sculpture by local artist and musician Nicolas Van Krijdt. The musical score capably builds in tension, although not-quite-intelligible quotes from the play—read in low monotones—bring no further clarity to the scene and seem unnecessary. We all know who the players are and the spoken lines bring an odd note of literality that jars one out of the meditative experience.
Still, “Remembering Hamlet” made for an intriguingly moody interlude in an otherwise fairly bright and upbeat program, which opened with Main and David Fonnegra in a peppy version of the famous duet for the Liberty Belle and El Capitan from George Balanchine’s rousing John Philip Sousa-inspired “Stars and Stripes.” If Main’s Belle tended a bit too much toward the simpering, still she displayed a satisfying technical strength, while Fonnegra’s cavalier put out loads of jaunty vigor, all adding up to a pleasant pairing with solid chemistry.
Also on the program was former Diablo dancer Kelly Teo’s 1999 “Dancing Miles,” which looked much better in the more intimate setting of the Lesher Center than at its Zellerbach Hall outing in January. Set to tunes recorded by Miles Davis such as “In a Silent Way,” “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and “Time after Time,” Teo’s loose jazzy, Bob Fosse shoulder and arm moves mixed with some compact bullet-speed choreography bore a lot of similarity to his own style as a dancer. Although the piece as a whole broke no new ground, its light humor and perky energy sat comfortably on the three couples -- in particular Mayo Sugano and Matthew Linzer.
The evening closed with co-artistic director Nikolai Kabaniaev’s humorous 1996 ballet-meets modern diversion, “Grand Pas d’Action.” By turns fluid and then slapstick, “Grand Pas d’Action” pits quotes from the famous classical ballets -- it’s even set to music by the late Romantic composer Alexander Glazunov – against modern freeform. Cartoonish and goofy, nevertheless, it had a few serious moments, many of them delivered by Cynthia Sheppard, who was notable as the modern dancer who throws caution to the wind, and herself at the balletically vainglorious Jekyns Pelaez. Linzer, as Sheppard’s modern dance cohort teamed again with Sugano, in full tutu and tiara regalia, to round out the cast.
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