IU offers an opera within a ballet
The origins of IU’s ballet department — a means of supplying dancers for operas — inspired its chair, Michael Vernon, to revisit this notion with “A Night at the Opera (at the Ballet).”
Friday and Saturday, area audience members can see the new production in its full, opera-scored form.
Dancers will perform to ballet music from operas by Gounod, Rossini, Handel and Meyerbeer. Choreography by ballet legends George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton will be featured, in addition to new work by choreographer/ IU distinguished professor Violette Verdy, and a pas de deux by visiting dancer Sasha Janes, principal dancer for North Carolina Dance Theatre.
“The reason we have a ballet department is because we have an opera department,” Vernon said in a press release. “They needed dancers for the operas, so this department was founded to train dancers in a university setting. This evening will give tribute to that history.”
IU Ballet Theater will offer a range of styles, from the classical elegance of Ashton’s Les Patineurs to the athletic physicality of Janes’ choreography, and, as always, will be accompanied by live music.
Janes created the piece for himself and his frequent dance partner Rebecca Carmazzi, who will perform it with him in Bloomington. Mezzo-soprano Amanda Russo will be singing during this performance.
Walpurgisnacht Ballet, choreographed by Balanchine to the ballet from Charles Gounod’s “Faust,” will feature an abstract neoclassical take on romance. “The partnering is more up-to-date, rather than old fashioned and formal. Instead of romance in an old opera, it’s more like Audrey Hepburn,” Vernon said.
Verdy’s Inouï Rossini will feature 27 dancers seeming to embody the music of Gioacchino Rossini’s Otello. “My best thing is that you can really see the music,” Verdy said in the release. “It’s really all about bella musica and bella danza.”
Vernon added that the ballet is family-friendly with its sunnier disposition. “It’s smiles all the way through,” he said. “There is not a dark moment in the program. I think it will be great after a long winter.”
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.
