Utah Arts Review

Love—its presence, absence, and manipulation through wedding preparations, courtship, and devotion—dominated Ballet West’s double-bill Friday night at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre.

The program opened with Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces (The Wedding). Originally created in 1923 for the Ballets Russes with music by Igor Stravinsky, Ballet West first staged this work two years ago. Rather than a warm, joyful celebration, this piece explores the hesitancy, uncertainty, and sorrow of Russian peasants as they embark on matrimony.

Nijinska’s choreography has a unique vocabulary that builds on classical technique, but augments it in geometric ways. In four short movements, Nijinska explores layers of the same gestures between the female and male dancers. Repeated motifs throughout the work emphasize the angularity of flexed feet, knees, and elbows instead of traditional long lines. 

Curved arms with hands clenched in fists in the first movement with the bride and her friends are echoed by the groom and his friends in the second movement. The motions are percussive, reflecting Stravinsky’s music, with syncopated pointework for the women supported by jumping and stamping by the men.

Most of the piece focuses on the group dancing together, and the company approached the choreography with strength and concise attention to the upright athleticism of the shapes. There were brief moments of contrast, and Anisa Sinteral as the Bride approached her short solos with a supple softness of contraction. 

The repetition of forms makes the ensemble feel like one interchangeable collective. The Bride and Groom’s Friends, Rylee Ann Rogers and Jordan Veit, demonstrated this distinctively in their pas de deux at the wedding feast, when dancing in unison with exaggerated flexed feet and aggressive sweeping arms. The jumping patterns began to feel tedious by the end of the ballet, but the dancers seemed to have an unflagging stamina as they bid farewell to the newlyweds. 

Ballet West Orchestra members under music director Jared Oaks performed Stravinsky’s score—written for four pianos and percussion—admirably, joined by four vocal soloists. The set and costume design by Natalia Goncharova were minimal, with muted backdrops and all the dancers in the same shades of brown and white.

After the intermission, the mood changed notably with Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream. With ornate sets and costumes by David Walker, a fairy forest unfolds for a short retelling of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which gave this program its title.

Ashton’s choreography adds complexity and delight to this story of magically contrived love. Each dancer has singular movements tied to the core of the character, giving each company member the chance to add layers of storytelling. 

The lesser fairies flit around the stage while Adrian Fry as Oberon and Katlyn Addison as Titania are regal and dramatic. Ashton adds embellishments like an exaggerated extension or an open leg during a turn to add vitality to the classical vocabulary. 

William Lynch as Puck was full of mischievous energy with bent knees, and a refined and rapid transition between turns and leaps. As Bottom, Jonas Malinka-Thompson stomped and kicked around the stage en pointe, before romancing the charmed Titania. 

The happy and unhappy lovers, played by Victoria Vassos and Dominic Ballard, and Emily Adams and Hadriel Diniz were a delight to watch. The affectionate gestures of Vassos and Ballard contrasted with the abrupt tension between Adams and Diniz. After Puck’s magical interference their physical comedy had the audience laughing as they fought, ran away, and leapt over each other chasing their love. 

The final pas de deux between Fry and Addison featured uncommon turns and an extensive series of lifts, which they executed with effortless precision. 

The Ballet West Orchestra and soprano soloists added upbeat spirit in their performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s music, as arranged by John Lanchbery.

Ballet West’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream continues through November 15. balletwest.org