Ballet Needs More Explosions

The basic recipe for a typical summer blockbuster movie is simple: one part story, three parts explosions set to dynamic orchestral music, one part stirring conclusion. Mix, bake and cash massive profits. For those of us who are fans or other entertainment, as well as movies, it has been difficult to watch cultural organizations who are brimming with talent often written off as museum pieces from an earlier era, too slow, plodding and married to the past to connect with the fast-paced demands of a modern audience.

Dance, symphony orchestra and full choir are performance arts that have been particularly hard-hit by the misperception, and some of it is due to a large part of their stock repertoires being, well old. As in powdered wig old. When reading a performance listing that includes Tchaikovsky, Bach or Orff, a good portion of the general public will make snoring noises and demand to hear some Jay-Z. Most of these same people have most likely never even heard any of the music by these "old" composers, much less understand how much power it can contain when presented creatively.

Creative is not a bunch of tuxedo-clad string musicians performing stiffly on stage.

Creative is not a choir concert with the only things moving being the conductor and mouths making "O" shapes.

Creative is not a ballet full of stiff choreography in starched period dress.

Creative IS what the Orlando Ballet and Bach Festival Society of Winter Park Choir and Orchestra have just presented for the past three days in a stunning collaboration of the elements - a summer blockbuster in the spring.

The groups started with the timeless cantata Carmina Burana by German composer Carl Orff, a piece that 9 out of 10 people on the street would say sounded stuffy and they have never heard, unless you showed them this, or this, or THIS. Oh THAT, the soundtrack for every ominous and dynamic commercial ever produced. Yes, the famous Oh Fortuna opening and closing sections of the piece, plus all the other meat contained between them, which varies from frenetic, to lyrical to haunting.

Unlike many people, I am somewhat familiar with the music from time spent involved with orchestras, drum corps and color guards, but all that was 25+ years ago, and even I had forgotten most of it until the Ballet and Bach Society forced it back into my head with a velvet sledgehammer.

The performance was in a word, EXPLOSIVE. The choreography was inventive, startling and extremely clever, with much of it being staged at breakneck speed, overflowing with death-defying pass-throughs and dizzying combination spins. This was Iron Man flying between buildings, but without the benefit of his suit.

Most impressive to me was the musicality of the writing. I am often frustrated when dance performances leave music "on the table," so to speak, with a lot of the phrasing and nuance steamrolled over to create a handful of impact moments. Here there were constant passages of delicate interpretation laid over deep foundations, beautifully mimicking the score as portrayed by the musicians and vocalists. In the ultimate compliment, the Ballet respected the magnitude of their effort by shining a visual spotlight on as many of their notes as they could. Suggestions of love, loss and conflict were hinted at just enough to be recognizable.

Mass forms often broke, changed, reformed, splintered apart and were suddenly struck with a sense of absence, leaving just a solo performer to alter the mood before they were swept away by another thematic movement sequence. Transitions, often a weak point in dance, were handled expertly and clarified by a beautifully designed palate of modern, simple costumes and colors. There was just enough. No excess. No shortage.

There was also a lot of skin, and no blockbuster has ever built up demerits for that.

Performers from all three elements, dance, instruments, and vocals worked expertly as team to manipulate the emotions of the audience, pushing, pulling and stringing them along, only to hit them with the bazooka blast of volume and visual cacophony at exactly the right moment. It was one of the strongest collaborations of disciplines that I've seen in a long time. And it was all performed live.

So I liked it, but I can be kind of a longhair (with a bald head), still, this was music written in the 1930's, before television, featuring violins and french horns, sung in German, French and TWO different forms of Latin, interpreted by dancers in tights and delicate slippers. This business is too mothball-infused for the modern world. How would an audience, whom appeared to contain a good number of husbands who were annoyed to miss the golf tournament, react?

By leaping to their feet and screaming before the final note had finished echoing in the livestock barn acoustics of the aged Bob Carr Center.

People went berserk - with shrieks and whistles piercing the air over a deafening, thunderous applause. And it went on, and on, and on. Loud for the corps de ballet, ear splitting for the principals, and an  EXTRA air horn level of volume for the choir and orchestra.

Men in pleated pants were whooping at the top of their lungs for baritones and oboe players.

For me it was more than a wonderful afternoon, it was a way forward for struggling cultural organizations. They had provided the story, the explosions and the exciting conclusion, and they had done it by doing what THEY do best. And it worked.

Let's see more of this sort of thing.