Tulsa's best goes on display in 'Carmina'
May 24, 2010 in GeneralTulsa's best goes on display in 'Carmina'
By JAMES D. WATTS JR. Tulsa World Scene Writer
Published: 5/24/2010
click here to read to full review on the Tulsa World website
Tulsa Ballet's production of "Carmina Burana," presented this weekend at the Tulsa PAC, was much more than the dance company's final offering of its 2009-10 season. It was a demonstration of Tulsa arts groups — and Tulsa itself — at its best.
This is not hyperbole. Five very different organizations had to work together to bring this show to fruition — ranging from professional dancers and musicians, to a chorus of volunteer singers, to an ensemble of youngsters. All ages, all skill levels, all pooling their talents to achieve one goal — of staging a theatrical extravaganza that was truly an all-Tulsa production.
And it worked spectacularly. Tulsa Ballet's "Carmina Burana" was stunning from start to finish.
Principal dancer and resident choreographer Ma Cong originally created this work in 2006 to open the company's 50th anniversary season. While he has made a few changes to the ballet for this production, if there is a difference between its first performance and the one we saw Friday night, it is because the Tulsa Ballet dancers have grown more comfortable with, and adept at, Cong's choreography.
I remember Tulsa Ballet dancing Cong's "Carmina Burana" well in 2006. Friday night, they danced it like they owned it.
Cong's approach to the score — Carl Orff's "scenic cantata" of 15th century secular songs set to music that mixes the modern and the primal into an irresistible whole — is to follow the emotions of the music rather than the letter of the
text. While his vision for the piece touches on the themes of spring's awakened and the earthy emotions that can be found "In the Tavern," Cong's "Carmina Burana" is a distillation of romance — not so much a love story, as a meditation on the stages of love.
There's Karina Gonzalez's cheerfully flirtatious dancing among four men in the "Rock Dance" episode (Cong retitled all the individual scenes), the touching duet of innocence between Yi Wang and Soo Youn Cho in "Like Roses," the slow-motion sensuality of the "Sexy in Deed" section with Gonzalez, Alfonso Martin, Cho and Wang; the flares of jealousy and violence thread through the "Court of Love" episodes, before the final coming together in the "Sweet Love" section.
Martin and Yi each have bravura solos — Martin in "Anger," Yi in "Ego" — that give each man the chance to play to the heavens. Martin's work is full of passionate energy held just enough in check with precisely articulated movements, while Yi, always the most elegant of male dancers, was able to show off a looser, more liquidly flexible style of movement.
The chorus, made of members of the Tulsa Oratorio Chorus, the Tulsa Opera Chorus and the Tulsa Youth Opera, sang Orff's music with tremendous power, emotion and precision, filling the Chapman Music Hall with glorious sound.
The three vocal soloists — soprano Sarah Jane McMahon, tenor Matthew Garrett and baritone Michael Mayes — all had solos that pushed them far outside their normal ranges, usually to stunning effect. McMahon's final solo "Dulcissimo" was superb, and Garrett simply soared through his lone aria, "Olim locus colueram." Mayes had the lion's share of the solos and sang them well; his only off-moment was an unfortunate wobble during the keening falsetto of "Dies nox et omnia."
Tulsa Ballet music director, Nathan Fifield, brought all the elements together with great style and led the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra in a performance with all the primal power one expects from "Carmina Burana," as well as the finesse Tulsa Symphony audiences have come to expect from this orchestra.
The evening opened with Tulsa Ballet's first William Forsythe ballet, "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude."
Perhaps the easiest way to describe this piece is: Take all the choreography of a full-length, neo-classical ballet and cram it all into about 11 minutes.
At least, that's the impression I had while watching this work, set to the final movement of the Symphony No. 9 by Schubert. It is a ballet that requires manic speed, razor sharp precision and great stamina because it hardly ever allows its dancers to stop.
In that way, it's very much a piece of Forsythe's work, as this choreographer has a reputation for dances that deconstruct classical ballet. And that made it an excellent companion to "Carmina Burana," in that each ballet in its way is dealing with elemental things, be they emotions or movements.
Forsythe's ballet, as performed by Martin, Gonzales, Cho, Wang and Alexandra Bergman, also lived up to its title.
It was truly a thrill to watch this piece, amazed by the dancers' speed, precision, stamina and expressiveness — even in those moments, such as the middle duet with Martin and Gonzalez, when they seemed to be on the verge of spinning completely out of control, yet holding it all together by sheer force of will.
Forsythe usually requires this work to be performed to a recording, to match the tempos he wants, but Fifield and the Tulsa Symphony sounded better than any recording and added a depth not just to the sound, but to the drama of piece.
