Joffrey Ballet soars and succeeds in new space with NWI talent nod
Time dissolves and disappears quickly when an audience is wrapped up in imagination and feats of artistic magic.
The Joffrey Ballet’s season opening stage performance ranks as a milestone move, since it is also the inaugural season at the Lyric Opera House, 20 North Wacker Drive, Chicago.
Continuing through Sunday, Joffrey’s run of “Home: a Celebration” is just under 2 ½ hours, and as explained by Joffrey artistic director Ashley Wheater, “is a true reflection of the legacy and talent that has been cultivated within Joffrey family, with magnificent works that speak to the complexities of our times.”
Spotlighting the choreography of Chanel DaSilva, Joffrey rehearsal director Nicolas Blanc, and Joffrey artist Yoshihisa Arai, audiences are also treated to a remount of the beloved ballet classic “Birthday Variations” as choreographed by Joffrey co-founder, the late Gerald Arpino, as the opening work showcased under glittering chandeliers.
With music by Giuseppe Verdi, “Birthday Variations” was commissioned in 1986 by Becky D’Angelo as a birthday present to her husband Dino, who owned Chicago’s Civic Opera House (now branded as the Lyric Opera House) and loved Verdi’s music.
New York-based artist and Joffrey’s 2020 Winning Works choreographer DaSilva flies to new heights with her winged and wondrous work “Swing Low,” with an early glimpse of this movement masterpiece given to September audiences at Ravinia Festival last month. (I was seated across the aisle from DaSilva at the opening night and her triumph was celebrated with an energy and exuberance felt throughout the audience.) The rhythms of Vermont-based cellist and composer Zoë Keating accompany the scattered feathers, grace, strength and artistic agility of the angelic dancers moving in perfect step.
“Under the Trees’ Voices” symbolically expresses the power of community in our endurance age of today’s social distancing, with this world premiere for the stage delivered in four distinct sections set to Symphony No. 2 by Italian composer Ezio Bosso as choreographed with precision by Blanc.
Starring 15 dancers moving with force to composer Maurice Ravel, the stage finale “Boléro” follows the second intermission and easily inspires and mesmerizes.
Evan Boersma, of Dyer, a 2017 graduate of The Chicago Academy for the Arts, is featured prominently throughout this season opener for Joffrey.
When I first wrote about Evan, 21, in October 2018 during his entrancing turn in Joffrey’s “Swan Lake,” at the time, he ranked as the youngest member of the prestigious Joffrey Company of accomplished dancers from around the world. And yes, at this month’s opening, I crossed paths with his proud mother Kelly Boersma during one of the intermissions. She is the principal of Frank H. Hammond Elementary School in Munster.
Boersma began his training at age 5 at Elite Dance Co. in Dyer, where many students have their first dance lessons at studios around Northwest Indiana, and he won favor and fanfare after appearing in the 2017 holiday run of Joffrey’s “The Nutcracker.”
Founded in 1956 by pioneers Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, the Joffrey has an acclaimed global reputation spanning more than 60 years. Tickets for “Home: a Celebration” start at $35 and are available by calling 312-3868905 or at www.joffrey. org. The current COVID19 protection protocol for all forthcoming indoor performances, reviewed regularly for the ability to relax certain provisions if mandates change, include:
All patrons ages 12 and older must show proof of vaccination.
All audience members are required to wear a mask while at the theater space.
Children under the age of 12 are admitted but required to wear a mask while at the theater space.