‘Christmas Ballet’ springs back to life
Smuin dancers show some rust, but new pas de deux is a keeper
In a return to live in-theater performance after 21 months, Smuin Contemporary Ballet has filled its holiday punch bowl once again with “The Christmas Ballet.” This popular concoction of 31 short pieces ranging from classical to swing, tap to step dance, with a fair number of sight gags sprinkled in, travels the Bay Area from Dec. 2 to 26.
First mounted in 1995, the work mixes recurring staples with something new each year. The 2021 edition includes two premieres, one of which — Ben Needham-Wood’s sinuous “Showtime” pas de deux — is a serious keeper. It would stop the show if “Christmas” weren’t so bent on momentum between its brief blackout scenes.
The production is divided into two color-coded acts. In the pastel tints of Sandra Woodall’s costumes and Douglas Schmidt’s pinched-curtain set, “Classical Christmas” comes first, its divertissements played out to recorded music by Bach, Palestrina, Handel and others. Act 2, “Cool Christmas,” with its hot red costumes and dancing green trees, features the modern, folk and comic numbers.
Seen on Nov. 19 on the opening of a two-day run at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, this year’s “Christmas Ballet” soared in spots but also sputtered. Passages of both solo and ensemble work looked dutiful, while some of the partnering was tentative or labored — though the dancers may well be shedding rust after a long hiatus and should find more of the company’s glint and zest in coming weeks.
Much of the choreography is by company founder Michael Smuin, who died in 2007. While several of the pieces might be due for retirement or replacement in future years (“Hodie Christus Natus Est,” “Ave Maria,” the listless “Christmas in New Orleans” in the second act), others offer renewable delights.
Linking arms as they weave lovely patterns, the company women bring a reliably lithe glow to “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel.” The jointly choreographed “Winter Wonder,” to an Irving Berlin tune, bristles with steps both muscular and frolicsome.
In the ecumenically minded “Licht Bensh’n (Candle Blessing)” and “Dobra Notsh” (Sleep Well),” one Jewish suitor after another tries his luck with a beguiling charmer (a crafty Tessa Barbour on opening night). Choreographer Rex Wheeler’s first-act premiere, a taut and compressed “Excelsis” trio, set to a swatch of Vivaldi, came and went all too quickly. Claire Buehler, Mengjun Chen
and Marc LaPierre were the able first-nighters.
The second act tumbles together showy solos (“Drummer Boy”), party scenes (a swing-dancing “Winter Weather”) and nightclub bits (the shamelessly dated “Santa Baby,” with its sulky female lead and obliging crew of trench-coated male enablers).
Brassy and bumptious as it gets at times, with a fair amount of athletic leaps and crowd-pleasing antics, “Cool Christmas” is at its best in some of its more intimate moments. “Pretty Paper,” with music by Willie Nelson, spins out a sweetly romantic ribbon dance duet. Two neighbors gently tap out their message that “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” In the subtly mysterious “La Calandria,” crisply performed by Lauren Pschirrer on Friday, a classical ballerina’s strict foot positions are gracefully joined to traditional folk-dance steps.
Just before a Bob Fosseinflected “Frosty the Snowman” and a bravura “Bells of Dublin” stepdance solo by Tessa Barbour that brought down the house, “Showtime” had its distinctive debut. In a fluidly charged performance, Brennan Wall and Weston Krukow made their attraction mutual, a current running through their joined hands and supple limbs as if they couldn’t imagine ever parting.
It was a lovestruck dream that lingered clear through the snow that fell, as it always does, at the end of “The Christmas Ballet.”