They’ve got the moves like Jagger
Ballet meets rock ’n’ roll in Hamrick’s Rolling Stones-themed dance recital
Recovering rocker Mick Jagger made a stealth appearance at the ballet, slipping backstage to support his partner, Melanie Hamrick, as she presented her new dance based on Rolling Stones songs.
It was Hamrick’s first work as choreographer, with a score arranged by Jagger. The short ballet comprised three Stones classics: Sympathy for the Devil, She’s a Rainbow and Paint It Black. Hamrick created the work for the 20th anniversary of Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest ballet scholarship competition, in which she performed as a teenager.
Jagger didn’t appear onstage or in the audience. But he did greet the crowd at New York’s Lincoln Center on Thursday night via a backstage mike.
“Hi everybody, this is Mick Jagger here,” he said, congratulating YAGP on its anniversary and adding: “I hope you are going to enjoy this wonderful ballet — and the music of course.”
The 75-year-old rocker recently underwent medical treatment, reportedly for a heart valve issue, forcing postponement of the Stones’ No Filter tour.
Hamrick said later in an interview that Jagger was “doing great. Thank goodness!”
“It was cute,” she said of his visit backstage. “He wanted to watch the piece. It was really special that he was there and able to see it. It feels good (for the dancers) when the choreographer and the person who wrote the music are watching you. It gave everyone an extra special feeling.”
Hamrick, who dances with American Ballet Theatre but did not perform in the piece, said she was nervous presenting her first choreographic effort.
It was Jagger, she said, who encouraged her to take the plunge when the idea came up, from YAGP founder Larissa Saveliev, for Hamrick to do something with Stones music.
“Mick was, ‘Who better than you? You’re a professional ballerina, you come to my concerts,”’ she said. “It went from there.”
Hamrick, 31, noted that the scholarship program was responsible for launching her career; though she didn’t win, her performance there led to a contract to perform at ABT’s Studio Company in 2003. She joined the main company in 2004.
It was Hamrick who chose the songs for the ballet, called Porte Rouge, or Red Door (as in, “I see a red door ... ”). Jagger arranged the songs to fit.
“We worked together and he said, ‘Just trust your gut ... go with what your instincts are, and I’ll help you figure out how to make the cuts,’” she said.
“I picked the songs I felt I connected with the most and I was like, ‘Can you make these work?’ And he took it away. He was very good, he was, ‘You do YOU.’”
The dancers included six from ABT and one from New York City Ballet. But the obvious Jagger “character” appeared to be the Argentine ABT star Herman Cornejo, with even his flowing mop of hair resembling the Stones frontman.
“I feel like they have the same energy,” Hamrick noted.
Another standout dancer in the piece, Calvin Royal III, said he’d particularly enjoyed the experience of “bringing rock ’n’ roll to ballet.”
“I think it was just such a beautiful relationship that needed to be merged,” said Royal, a soloist with ABT. “It’s so athletic and dynamic, and it was just fun to perform.”
Royal admitted he hadn’t had much previous experience with Stones music.
“To be honest with you, I hadn’t heard a lot of Rolling Stones music until Melanie approached me about this project, and I went on Spotify and just started listening to a lot of their music,” he said.
He did, though, get to meet Jagger. “It was great to have him on board to support us,” Royal said.
Hamrick noted she’d had to strike a fine line with channelling the essence of the Stones, without imitating those moves like Jagger.
“I studied some videos of his, because I didn’t want to imitate, but I wanted you to feel the essence, and I didn’t want him to tell me what to do, because I wanted it to be original,” she said.