ASPEN SANTA FE BALLET
celebrates 20th anniversary with a look forward
In celebration of its 20th anniversary, the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet is looking to have twice the amount of fun this year. Or at least twice the number of new dances — four instead of the customary two in one year — commissioned expressly for the corps.
“We decided, for our anniversary, instead of looking back, we’d look forward,” said Tom Mossbrucker, artistic director, by phone from New York City.
Audience members can join that look forward when two of the dances premiere in Santa Fe (they were performed earlier this year in Aspen) in a three-dance program taking place tonight at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.
And at least one of the works is significantly different from anything the group has done before, by a choreographer whose work the company has commissioned for the first time.
“Re:play” by Fernando Melo, a Brazilian choreographer based in Sweden, “is almost mathematical in construction,” Mossbrucker said. As a matter
of fact, the choreographer attached giant sticky notes to the studio walls and dancers carried written notes in their hands as they learned the “formula” for the piece. “The dancers loved it. It was a completely different way of working,” Mossbrucker said. “It was really stimulating for the company.”
“Re:play” is rather fastpaced, with “images that come and go very quickly,” he said. “It’s like a time-lapse view of a metropolitan city.”
To accomplish that effect, people managing the lighting have to follow some 800 different lighting cues — anywhere from 10 to 60 is usual for a dance, according to Mossbrucker.
The result is a number of brief vignettes, lacking the usual robust physicality of the company, that show fleeting gestures and elicit an emotion. All together, it has a deep sense of humanity and relationships, he said, calling the dance both “cinematic” and “theatrical.”
While it’s cerebral, constructing and deconstructing a scene, it also connects with the audience, he said.
Relatively new on the dance scene, much of Melo’s work has been in Europe. “I’ve been looking at his work for quite some time,” Mossbrucker said. “Everything he has sent me has been creative, intriguing — I liked it all. I was attracted by what I felt was a strong voice and a unique voice.”
The second premiere that audiences will see at the Lensic in today’s program is by a familiar face — choreographer Cayetano Soto has put together five pieces now for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet — but with an about-face from his usual mood.
“His work tends to be very serious, dark, shadowy ... ,” Mossbrucker said. “Yet he’s the craziest, funniest, most carefree (person).”
So he asked Soto to express that other side of himself with something “upbeat, joyous and celebratory” to mark the anniversary.
“He was really eager,” Mossbrucker reported, and Soto came up with an outgoing, rollicking, athletic piece, “Huma Rojo,” set to ’50s and ’60s music, with men and women dancing in identical bright red outfits.
It still includes the choreographer’s intricate partnering and superphysical movement, he said, adding that he expects it to become a new audience favorite.
An audience favorite from last year, “Silent Ghost” by Alejandro Cerrudo, returns to complete the program.
“It premiered last summer and was the hit of the whole year,” Mossbrucker said.
Looking back over the past two decades, Mossbrucker, a co-founder of the company, said it has been evolving throughout the time and will continue to do so.
After some initial exploration, “I can confidently say we know who we are and what we do,” he said. “When you look at our repertoire, I don’t think we look like any of the other companies” of a similar size around the country.
The company has been invited back to the Jacob’s Pillow dance festival in Massachusetts this June as the opening act, while the affiliated Juan Siddi Flamenco group will be appearing there for the first time, he said.
“We’re super-excited,” Mossbrucker added.