KAYOKO EVERHART MAKES ROLE OF ‘CARMEN’ HER OWN
The lusty gypsy at the heart of “Carmen” provides compelling material for a bravura ballerina. Perhaps because of the earthy weight of Georges Bizet’s popular opera score, the best dance productions of recent years have been contemporary, rather than classical.
American dancer Kayoko Everhart, a principal with Spain’s Compañia Nacional de Danza, leads the cast of the latest take on the French writer Prosper Mérimée’s early-19thcentury Spanish story. The production, a highlight of Society for the Performing Arts’ season, arrives at Jones Hall Saturday.
Compañia Nacional de Danza’s “Carmen” is filtered through the contemporary Swedish sensibilities of choreographer Johan Inger. In addition to Bizet’s score, it incorporates music by a few others.
If that sounds like quite a brew, consider Everhart’s own journey: Japanese was her first language.
Born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother (who danced many Western styles) and a father who was in the U.S. military, she grew up in the Pacific Northwest. After starting her career with the Tulsa Ballet in Oklahoma, she moved to Spain a decade ago after falling for the dances of contemporary choreographer Nacho Duato.
During a decade as director of Spain’s national dance company, Duato had built a repertoire in his intense, contemporary style. In some ways, for Everhart, taking that leap meant throwing away years of ballet perfection.
“I was fine with giving up pointe shoes,” Everhart said recently. She even thought she’d never wear them again.
But Duato left soon after Everhart arrived in Madrid, and the company’s board tasked his replacement, José Carlos Martinez, with rebuilding a classical repertoire — bringing back works that inevitably meant tutus and toe shoes.
Everhart had doubts about staying, but Martinez let his female dancers choose their ballets. And he broke them in with hard-edged contemporary ballets, including dances by William Forsythe that were too tempting for a dancer of her skills to resist.
“My body definitely fought back — especially my ankles,” Everhart said. “But I got used to it and ended up liking it.
And Martinez continued to let his soft-shoe-leaning dancers grow with contemporary ballets. “Carmen,” which debuted in 2015, offers a perfect example.
Inger added a mysterious figure to the story of the naïve soldier Don José, whom Carmen seduces, to make the tale his own. He focuses on the passion and violence through the pure vision of a child who could be interpreted as any number of characters — a young Don José or Micaela, or the unborn child of Carmen and Don José, “or any one of us, with a primitive goodness,” he has said.
And Everhart has been encouraged to interpret Carmen in a way that makes the role her own.
Moving closer to the earth, in soft shoes, no doubt helped.
“There’s a freedom I feel onstage that I don’t feel in pointe shoes,” she said.