Oakland Ballet celebrates its golden anniversary.
It will be an afternoon of premieres, revivals, friendly reunions and stirring of memories. But “Five Decades of Dance,” the 50th anniversary gala of the Oakland Ballet this week, will also recall a golden moment in the history of Bay Area and, frankly, American dance.
This country abounds in remarkable ballet companies, institutions where mixed repertoire and peerless dancing can prove extremely nourishing ,
But only with a few of them do you feel that attendance was an essential part of your education. You have the New York City Ballet with its priceless heritage of Balanchine and Robbins repertoire. You had the Joffrey Ballet, which, until the death of co-founder Robert Joffrey in 1988, provided wonderfully eclectic fare, from Ashton to Tharp, that mattered greatly.
And then, there was Oakland Ballet. Much of what founder Ronn Guidi did in the East Bay mattered greatly, too. I suspect that when the locally born dancer coaxed acclaimed choreographer Eugene Loring into restaging his renowned “Billy the Kid,” he had little inkling that an interest in the classic ballet repertoire would evolve into a 35-year adventure.
For decades, Guidi had been fascinated by the repertoire of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. That remarkable company generated the collision of the movement, musical and visual arts that, between 1909 and the Russian impresario’s death in 1929, prompted a great modernist experiment in which the collaborators aimed at what Richard Wagner called gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art.
Could that era be reclaimed from the mists of time? Would it satisfy our contemporary sensibilities? Guidi went all the way in his quest. He en-
gaged the original choreographers, or their appointed emissaries, and he reproduced the decor and costuming of the original productions, some of which were originally signed by museum names — Picasso, Derain, Chanel, Bakst, Benois and Goncharova. Dances we despaired of ever seeing live arose from the pages of the history books on the Paramount stage.
Guidi did not know the meaning of impossible. He wanted to produce “La Boutique Fantasque,” so he invited famed dancer-choreographer Léonide Massine, then 82, to restage it. They were heady times for this young, insatiable critic, who once found himself across the breakfast table from Massine, lacing his orange juice with spirits poured from an omnipresent little flask, while he answered questions.
Traded in revelations
Not all of these reconstructions withstood the scrutiny of time, but Guidi mostly traded in revelations. And no work justified his efforts more than Bronislava Nijinska’s 1923 “Les Noces.” Staged here by the choreographer’s daughter Irina Nijinska in 1981, this was the first production by an American ballet company and the first time the piece had been seen anywhere since the mid-1960s in London.
Nijinska was every bit a genius choreographer as her brother Vaslav. “Les Noces,” a re-creation of a Russian folk wedding, sometimes seems a carving or sculpture as much as a ballet. One can talk of the work’s architecture; one can admire its incredibly intimate relationship with the primitive rhythms and acrid tone of the accompanying Stravinsky cantata. To watch “Les Noces” produced here was astonishing. To watch the minute reconstruction of the ballet in rehearsal was akin to observing the building of the great pyramid at Giza. Little wonder that this production of “Les Noces” won the Oakland Ballet an international reputation.
One person who heard about the company from afar was a young English dancer, Graham Lustig. On a traveling fellowship in 1987, he stopped in Oakland, watched the troupe and conferred with Guidi. More than 20 years later, he was named Oakland’s artistic director. In planning “Five Decades of Dance,” he has availed himself of the goodwill Guidi inspired over the years.
First, Lustig coaxed new pieces for the occasion from five local choreographers whose burgeoning careers received a boost from making dances for the company. “They are all very short, and they are like birthday cards, ‘signed’ by the choreographers,” Lustig said in a phone call the other week.
The news about the Ballets Russes material is mixed, With the exception of the production of Nijinsky’s “L’Après-midi d’un Faune,” which Oakland Ballet owns outright and which will be danced in its entirety during the celebration, the sets and costumes have vanished. “The physical legacy has evaporated, which I discovered when I walked through the door in 2010,” Lustig says.
Happy memories
But happy memories of the company remain among alumni, and they will contribute. “These are good people reaching out with their knowledge. There are former dancers who are sewing the new costumes. My ballet master and I will stage the revivals,” Lustig says, “and I have invited the dancers who originated the roles in Oakland to coach members of the current company. It’s the most sensitive way to reach a community like this and provide continuity.”
The goodwill prompted by this 50th anniversary project (“We have had great support from the unions,” says Lustig) should help in the renaissance of a company one had thought extinct nine years ago. Lustig notes that “we are on a solid trajectory of rebuilding, but I will do only what the company can afford.”
In an attempt at community engagement, Lustig will follow “Five Decades of Dance” with “East Bay Dances” next Sunday, May 24, at Laney College. Lustig will curate the event, which features smaller professional and semiprofessional dance organizations.
On a positive note, the income from December’s “Nutcracker” exceeded projections, and Lustig talks of a new relationship with Hayward’s Chabot College. Among his wishes for the Oakland Ballet is the reopening of the Calvin Simmons Auditorium, a splendid venue for dance and music, which the city closed a decade ago. If the company is to rise to former glories, it will need a performing home worthy of its aspirations.
Lustig agrees: “It would be the frame you put around the picture.”