Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
‘Prodigal Son’ wraps up Miami City Ballet’s season at Broward Center
Miami City Ballet wraps up its season this weekend with “Prodigal Son” at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale.
The season closer — which ran in West Palm Beach at the end of April and in Miami at the beginning of May — combines two notably different narrative ballets and two duets into a thoughtful program that packs emotional depth.
The four works include:
”The Source,” a world premiere by Claudia Schreier and director Adam Barish
Christopher Wheeldon’s 2005 “After the Rain Pas de Deux”
Company premiere of William Forsythe’s 1992 “Herman Schmerman”
George Balanchine’s 1929 story ballet, “Prodigal Son”
The program opened with the world premiere of Atlanta Ballet resident choreographer Claudia Schreier’s “The Source,” a multimedia fable for 16 dancers told through dance, theater and strikingly produced digital effects.
Film plays a key role in “The Source.” Filmmaker Adam Barish and projection effects designer Alex Basco Koch deserve credit for the seamless way in which the visual effects and dance sequences combined to narrate a story of healing.
The action started with an oppressing scene of a port at sunrise. Dancers in oversized shirts and pants in shades of gray plodded across the stage, heads down, occasionally stumbling or erupting in fights. Occasionally, a viral-like streak streamed down the front scrim. Many dancers held hands or fists on their chests as if in pain.
The narrative then transitioned from the oppressive opening to an encounter with a group of beings in white that revitalized them. The piece ended back at the port with dancers interacting in an atmosphere of warmth and hope.
Applause from the Miami audience on two occasions (May 6 and May 8) indicated that the work’s message of grief and healing came through across the stage.
However, “The Source” suffered from some weaknesses, including an overly simplified dance vocabulary and the randomness of certain scenic and video elements. For example, it wasn’t clear why the action opened and closed at a port or what the significance was of the repeated sun images. Such ambiguities distracted from the work’s straightforward message.
Next up was Christopher Wheeldon’s enchanting “After the Rain Pas de Deux.” Originally a two-part ballet performed by New York City Ballet’s Jack Soto and Wendy Whelan at NYCB’s annual New Combinations Evening in 2005, MCB performed the work’s second half pas de deux.
Pianist Francisco Rennó and violinst Mei Mei Luo hauntingly played Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s 1978 composition, “Spiegel im Spiegel” (“mirror(s) in the mirror”). Both Hannah Fischer and Cameron Catazaro on May 6 and Katia Carranza and Chase Swatosh on May 8 danced this tenderness-drenched duet memorably.
The gorgeous lifts and quirky contortions communicated emotional intimacy through physical vulnerability, as when the woman holds a full backbend as her partner rotates her, or when she stands on his bent leg, leaning forward, sweeping her arms as if flying.
Opposite in mood and approach was the company premiere of rouWith a title borrowed from the 1982 Steve Martin comedy, “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” Forsythe famously stated the ballet “meant nothing.”
It may “mean nothing” but what’s important is what it “does.” It mocks gender distinctions in ballet mercilessly. It gestures to how ballet as an art form is a training for gender, where differently trained male and female bodies are disciplined to fulfill expectations audiences have around gender stereotypes.
To a Thom Willems’ electro-funk score with a distinctly “Blade Runner” vibe, two couples — Nathalia Arja and Chase Swatosh on May 6 and Adrienne Carter and Steven Loch on May 8 — performed their roles powerfully, with Swatosh turning in a standout performance.
The pas de deux begins with the male dancer struggling to support his haughty partner whose classical sequences demand his entire investment, blocking him from dancing. The sense of frustration communicated by both Swatosh and Loch was tangible.
Both female and male dancers executed a quick costume change and returned sporting yellow pleated Versace skirts. The male dancer in each performance executed wild sequences and the rawness of his movements noticeably distracted his partner from her sequences.
When he again agreed to support her, he no longer offered the sculpted expertise expected from a classical male lead. She had to work within the forms of support he was willing to offer.
The program’s finale was George Balanchine’s 1929 “Prodigal Son,” with music from composer Sergei Prokofiev. The piece is one of two still-performed works that the choreographer created for Sergei Diaghilev’s company, The Ballets Russes.
The ballet opened in a Georges Rouault-designed Middle Eastern landscape with servants collecting the son’s inheritance. “The Prodigal” — danced by Alexander Peters on May 6 and Shimon Ito on May 8 — entered the scene ready to bolt, beating his knees, lunging to all sides with a great mimed yell before abandoning home despite the entreaties of sisters and father.
The scene shifted to the tent of the Siren, where ape-like servants, costumed in white with skeletal accents, paraded across the stage. Their antics set up the entrance of the Siren — performed on May 6 by Dawn Atkins and on May 8 by Carter.
The company’s season finale was worth seeing twice just to observe two very different takes on the Siren role, with Atkins imperiously dominating Peters, and Carter emphasizing the role’s carnality in her seduction of Ito.
If “The Source” suffered at points from narrative ambiguity, “Prodigal Son” presented few interpretive options. Still, the dancers generated dramatic tension so skillfully that we were left in suspense until the ballet’s final moment as to whether the father would, in fact, take his errant son back.
WHAT: Miami City Ballet’s “Prodigal Son” WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 21, and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 22
WHERE: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. COST: $30-$148
INFORMATION: miamicityballet.org/prodigal