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Dayton Ballet peers into the ‘Shadows’
There’s nothing pink about the Dayton Ballet’s program “Tales from the Shadows.”
Dark as a raven’s feathers is more like it.
The double dance-drama premiere that opened the company’s 72nd season Thursday, Oct. 29, took inspiration from literature — stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Both ballets depicted men battling dual identities.
Christopher Fleming’s hour-long “Myth and the Madness of Edgar Allan Poe” portrayed Poe (Justin Michael Koertgen) as increasingly ruled by his imagination and mental instability, elicited by the Raven (Keenan McLaren in a performance of sharp focus and attack).
Danced to a conglomeration of recorded music ranging from the sublime to the odd, harsh and grating, the ballet contained several strong sections and some that served little purpose but to repeat movements that didn’t contribute much to the narrative.
One segment clearly based on “The Tell-Tale Heart” showed a man “buried” under layers of cloth that represent the floorboards in Poe’s story. Another showed Poe being intentionally separated from his mother by the Raven and her ensemble, a necessary step in his evolution as a writer.
Other featured roles were done by Katie Keith (Poe’s mother), Christy Forehand (his wife), Erika Cole (his muse, a potentially fertile role usurped by the Raven), and Grant Dettling as Poe’s surrogate father and, later, as the title character in “The Masque of Red Death.”
Karen Russo Burke’s “Hyding Inside” was less ambitious, simpler and more consistent.
It featured Dettling as “Dr. J.” and Dillon Anthony as his primitive doppelganger, “Mr. H.” The two halves began to diverge after a quartet of drunks and harlots (Robert Morrow, Christy Forehand, Erica Lehman and Christian Delery) accosted Dr. J. for money on the street, then injected him with a hypodermic they found in his bag.
He then began to pull away from civilized behavior and his fiancee (Halliet Slack), who was left to worry and to glance longingly at her engagement ring.
Unlike Poe, who was drawn ever farther from his origins as Fleming’s ballet proceeded, Dr. J. did eventually fuse his split when the 30-minute piece to music by Mussorgsky, Janacek and Berners ended with a scene in the forest.
Dettling was all clarity in his portrayal. Anthony, perhaps inescapably, was more of a comic book character. Slack was a woman with few options. Choreography for the ensemble was well done and reinforced the telling of a well-known story.
At least for the Dayton Ballet, Halloween is a serious and literary holiday this season. Lighter, happier fare will have to wait until “Nutcracker.” . The company will present the program again at 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct 31, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, at the Victoria Theatre, First and Main streets. Tickets are $20-$70 Call (937) 228-3630 or order online at www.ticketcenterstage
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By DaytonBalletRocks!
November 1, 2009 4:32 PM | Link to this
Enjoyed both of the ballets! Wonderful experience!