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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > May > 12
Monday, May 12, 2008
Review: Ballet Austin’s ‘Don Quixote’
In an impromptu fashion, the dancing started outside the Long Center Friday night before Ballet Austin made its debut on the stage of the new $77 million civic venue. A handful of little girls danced playfully and on the large, flat circular lighting feature set in the lawn at the top point of the Long Center’s City Terrace.
And, perhaps in deference to the parking problems that have plagued the Long Center on some occasions, one couple was seen arriving in the relaxed comfort of a pedicab. Inside, a nearly full house packed Dell Hall with anxious anticipation, there to drink in the spectacle of “Don Quixote,” the sweeping classical story ballet that Ballet Austin chose for their inaugural performance in their new performance home, though their last show of this season.
Indeed, a ballet spectacle doesn’t get more spectacular than this “Don Quixote,” a hybrid of choreography combining the original 19th-century Russian ballet by Marius Petipa and subsequent American versions. To wit: When Don Quixote (Greg Easley) and his sidekick, Sancho Panza (Kevin Hockenberry), paraded onto the stage in the first act, they rode a live horse and donkey, respectively. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the Long Center’s first instance of live onstage animals drew audible gasps of surprise from the audience.
This “Don Quixote” is a demanding three-act, two-and-a-half hour ballet of one virtuosic pas de deux after another by the story’s young lovers Kitri (Michelle Thompson) and Basilio (Frank Shott) intermixed with equally showy solos and small ensemble dances.
Ballet Austin’s true strength is perhaps as a contemporary ballet company with expressive, theatrically nuanced dancers. And true to that, the company succeeded in extracting the comedic elements of “Don Quixote” with utter charm, playfully incorporating a little slapstick and mime in a light manner.
However, with the exception of Thompson’s commanding and sparkling performance — do we have a new leading ballerina of the company? — the technical flourishes demanded by the rigorous choreography wasn’t consistently there throughout the company.
This “Don Quixote” might have been a stage spectacle aimed at filling Dell Hall with splash and glamour. It did in terms of its scale, but not its finesse.
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Review: ‘The Last Days of Desmond Nani Reese’
“The Last Days of Desmond Nani Reese: A Stripper’s History of the World,” written and performed by Heather Woodbury with direction from Abigail Deser, is in its last weekend of its Texas premiere at the Vortex. That it hasn’t been performed frequently before is evident in some of the rough patches throughout the show, but equally so in Woodbury’s more than compensatory energy.
In spite of the title, “The Last Days” mostly recounts the early days of Desmond Nani Reese. Along the way of the storytelling, the sometime stripper, prostitute and mermaid for Salvador Dali offers up her views and lessons to go along with her history. The beneficiary of the knowledge is Amber, a beleaguered Harvard doctoral candidate researching “loose women” for the specialized field of “ethno-feminist-dance anthropology.”
The awkward juxtaposition between the ivory tower’s take on sexuality and the streets is prevalent, with plenty of — maybe a few too many — jabs at academia. What I find more satisfying, though, is the way Woodbury drifts between the elderly woman and her younger self. The former is an eccentric caricature, though one with occasional bursts of melancholy and introspection. The latter is, simply, poetic.
Woodbury occasionally lingers too long for pacing’s sake in Nani’s near monologue. When she jumps between her stable of characters, otherwise often and ably, the difference is intriguing, comic, and touching.
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