Outside visitors inspired performers with the Alaska Dance Theatre to do some of their best work in recent years on Saturday night. Members of Minneapolis' James Sewell Ballet have been in town working with local dancers on some of Sewell's pieces and the results, seen at ADT's annual "Intersections" concert, were exceptionally elegant and satisfying.
Several of ADT's most experienced dancers (Walter Barillas, Sarah Grunwaldt, Heather Harvey, Abby Keller, Carissa Landes, Nicole Maple, Heather McEwen, Avianna Kc-Kee, Rachel Parlier, Stephanie Tuley and Tess Vandiver) opened the evening with Sewell's "Winter," set to the concerto by that name from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons."
If practice makes perfect, their time in rehearsals was evident in this performance. In these blended concerts, usually, the difference between out-of-town pros and local students is easy to spot. On Saturday, I found myself repeatedly referring to the program to puzzle out whether a particular dancer was theirs or ours.
Sewell describes his style as "contemporary ballet," classically grounded with some envelope-pushing. But with a few exceptions, "Winter" was strikingly formal: pirouettes, much time spent en pointe and moving designs that had the symmetry of snowflakes. The "pure dance" aspect was laced, however, with pantomimes of activities like skating, horse-sledding, shivering and warming one's backside before a log fire.
Sewell himself supplied an intermezzo with "Rings" from his larger piece, "Prestidigitations." He sensuously performed tricks with Chinese linking rings -- a vaudevillian version of an Indian Hoop Dance. As a boy he'd hoped to become a magician, he said after the show, and credited magic with getting him into dance.
His own troupe presented one of his "Chopin Studies" with strength and precision. The frantic arpeggios of Chopin's A-flat Etude were replicated in ceaselessly waving arms, often presented in a line perpendicular to the audience, like a multi-armed Eastern deity. Sewell's humor came to the fore in the final sections. One involved an invisible crown, coveted by several dancers but eventually winding up on the head of a janitor --- and only becoming visible then. The conclusion, set to the "Winter Winds" Etude, used a padded mat as a prop, with dancers tumbling over it, sliding on it, spinning it on their heads and finally flopping hard after catching a football pass.
KT Nelson's "There's So Much To Do," which debuted with ADT's winter concert in February, once again popped up on the Discovery Theatre stage. Sam Franklin joined previously named dancers in the complex and modernist piece. The dancers were dressed in beachwear from a century ago and were in constant motion from start to finish. There was no narrative to speak of, but an incessant outpouring of energy; each entry seemed to involve a full-speed run across to the opposite side of the stage.
Penelope Freeh, one of Sewell's artistic associates, who has spent the most time working with the ADT dancers over the past several months, performed a solo piece titled "Inside-Out," which involved her uncomfortable relationship with a jacket adorned with flowers on one side and prickly stems on the other, and ended with her tossing a rose into the audience.
ADT and Sewell dancers mixed for the finale, Sewell's "Appalachia Waltz." The girls wore plain, long pastel dresses; the boys sported rustic suspenders. The choreographer's love of symmetry was again showcased in the opening piece, in which a pair of women (sisters) mirrored each other's motions, then two men did the same steps from a different angle. The conclusion, a round-dance turning into a line-dance, had an almost lithographic formality.
But it was Sewell company dancer Nicolas Lincoln's solo turn that led to some gasps. Lying on his back, he flexed and lifted his entire body off the floor in a short spinal leap. It was only one moment in a longer piece, and he only did it once. But it was enough to earn him a little extra applause at the curtain calls.
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
By MIKE DUNHAM
mdunham@adn.com