Houston Ballet to Close Production of AMERICAN AT HEART, 3/21

Houston Ballet will close its current production, American at Heart, featuring two ballets that are significant to the history American dance (George Balanchine's Apollo and Jerome Robbins's Fancy Free) and one work inspired by American popular culture and created specifically for an American company (Christopher Bruce's Hush, choreographed for Houston Ballet in 2006). The production will close March 21st.

The company premiere of Jerome Robbins' American classic Fancy Free depicts the adventures of Three Sailors on shore leave who meet two girls on a hot summer night in New York City in the 1940s. An influential work in the history of twentieth century ballet, George Balanchine's Apollo traces the birth of the birth of the young god Apollo, and his education by three muses. Christopher Bruce's comic and moving Hush chronicles the adventures of a family of performers and is set to a musical celebration of life - from youth to old age - by Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin. Houston Ballet will give six performances of American at Heart at Wortham Theater Center in downtown Houston.

When Jerome Robbins' first ballet Fancy Free premiered on April 19, 1944 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, it proved to be one of the most exciting evenings in the history of American ballet and hailed the arrival of a major new choreographic talent. Robbins created the one act ballet at the age of 24 with a young, unknown composer in New York, Leonard Bernstein, who sprang to national prominence shortly before the premiere of Fancy Free when he stepped in at the last moment and conducted the New York Philharmonic. Following the success of the ballet, the work was developed into the hit Broadway musical On The Town hand in 1949 was adapted for the movie screen with Gene Kelly as the star.

Set in New York City on a hot summer night, Fancy Free portrays Three Sailors on shore leave in the 1940s. The sailors pick up two young girls and a fight breaks out over which sailor will be left without a partner. They stage a competition in the bar, each dancing a variation in hopes of winning the favor of a girl by revealing their unique personalities. Unfortunately the girls are unable to choose, the fight resumes and the girls slip away. The sailors forgive each other just as a third girl passes by leaving the audience wondering if they learned their lesson.

Houston Ballet has three other works by Robbins in its repertoire: Afternoon of a Faun, which entered Houston Ballet's repertory in 2008; The Concert (1956), which the company first performed in 2007; and In the Night (1970), which the company first danced in 1987. Christopher Bruce's Hush : Inspired by American Silent Film Actors and American Theatrical Families during the Great Depression.

Hush is a comic and moving celebration of life chronicling the adventures of a family of performers, featuring three men and three women. Houston Ballet Associate Choreographer Christopher Bruce choreographed Hush for Houston Ballet in 2006. Using what Bruce called "a unique vocabulary we're evolving for the piece," the dancers perform to selected tracks from the album Hush by Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma. An unusual collaboration between a master cellist and an improvisational singer/sound-effects performer, the recording is a joyful exploration of genres.

During the creative process of choreographing the ballet, Bruce was drawn to a quote by Yo-Yo Ma from the record's liner notes. Yo-Yo Ma wrote, "Hush is a musical celebration of life -- from youth to old age. While in so many ways this album speaks to children, it is equally true that perhaps its central goal, to use Bobby's phrase, is to 'release the child in the adult.'" Mr. Bruce noted that the music was an inspiration for his piece.

"My cast has evolved into a kind of family group reflecting, in a light-hearted way, various archetypical characters and situations," commented Bruce. The characters in the ballet include a mother, a father and four children.

Bruce has played a key role in Houston Ballet's repertory over the last two decades, greatly expanding the company's facility for performing modern dance works and developing the dancers' capacity for contemporary movement. Hush is the fourth work Houston Ballet has commissioned by Bruce to enter the company's repertoire -- and the tenth work by him that the company has performed.

The sets and costumes for Hush are designed by Bruce's frequent collaborator and wife, MarIan Bruce. Her concept for the designs puts the dancers backstage at a theatrical venue and transforms them into a close-knit theatrical or circus-like troupe. In preparation for designing the costumes, Ms. Bruce researched a variety of sources, and was inspired by silent film stars from the early twentieth century such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon. "I looked at silent clowns, Italian improvisational theater groups such as commedia dell'arte, Italian and French jesters, and strolling players. I also looked at family groups from the depression, specifically, theater families in America in the 1920s and 1930s. So I had a huge amount of material to draw upon," says Ms. Bruce.

In a Dance Europe interview with Donald Hutera (March 2009), Christopher Bruce commented on choreographing Hush:

"I built around the idea of a family unit. There's a mother, a father and two sets of older and younger siblings. It's very much modeled on my experiences of family life, and the characters of the children on my own children and then my grandchildren. There are certain patterns that keep cropping up. It's a commedia dell'arte family, a family of clowns. There's a theme of a journey through life, of being on the road as a performer and, in a sense, rootless except in your tradition. The setting suggests a circus ring that's deserted and partly been taKen Down, with just sections left. It's like after the show, moving on. Like a metaphor for life."

Hush entered the repertory of Rambert Dance Company, one of Britain's oldest and most venerable dance companies, in 2009. Reviewing the first performances of the work in London, Sarah Crompton observed in The Daily Telegraph on May 14, 2009:

The most impressive work is the opener, Christopher Bruce's Hush, created for Houston Ballet and receiving its London premiere. Set to tracks by Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma, which combine a cappella singing and cello in improvised snatches of famous themes, it creates a nuclear family of mother, father and four children and sets them dancing under the stars.

As a former Rambert director, Bruce is a past master at this kind of lyrical musing, and MarIan Bruce's Pierrot-style costumes and setting propel the piece perilously close to whimsy. But what is so lovely is the substance of the movement. Each character is given individuality through the steps they perform: the mother stiff-legged, bound to domestic tasks; the oldest daughter's arched-back sense of discovery; the high-jumping, fleet-footed square dances for the adventurous boys.

The playful duet for the parents while their children slept drew an "aah" from the audience, not a sound often heard in contemporary dance, but a tribute to a work that is both expressive and stunningly performed.

Hailed by London's The Daily Telegraph as "the Nureyev of contemporary ballet," Bruce was appointed Houston Ballet associate choreographer in 1989 and has staged ten acclaimed works for the company including Ghost Dances (1981), Land (1985) and Swansong (1987). He has created four works especially for Houston Ballet: Gautama Buddha (1989), Journey (1990) Nature Dances (1992), and Hush (2006). Over the last 20 years, Houston Ballet has emerged as Mr. Bruce's artistic home in America.

In April 2009 Houston Ballet toured Hush to Santander, Pamplona, Murcia and Oviedo, Spain. In October 2009 Dance Europe's editor Emma Manning named Hush the "Best Contemporary Dance Premiere" when Rambert Dance Company premiered the piece.

George Balanchine's oldest surviving work Apollo (1928) traces the birth of the god Apollo and his education by three of the muses in the arts -- Calliope, Polyhymnia and Terpsichore. Calliope personifies poetry and rhythm, Polyhymnia represents mime, and Terpsichore combines poetry and gesture in dance. In a final dance, Apollo and the muses ascend to Parnassus.

The creation of Apollo is significant in dance history in several respects. It is the first work that Balanchine choreographed, at age 24, to music by Igor Stravinsky. Apollo also furthered Balanchine's development as a choreographer, forcing him to analyze his choreographic style and motivation. Writing in The International Dictionary of Ballet, Jody Leader has noted, "With Apollo, Balanchine began to strip down ballet, clearing away the multiple choices to the one choice that was inevitable, unique to each piece. He was influenced by Stravinsky, who believed the highest expression in dance was absolute purity -- dancing with no meaning apart from itself....All the choreography he did after Apollo was affected by this realization."

"I look back upon Apollo as the turning point in my life," Balanchine said.

For the next half century, he continued to revise and refine Apollo, cutting music, dance and eventually omitting scenery. It is one of New York City Ballet's signature works and is also danced by companies across America and the world. Houston Ballet first performed this landmark ballet in 2004.

Visit Houston Ballet on the Web at www.houstonballet.org.

 

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