Photo Flash: OBT's SONG & DANCE

The eclectic influences of Oregon Ballet Theatre's final season performance give retiring dancer Anne Mueller a chance to showcase her wit and range in four short works from choreographers (Balanchine, Fonte, McIntyre and Stowell) who have been instrumental to her career and the development of OBT's repertoire. Song & Dance (http://www.obt.org/season_program4.html) opens on Thursday, April 21, 2011 and runs for 9 performances through Sunday, May 1, 2011. Show times: Thursday, April 21 at 7:30pm; Friday, April 22 at 7:30 pm; Saturday, April 23 at 2:00 pm and 7:30pm; Sunday, April 24 at 2:00 pm and 7:30pm; Thursday, April 28 at 7:30 pm; Saturday, April 30 at 7:30 pm and Sunday May 1 at 2:00 pm. Tickets start at $20.00, with discounts for students, military and Music for All participants. Visit www.obt.org or dial 503.2.BALLET for tickets.

ABOUT SONG & DANCE

Cole Porter tunes. Yoga. Street fights. Broadway musicals. Ballroom dancing. Skateboarding. Spirit animals. The Wild West. The inspirations behind the four short works on the Oregon Ballet Theatre spring program prove that fascinating ballet performance can be sourced from truly anywhere...and with musical styles ranging from Bach to the Bloodhound Gang, Song & Dance offers something to savor no matter what's on your iPod. The evening features a mixture of live and pre-recorded music, with Cole Porter tunes performed by Portland songstress Pamela South (Eyes on You) and pianist Richard Bower; a live chamber quintet for Square Dance; pre-recorded Bloodhound Gang hip hop and a Bach violin solo for Speak and Left Unsaid, respectively.

The program opens with the company premiere of George Balanchine's Square Dance, a piece that layers the complex geometries of traditionAl Western partner dancing with the elegant architectures of chamber music by Antonio Vivaldi and Arcangelo Corelli (performed live by a chamber quintet). When the piece premiered in 1957 it featured a live square dance caller, a practice that was abandoned in the ‘70s and will receive a rare revival with OBT's production. "Calling" for OBT's performance will be Portland violinist, composer and actor Tylor Neist.

The asanas of Iyengar yoga practice and the sinuous spirit animals from the award-winning young adult book The Golden Compass inspired Nicolo Fonte's Left Unsaid, which premiered in 2003 at the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and was first performed by Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2009 as part of the spring program. In the finished piece, Fonte's initial inspirations are abstracted into intricate partnerships that form and fade, supported by the three simple folding chairs and the "voice" of a lone violin.

Ballet gets a backbeat in Trey McIntyre's Speak, a piece the mashes up skateboard moves with street fight swagger, using classically trained ballet bodies to riff on the rough magic of youth culture, set to rap from Tracie Morris and The Bloodhound Gang. This will be the first time in 8 years that the piece will be performed by OBT in its entirety. Speak world premiered at OBT in 1998 and was a popular element of the touring and outreach repertoire for many years after that.

Rounding out the program will be Christopher Stowell's wildly popular Cole Porter romp, Eyes on You. Inspired by the wit and showmanship of the vintage Broadway musical, Eyes on You winks at show-folk traditions, from the private moments of a dressing room pas de deux to the public anxiety of that dream where you are on stage in your underwear. With sly nods to ballroom dancing and the heyday of Hollywood, Eyes on You brings the black and white era roaring to back to life with wit and sophistication. Music for the piece will be a mixture of pre-recorded music and live performances of Cole Porter classics by Pamela South and Richard Bower.Speak is sponsored by the Raymond Family Foundation and Rick and Jean Wills.

Live music for Song & Dance was made possible through support from the Rose E. Tucker Charitable Trust.

Oregon Ballet Theatre's 2010/11 season is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council and Work for Art; the Oregon Arts Commission; the Oregon Cultural Trust; The Oregonian and Kink.fm

ABOUT OREGON BALLET THEATRE

Founded in 1989, OBT is the region's largest full-time professional ballet company. Christopher Stowell joined the company as Artistic Director in 2003. Since then, OBT has added over 50 ballets to its repertoire, including nearly two dozen world premieres; providing a compelling and diverse five-program season of work that reflects the broadest spectrum of what great ballet can be. Annually, OBT offers eleven experiential arts education programs for youth and adults, as well as a professional ballet school for students, ages 4-18. Through all the programs offered, OBT reached over 112,000 members of the community last year. For more information about OBT go to: www.obt.org.

Photo Credit: Blaine Truitt Covert

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