Tulsa Ballet artistic director Marcello Angelini has only one regret about the “Creations in Studio K” program that opened Sept. 11 at the ballet company’s Studio K theater.
It’s that Natasha Adorlee did not create “Salt Wives,” the extraordinary work that opens this year’s triple-bill, four months earlier.
If that had happened, Angelini said, her ballet would have been part of the program the company presented during its week-long residence in May at London’s Royal Opera House.
“Salt Wives” is Adorlee’s first work for Tulsa Ballet’s main company. Last season she created “Horas de Hamras” for Tulsa Ballet II, which was the best work of that particular production.
Like that first piece, Adorlee’s “Salt Wives” features an earthy, grounded, yet inventive movement vocabulary — there is a thrilling unpredictability in the way she crafts her dances — coupled with a fluid musicality and a palpable sense of passion.
The golden haze created by lighting designer Julie Duro gives the Studio K stage an atmosphere of heat and dust, through which the dancers portray stages in the life of a community determined to find those small moments of joy and hope in their efforts to subsist in an oppressive, even uncaring, world.
Principal dancer Nao Ota has the central role in this piece — a young woman whose romance with a young man (soloist Edward Truelove) proceeds inexorably from rapture to despair. The duet titled “Salt Kiss” is just that — Ota and Truelove perform a dance at once passionate and chaste, maintaining a kiss throughout — and it is beautiful to behold.
This romance has a tragic outcome, foreshadowed by the haunting duet “Omen” featuring principal dancer Aina Oki and corps de ballet member Lachlan Murray. But the community will continue, as the women come together to bring the latest widow into their unique sisterhood.
In a video preceding the performance, Adorlee said she very quickly developed a unique rapport with the Tulsa Ballet dancers, to the point where, choreographically speaking, “They could finish my sentences.”
That may be the best way of describing this work, and the effect it has on the viewer. One gets the sense, almost from the first bit of movement, that this was not a ballet that was set upon this company, but one that has been drawn out from the souls of the dancers themselves. It was exhilarating to watch.
Yury Yanowsky, whose “Classical Symphony” has been part of Tulsa Ballet’s touring program for a couple of years, is represented here by his ballet “(in-TER-stiss),” which was performed by Tulsa Ballet II.
Set to a soundscape of electronic noises, whip-crack percussion and the (very) odd human voice that Yanowsky assembled from the work of techno artist Senking, this is industrial ballet to the extreme. The choreography seems built more on physical strength and dynamically angular movement than on beauty and musicality.
While I cannot say it is a ballet I love, it certainly is a work I can admire, especially when danced with breathtaking power as Tulsa Ballet demonstrated.
Especially impressive was the performances by the lead quartet of Paula Zapata, Jonathan Kay, Ava Thomas and Gabriel Fabiani. Zapata, in particular, displayed an impressive sense of balance, control and flexibility in a work that really pushed the young company to the limits, and they conquered every challenge with skill and aplomb.
Closing out the evening was “Route 66,” a new work by former resident choreographer Ma Cong, now the artistic director of the Richmond Ballet.
This was a septet of pieces, set to an eclectic collection of pop, country and R&B songs, that were designed to evoke a kind of joyous nostalgia. It’s a celebration of the real American dream to strike out on the road in search of adventure and maybe even a new and better life.
Shades of Paul Taylor’s Americana ballets, such as Company B, could be detected in the look and atmosphere of “Route 66,” but without any underlying darkness. Even the more mournful tunes, such as Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California” and George Strait’s “Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa,” featured choreography that played against the song’s less than celebratory attitude.
No, this ballet was a way to send the audience home on a high note, with dances that were fast, flashy and full of good cheer, and which the Tulsa Ballet dancers performed with such obvious energy and panache that it was easy to see that this very international group of performers were more than happy to be “Livin’ on Tulsa Time.”
“Creations in Studio K” — kicking off Angelini’s final season with the company — continues with performances Thursday through Sunday, Sept. 17-20, at the Tulsa Ballet’s Brookside facility, 1212 E. 45th Place. For tickets: call 918-749-6030 or visit tulsaballet.org.
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