Ballet Quad Cities' "Romeo & Juliet Suite" in "Love Stories" -- February 11 and 12 at the Davenport Outing Club.
[Author's note: I attended a rehearsal for Ballet Quad Cities upcoming performance of Love Stories, and it was powerful stuff. Tender and warm in the earlier dances … but Romeo and Juliet? A devastating and yet beautifully abstract expression of the miraculous complexity of the human body, longing, partisanship, and destiny. This should be on everyone's Valentine's Day wish list. It's essential experience. - Les Bell]
Time, the elegant trickster, offers us this paradox: How can we move forward together with him while traveling at different speeds?
Our superb professional ballet company Ballet Quad Cities is preparing another outstanding set of dances for us. Five dances by four choreographers will unfurl in the first half of a concert at the Outing Club in Davenport on February 11 and 12, and if something called Love Stories has you thinking of bobby socks, coy flirtation, and boxed chocolate tied up with a red bow, you’re only partly right. From rustic American folk dancing to melting, languorous reverie, the first half of the program will play with tradition while evincing surprising originality from its dancers.
The fine dancer/choreographer Domingo Rubio (Dracula to some) offers “Twelve Temperaments,” a complexity of luxurious pairings – men with women and men, women with men and women – with a sensual underpinning and multiplying patterns of kaleidoscopic movement. Other delights come from Emily Kate Long and Lynn Bowman.
There’s so much variety before the intermission that you might think you’ve seen the full spectrum of dance possibilities. But then there is the Romeo & Juliet Suite. Lyon says of her dance that despite its Shakespearean conception, and location in courtly Verona, she has set her tale in an ever-present now, for us to witness and from which to learn. In Ballet Quad Cities' brilliant take on the story of Romeo and Juliet, the moments of honey slowness and mercury speed take place together. The dance itself is of the moment while eternal. The dancers are contemporary masters of their art while embodying potent ideas and gestures from history. The love, life, and death of our moment are as timeless as the earth itself.
This suite comes from a story we all know by heart: Boy and girl from warring families fall in love. Complexity follows and it doesn’t end well. The story has been endlessly re-imagined right up to the Steven Spielberg West Side Story of today. But this is different. This dark, lush, narcotic dance takes us into the profundity of conflict; of tragic unfairness; of mistakes made and consequences suffered. It’s not an airy puff of pink – we will find ourselves caught up in a powerful, emotional force field as delight turns inexorably to despair, and despair to resolve.
Romeo and Juliet, young, alluring, curious, and wildly intelligent, are joined by a swarm of portentously, dark woman-angels and a single male – Fate – who patiently, persistently, and unflinchingly delivers the sentence to the loving couple.
The abstraction of the choreography is a wonderment. By keeping the storytelling on an intuitive level, Lyon provides an unobstructed channel from the stage to our emotional center. There are gorgeous, legato passages of pure lyricism but the miasmic presence of Fate’s grim message is never far away, and the dark complexity of Prokofiev’s music is a constant reminder of what we already know but dare not believe. Young lovers are not supposed to die, especially under such twisted circumstances.
But that’s the genius of Shakespeare and the genius of Ballet Quad Cities’ powerful tale of Romeo and Juliet. By witnessing their doomed love, you’ll come away purged of unrealistic romantic notions and full of resolve to live more fully, bravely, and lovingly. Altogether, this concert, with its humor, athleticism, grace, tragedy, originality, and joy, will take you to eternal truths, make you more fully human, and convince you that all of life is a Love Story.
For more information on Ballet Quad Cities' February 11 and 12 performances of Love Stories at Davenport's Outing Club, call (309)786-3779 and visit BalletQuadCities.com.
