Grand Rapids Ballet Company
When Grand Rapids Ballet Company moved into its first permanent home in 2000, the renovated bus garage was intended to be more than just a place
to rehearse, teach classes and store costumes and sets for The Nutcracker. The 20,000-square-foot Royce Center for Dance was built also to provide performance space for Michigan’s only professional ballet company.
Two years later, the company, under Artistic Director Gordon Peirce Schmidt, inaugurated its Dancers’ Theatre Series of one-act programs, which quickly became one of the hottest tickets in town. With just 100 seats available in Studio A, and no more than five performances, it wasn’t hard to sell out the first program. Three seasons later, the series remains popular among dance fans who enjoy sitting as close as 12 feet away—near enough to see the dancers sweat.
The 15-member company gave Schmidt’s latest creation for the series, Mistletoe, its world première in January. No particular references to Norse mythology nor to horticulture were evident, but there was a good bit of kissing and plenty of dancing.
Set to the recorded music of Ensemble Galilei, with such Celtic, Renaissance and folk tunes as “Death’s Second Self” and “Lilli Burlero,” the ballet consisted of 12 vignettes touching upon the eternal desire for love and lasting relationships.
Mistletoe, some 45 minutes long, is the most abstract work that Schmidt has created to date for this series. None of the vignettes told a tale that was carried forward on the program. Still, Schmidt’s athletic choreography, grounded in traditional ballet, but with elements of contemporary dance, captured the essence of love, loneliness and loss.
In “Flanagan’s Waltz,” four women competed for the affection of Nicholas Schultz, a native Grand Rapidian in his third season with the company. He gave a muscular performance with wide, open movements and strong double tours. He was rejected by all four women but not by the audience. The most powerful performance featured Akop and Gaiane Akopian, real-life husband and wife, formerly of the National Theater of Opera and Ballet in their native Armenia. Their pas de deux suggested an unhappy couple struggling to restore an empty relationship. Their partnering was often at arm’s length and with interrupted motion, marking the emotional separation between them. Finally, to the song “Joy to the Person of My Love,” they met and kissed under the mistletoe. But only their lips touched; the true distance between them remained.
Alexey Kulpin, a well-traveled native of St. Petersburg, Russia, in his first season with GRBC, appeared sparingly yet explosively—so excited that he stumbled in the finale.
The Dancers’ Theatre Series is intended to offer workshop experiences—”challenging, interesting, experimental new works,” associate artistic director Laura Schwenk Berman said on opening night. The performance had its rough spots, but many rewarding moments as well.
Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk is the classical music and dance critic for The Grand Rapids Press.
