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OCTOBER 7,2011
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Fall Dance In
Full Swing
OBT’s Petrouchka/Carmen offers new perspective on
two classics
BY REBECCA RAGAIN
Love and destiny are con
cepts that run through narra
tives of all kinds, f rom movies
to music, but they’re especially
prevalent in story ballets. The
two classics that Oregon Bal
let Theatre is tackling this fall
are no exceptions.
O n October 8, O B T kicks
off its 22nd season by pre
miering two new narrative
dance works, both set to fa
mous scores but choreo
graphed with 21st century
Brian Simcoe, Yuka lino, Lucas Threefoot and choreog
rapher Nicolo Fonte in rehearsal for Petrouchka
audiences in mind.
The original Petrouchka de
buted in 1911, performed by Diaghilev’s Bal with [our] audiences. I t’s a relationship I’m
lets Russes. A Russian tale of a puppet that happy to continue to build, for sure.”
comes to life and falls in love, it was set to a
Fonte was intrigued by the idea o f re
score by composer Igor Stravinsky— his first freshing a classic by taking just the score and
commission after the premiere of The Firebird, the bare bones o f the story— a love trian
which made him a superstar of the era.
gle— and reimagining the work from there.
Though Stravinsky’s score is timeless, “The point was to take this magnificent
O B T ’s artistic director Christopher Stowell score and modernize it choreographically,”
says that the original production of Pet said Fonte, in an interview published in the
rouchka “does not speak to us today... It looks Petrouchka/Carmen performance notes.
like a museum piece now.”
Fonte added, “I like that this program,
So Stowell invited Nicolo Fonte, one of where we re expected to make something
the country’s hottest choreographers, to cre contemporary, something relevant today... It
ate a new take on Petrouchka to mark the uses real music— it has some real value.
100th anniversary of the original ballet. Fonte [There is] some relationship to tradition, but
previously choreographed Left Unsaid (2008) [it is] somehow new. And that, to me, is ac
and Bolero (2009) for OBT, both of which tually quite innovative.”
were well received by Portland audiences.
For his own choreographic contribution,
Stowell says o f Fonte, “He loves working Stowell chose to reinvent Carmen, the opera
with O B T [dancers] and they enjoy working that has been adapted as a ballet myriad
with him equally. His work has resonated times since its premiere in 1875. Audiences
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