BY MARTHA ULLMAN WEST
Silver Anniversary
EBC opening the new season
C
©2003 Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Co., Hood River, OR. Show Reserve. Drink Responsibly.
rack open the champagne, drum
rolls, please: This is the Eugene
Ballet Company’s 25th anniversary,
and they are celebrating with some terrific
new dancers and a season of classics, start-
ing with The Sleeping Beauty, which opens
in the Silva Concert Hall at the Hult Center
for two performances, at 8 pm Nov. 1, and
at 2:30 pm Nov. 2.
Pimble’s 1993 staging of the 1890
Marius Petipa ballet based on Perrault’s
fairy tale of the sleeping princess awakened
by a kiss, like the original, is all about danc-
ing. Eloquent pas de deux, bravura solos,
ensemble social dances and glorious third
act fairy tale divertissements are all per-
formed to what Tchaikowsky viewed as his
finest ballet score.
Performing it would have been impossi-
ble 25 years ago, when Managing Director
Riley Grannan and Artistic Director Toni
Pimble sewed the costumes, painted the
scenery and performed with six other
dancers. Today, the company’s roster of 19
performers and five apprentices adds up to
“by far the finest group of dancers we have
ever had,” according to Pimble.
Pimble and Grannan are particularly
excited about Hyuk-Ku Kwon, a gold
medalist in the first Kirov-Universal Ballet
Competition in the early 1990s and most
recently a principal with Ballet Arizona.
“He has beautiful technique and style,”
Pimble said, “and an abandoned quality
when he gets going.” He’ll bring those
attributes to the role of Prince Desiree,
which he will dance with Jennifer Martin as
Aurora on Saturday night.
Also new to the company this season are
Gilmar Duran and her husband, Dubraskha
Arrivillaga, from Venezuela, both of them
experienced in the classical repertoire as
well as more contemporary choreography.
It took enormous effort on Grannan’s
part with the INS, but Peter Orlov, whose
training is Russian and English, is now a
full-fledged member of the company. And
Diego Fernando Castro, who studied in
Havana and has a grand jump, is also an
addition to the male complement. Suzanne
Haag appeared in Kirk Peterson’s Sleeping
Beauty with Hartford Ballet; Carlos Miller
is a graduate of the Joffrey New School
BFA program, and Phyllis Rothwell has
joined the company from Charleston.
Returning dancers include Frank
Affrunti, Daniel Alsedek, Juan Carlos
Amy-Cordero, Neysa Fulsome, John Funk
in character roles, Jonathan Guise, Melissa
Nolen and Stephanie Parker. New appren-
tices include Mary Jane Ward and Kaitlin
van Rossman, both students of Susan
Zadoff and Sara Lombardi at the Eugene
Ballet School.
With these new and returning dancers,
EBC is obviously poised to deliver a new
season with plenty of high points.
Asked about the high points of the past
25 years, Pimble pointed to Don Quixote in
2001, staged by the highly distinguished
Anna-Marie Holmes and her respect for
the company. Curiously Pimble, this
innovative contemporary choreog-
rapher whose Silk and Steel is
arguably a masterpiece, also men-
tioned the first Giselle the company
did in collaboration with Ballet
Oregon in 1988, with live orchestra and
guest artists Fernando Bujones and
Kimberly Glassco. The much earlier Les
Noces, performed with the Eugene Concert
Choir, was also a high point for Pimble.
Grannan’s choices are different. “The
dramatic power of Toni’s Still Falls the
Rain was his first thought, a defining
moment for this writer as well. The 1997
work, based on a horrific incident with
the Taliban, made a strong state-
ment about the horrors com-
mitted in the name of funda-
mentalist religion.
“Being in Syria, in
Aleppo, on tour
was another high
point,” Grannan said.
“To share our work
with another culture, to
get through to people who have lived in one
place for so long, to hear their applause,
was really memorable. And the collabora-
tions with Lloyd Sobel, especially Silk and
Steel, are also high points.”
Both founders were non-commital
about the company’s low points, preferring
to forget them. Grannan mentioned the
loss of the young, such as Nian Mei Geng,
a beautiful classical dancer who fell to her
death some years ago, and choreographer
Dennis Spaight’s death from AIDS in
1993. The company’s revival of his
Scheherazade, with Jennifer
Martin dancing the title role, paid
homage to Spaight’s memory
and brought that eloquent,
splendidly designed work
before audiences who would
not otherwise have seen it.
That, really, is the
defining quality of this
company, whether at home
in Eugene or on tour: For
a quarter of a century, it
has brought fine ballet,
increasingly well-performed,
to many for whom this form of
dance was new.
ew
F I R E DA N C I N G . OCTO B E R 16 , 2 0 0 3 . 10: 5 3 P M .
OCTOBER 23, 2003 21