Love's Labor's Lost and the Miami City Ballet

Last week was another good one for supporting the arts.

Wednesday

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I saw Love’s Labor’s Lost, a Shakespeare romantic comedy, at the Folger Shakespeare Library. I had never read the play, and I didn’t know anything about it. But I really enjoyed the performance!

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Like many of Shakespeare’s plays, this one included lots of different couples and mistaken identities. The gist is that four men swear to commit to their studies and not touch or even talk to a woman for three years. Yet the Princess of France is about to visit (along with three of her friends), and you can guess that each man falls in love for one of the girls. There is also a side story of a Spanish soldier (played by Eric Hissom, who sounds just like Hank Azaria from The Birdcage) who is in love with a servant girl, and then a librarian and some old guy (played by Susan Rome and Louis Butelli, respectively), fall in love, too (I have no idea where they really came into the story). Mixed messages are sent to the wrong people, costumes and disguises cause confusion, etc. But it all turns out right in the end.

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I thought the Berowne character (one of the male students) was the funniest. Zachary Fine played him SO well! He was very expressive, which helped get past the old English (which frequently is hard to understand). But everyone did a great job. Megan Graves as the young boy Mote was spot-on, and Josh Adams playing Dull was, well, dull! And Edmund Lewis as Costard was hilarious. Wonderful cast, beautiful set, fun story: I highly recommend it! You can still buy tickets through June 9. Don’t wait!

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*Interesting: Although this play does not have a primary source, this article highlights some items that may have inspired parts of this story.

Saturday

The Kennedy Center's annual "Ballet Across America" series featured both the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Miami City Ballet (I only saw the latter). I had never seen this company perform before, so I was excited to see them. I really liked the mixed repertoire they performed! And as a side note: this is the best looking ballet company I've ever seen. Most of the time there are ballerinas with horse faces or pug noses, but all of these dancers were actually beautiful!

Walpurgisnacht Ballet

This ballet is so pretty and classic, so it's no surprise that George Balanchine choreographed it. 24 women in pink and purple dresses dance gracefully across the stage like standard ballerinas. But partway through, the music grows intense, and the women come back on stage with their long hair flowing, looking wild and free.

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Here's a video of the same dance (from 1980):

Carousel Pas de Deux

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The program notes called this piece the "quintessential expression of ecstatic - and dangerous - young love." I completely agree! A young girl (Jennifer Lauren) is dancing playfully, crawling around like an animal or splashing in nearby water. And then the bad boy (Chase Swatosh, who looks like a young Val Kilmer - not the man in the photo above) arrives and tries to show off to her. Parts of the dance seem like a PSA on domestic violence: he's pressuring her, she's trying to slap him, he's grabbing her by the arm tightly. And yet they kiss and roll around on the ground together, and they seem the most in sync during the impressive lifts. They're dramatic as teenagers are, and when he leaves her, she falls to ground as if she actually died. The dancers truly became their characters!

Heatscape

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This piece, choreographed by Justin Peck, was inspired by the street art of Shepard Fairey (or Obey Giant professionally). You can see the art in the background, which for me evoked light (from the sun) and peace (from the dove). This modern dance was very playful and fun, as the dancers ran, jumped, and slid across the stage. Peck choreographed the piece to mimic the mandala art, and I could see how the group would gather and then break away, then weave back together, almost in a pattern formation. I liked the joyful, youthful feel of this dance. I wasn't crazy about the costumes (many of the women were wearing long tank tops that looked like they could be found at the Gap), but the little white slips with piping or sleeves looked a bit more put together and much more flattering. And I'm sure the men were happy not to have to wear their usual tights!

Here's the trailer for this piece:

Brahms/Handel

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This piece is interesting because it was a collaboration between two choreographers, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp. The dancers are distinguished by color, almost like sports teams: Robbins' dancers in blue and Tharp's in green (like smurfs vs. leprechauns). I must preferred the classic dancing by Robbins compared to Tharp's weird moves (clapping, weird lifts, yoga poses). But it was cool how in the end all of the dancers were together and the moves were melding together to the point that you couldn't tell who choreographed what.

In the program, the notes said that the Miami City Ballet's artistic director, Lourdes Lopez, is the "only dancer ever to have performed both the green and the blue ballerina role." How cool!

This is a great video about this piece:

Frequently when I go to see the Ballet Across America performances, I fear that the pieces will be too modern for my liking. But I genuinely enjoyed all of the pieces from this show! I was very happy to see so much classic ballet, and even the more modern pieces were just as graceful.

I bought tickets for the next ballet season at the Kennedy Center, so I am very excited to see all of those shows starting in the fall!