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Sarasota News Leader February 8, 2013 Page 83 I had a feeling of curious anticipation about Tuckett's Changing Light, not really knowing what to expect, as both the work of the composer and the choreographer were unknown to me. As the curtain lifted to reveal a sea of 25 orange-and-blue costumed dancers floating across the stage in strong, energized dancing, I knew we had stepped into the 21st century. It might have been last on the program, but Changing Light, set to Jeremy Holland-Smith's contemporary, percussive and exhilarating score, promised to be a sophisticated joy ride. The ballet is constructed in a series of constantly changing, complex patterns with varying moods that alternate sections of freewheeling dancers sliding, leaping and turning in configurations that shift like the tide: solos, couples, groups — all coming together and then parting, with the music intrinsically connected to both the emotions and the choreography. Will Tuckett/Contributed photo little steps like birds skimming along the shore. Though the nonstop, energetic choreography had to be challenging, the company appeared to dive into the work, dancing with an open ease that contrasted with the stiffness apparent earlier in the evening. At the finale, with all 25 dancers back on stage, there was an explosion of joyful dancing as the ballet came to a close. At first the focus was on three couples who circled around as if in a giant square dance. There was a quiet intensity to the dancing of Ricardo Rhodes and Ricardo Graziano and their partners — Danielle Brown and Kate Honea — as they mirrored each other's choreography of overhead lifts and squared-off Little had I or anyone else guessed that the fish dives. evening would reveal Changing Light to be such an extraordinary world debut of both In another section of duets, Sara Sardelli and music and dance, and how lucky we were to Logan Learned were happily reunited. come away with such a gift of having been Throughout and in between the solos and at this premiere of a rare experience in the the duets, a group of happy women, whom ballet world: an original, successful, new I called the "bluebirds," came and went — work. I know, I could have turned around and arms stretched out into the universe, as they gone back into the warmth of the theater and hopped in unison, moving backwards in quick watched the ballet all over again. %