Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/129431
Sarasota News Leader May 10, 2013 Trudel on cello — the strong, spare, percussive score overpowered Carter's choreography, which was almost frantic in its busyness. Against a backdrop of changing colors — from purple to deep red to yellow — which indicated the mood of each section, Carter set the four movements, alternating pas de deux and pas de trois with dancing by a large corps. Page 97 students could have been presented in a short variation with the same purpose: introducing a new educational program. As there was a short intermission afterward, some people left, missing Ricardo Graziano's Valsinhas, the most intriguing ballet of the evening. Carter has a painter's eye for moving groups of dancers around the stage and an overall understanding of structure, but I thought there was little or no connection to the music. It was as if the choreography had been set to a different score, and while that sometimes works, as in the ballets of Merce Cunningham, it can be disconcerting. In Valsinhas, set to Franz Schubert's 34 Valses Sentimentales (accompanied by pianist Jonathan Spivey), Graziano interpreted the waltzes with totally unexpected, inventive choreography that had little to do with the traditional idea of a waltz. Instead, the ballet opened with the entrance of a group of five men (Learned, Ricardo Rhodes, Bertoni, Sam O'Brien and Juan Gil) in red velvet shorts, bare legs and gauze tops, their backs to the audience as they scurried like beach birds onto the stage. The dancers then wandered on and off in a series of short solos, duets and group movements. There were hints of acrobatic tumbling in a bodybuilding duet. Then, in each one-minute waltz, there were less specific situations while the dancers simply explored their own flexibility — bending into an odd rolling ball, straightening an arm as if exploring space, flexing a hand as if pushing through a wall and testing the ability of each joint in the human body to see the limits and possibility inherent in their heads, necks, arms, legs, hands and torsos. Carter's second ballet, Dances for Cello and Piano, set to Ned Rorem's composition of the same name, was added to the program to present young dancers. The choreography was repetitious and the costumes were fussy, and I felt that it unnecessarily extended the evening to include a school performance. The There was enough variety of movement to keep the ballet interesting. Perhaps, most importantly, Graziano knew that he did not need to use all 34 waltzes. The ballet ended as it began, with the dancers tiptoeing off the stage like a bevy of sandpipers gently edging through the sand. % In the first section, Ryoko Sadoshima and Ricki Bertoni were the lead dancers, emerging from the group of 16, while in the second, sunny section, Logan Learned led Kate Honea, Sara Scherer and Anais Blake through a series of spoke-wheel variations that brought to mind the muses in Balanchine's Apollo. Christine Peixoto, a figurative long drink of water in a black and red unitard — partnered by David Tlaiye in the final duet — merged into the score's dramatic rhythms; instead of fighting the music, she relaxed, letting her extensions melt into the air.