Hedy Weiss: Theater Reviews
The CSO and Joffrey Ballet Make an Ideal Couple: Review
The Joffrey Ballet Ensemble featured in the world premiere performance of choreographer Amy Hall Garner’s “Second Nature.” Conductor Harry Bicket leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Perkinson’s Sinfonietta No. 1. (Todd Rosenberg Photography)
Pair two of Chicago’s greatest cultural gems in a multifaceted program on the Symphony Center stage, and you have an ideal example of the city’s exceptional talent. And that is exactly what you will find in the current program that brings the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Joffrey Ballet together in a most winning way.
The first half of the program, deftly conducted by Harry Bicket, features two works, both of which have a notable emotional flair. It opens with the CSO’s first performance of “Symphony No. 1 in G Major,” a 1779 work composed by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the Guadeloupe composer born to a White French plantation owner and a teenage African slave of Senegalese origin. Driven by an orchestra of strings, along with two oboes and two horns, the 14-minute piece has a lively opening that grows to high speed and fervor in its first movement and shifts to a light and lively andante in its second movement. It then builds from a lyrical start to a bit of stormy, high speed excitement for a finale.
Next comes Joseph Haydn’s “Symphony No. 45 in F-Sharp Minor,” a 25-minute work in four movements that dates from 1772 and is composed for strings, two oboes, a bassoon and two horns.
The piece has a dark start and then builds into a beautiful melody full of energy and emotion, followed by a lovely lyrical passage that leads into a burst of intensity and an elegant frenzy. The second movement has a lyrical opening that draws on the beauty of the strings and is marked by a meditative moment and a lively melody that builds gradually and draws on the winds before moving to a calm ending.
Conductor Harry Bicket leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Stain-George's Symphony No. 1. (Todd Rosenberg Photography)
The third movement, dubbed a “Menuet,” opens with a big, jaunty, playful sound that then moves through beautiful shifting emotions. And finally, the fourth presto movement opens with high speed and excitement, calms down to a lovely melody and then plays a bit of a laugh-inducing trick that I will not give away here aside from saying it played quite a wonderful trick on the audience.
The second half of the program (with the orchestra perched at the back of the stage, the dancers up front and the floor covered in a special surface) is devoted to the Joffrey Ballet by way of two very different world premiere works. They not only showcase the superb dancing of the company but also serve as a reminder of its dancers’ impressive theatrical gifts.
First up is “Second Nature,” choreographed by Amy Hall Garner and set to a score dating from 1954 by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, the late Black composer who grew up in New York, studied classical music and worked as a jazz pianist and composer who dealt with many styles. Garner has also worked with many styles, drawing on ballet, modern and theatrical dance, and was one of the first recipients of the Joffrey Ballet’s Choreography of Color Award.
The work unfolds in a series of duets performed by couples dressed in gold, blue or green costumes. Opening the piece were the ever ideal Victoria Jaiani and Dylan Gutierrez, a gold couple, with Lindy Mesmer and Jackson Miles also in gold. The blue pairs were Jeraldine Mendoza and Edson Barbosa, and Yumi Kanazawa and Hyuma Kiyosawa. And in green were Gayeon Jung and Stefan Goncalvez, and Anais Bueno and Jose Pablo Castro Cuevas. The work, suggesting somewhat different temperaments, was beautifully danced throughout.
The Joffrey Ballet Ensemble featured in the world premiere performance of choreographer Nicolas Blanc’s “Les Bœufoons.” Conductor Harry Bicket leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Milhaud’s “Le Bœuf sur le toit.” (Todd Rosenberg Photography)
Next came “Les Boeufoons,” a zestily choreographed, circus-like work by Nicolas Blanc, a dancer turned worldly choreographer who has created several pieces for the Joffrey. In this case it was the comical and clown-like “Les Boeufoons,” set to French composer Darius Milhaud’s widely known 1920 work “Le Boeuf sur le Toit” (“The Cow on the Roof”), with a rich collection of costumes for the work’s many, varied (and mischievous) characters who can pull off quite a few acrobatic moves.
There were wonderful characterizations and dancing by A Fashion Couple (ideally danced by Amanda Assucena and Alberto Velazquez); La Femme au Décolleté (by the ever comical Fernando Duarte); A Buffoon (played with zest by Xavier Nunez); and Les Farfelus, the zany and extravagant ones (played by Nae Kojima, Olivia Duryea, Lauren Quinn, Ao Wang, Evan Boersma, Maxwell Dawe, Wictor Hugo Pedroso and Aaron Renteria).
This program will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. For tickets, visit cso.org or phone 312-294-3000.
Note: This article has been updated to reflect that Nae Kojima danced as one of Les Farfelus.
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