HQ Review: Ballet 314’s Fall Fête Angels and Demons
On October 18, Ballet 314 presented Fall Fete: Angels & Demons at UMSL’s Touhill Performing Arts Center Lee Theater. Ballet 314 delighted their audience with an intimate matinee performance as well as a luxe evening performance and fundraiser. This review is for the 3:00pm matinee performance.
The performance began with Astra Planeta, choreographed by Co-Artistic Director Rachel Bodi. According to Rachel, as she stated at the end of the show, this piece was inspired by Gustav Holst’s music as well as her husband, who does astrography. Looking at the images he would create motivated Rachel to form a piece about how the planets formed. Each dancer represented a different planet (Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury), and each dancer was also inspired by the energies of amazon warrior women. The dancers’ black tutus and pointe shoes emphasized the dancers’ technical execution in this contemporary ballet work. The piece began with all four dancers fiercely moving throughout the stage. Interspersed between the group sections, each dancer had a solo representing their planet. From the time she began, the first soloist, Marcela Gomez Lugo, immediately demanded attention from the audience with her fierce energy. The solos were very fun to watch since each solo told a different story, with some dancers having gentle movements and others having rapid movements .
The second piece was When Does Trauma Heal?, choreographed by Thomas Proctor. During the post-show talk-back, Thomas explained how his piece was inspired by the book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, which is about how trauma can reshape the body and how you interact. His hope for his piece was to bring awareness that in order to deal with trauma, you need to be able to accept it. The piece started with Thomas, as the main character, looking down in distraught, sitting on a chair. Four dancers walk up to him almost like they knew what was going on with him, or as if they are beings in his mind. Throughout the piece, you can see Thomas’ ongoing struggle, trying to mingle with characters, but it never works out. Eventually, there is talking, and one especially repetitive statement: “I don't want to understand what makes us hurt each other." Towards the end of the work, Thomas found his happier ending. It was beautiful to see the Thomas, the choreographer, interacting with the other dancers within this work.
Executive Director Rachel Bodi entered the stage to speak to the audience a bit about the company. This Fall Fête is their fourth annual fundraiser. She shares that the company has an equal focus on presenting main stage performances and within local areas of the community, and concludes by thanking the supporters and highlights the amazing opportunities provided for their dancers.
The third piece, Our Own Eden, was choreographed by Co-Artistic Director Robert Poe. He allowed the lyrics be the “connective tissue” of his piece and the movements were a response to what the dancers were hearing. The piece had a tone of finding your own space, which was shown not only in choreography, but also in the fact that some dancers were wearing pointe shoes while others weren't, and the dancers had different hairstyles and different colored costumes. The piece began with vibrant, 80’s-like music, then shifted to more serious then an energetic tone. An especially powerful moment was when a repetitive voice that said “Wherever you’ll take me I’ll go.”
The final piece of the show, The Deal, choreographed by Marcela Gomez Lugo, brought the audience back in time to the Great Depression and the musical development of the Delta Blues. The piece told the story of Robert Johnson, a once terrible musician who became phenomenal overnight. There are many conspiracies about him, but this piece portrays the idea of him selling his soul to the devil, inspired by Papa Legba. The female dancers in the piece portrayed the characters of ‘Hellhounds”, which is an expansion of the spirit Papa Legba.
In its fourth annual fundraiser, Ballet 314 continues to amaze its audience with their beautiful performances while carrying out their mission of emphasizing literacy through the arts. The company continues to provide amazing opportunities not only for its dancers, but also for the community.
Photos by Lumosco Photo