Balancing Act

I have been a dancer with Ballet Memphis since 2004. I met the man of my dreams in Memphis, and we got married on July 3, 2010; we just celebrated our one-year anniversary!

It has been hard balancing my professional dance career, teaching Pilates and ballet, choreographing for the Company and the Junior Company, and being a supportive wife.

Matthew, my husband, is in theater, working as a freelance lighting and scenic designer. Some months he works on three or four shows at a time and is rarely home. And now that I am teaching Pilates before and after my own class, I work 12-hour days sometimes, so I’m not home very long at night.The great thing is that he absolutely loves dance and loves to design lights for dance, and we have a mutual respect for one another’s art.

Usually, when I have a Ballet Memphis performance, he is also in the middle of putting on a show, so we are constantly missing each other. But when time permits, he is at every show/rehearsal of ours, and the same goes for me for his productions.

I will admit, performing in a theater all the time, and then on your day off going to the theater to see your husband’s show is difficult, but then I get to sit back and enjoy his talents. We usually make a date night out of it by going to dinner before the show and trying to catch up on each other’s lives.

The best part of having Matthew as my husband is that we are a team. He is my constant support system, my own personal foot masseur, and my very dearest friend to go to with my problems. And to know that there is someone rooting for you in the audience is a wonderful feeling.

-- Julie Niekrasz

Playing a Part

Working on a character role is something that I find incredibly challenging and welcoming at the same time. It produces different obstacles when performing a role. You not only have to execute the steps properly but also understand who your character is and the way that they would perform the choreography. On the other hand, dancing a character role gives you guidance in how the steps should be done because the work is often initiated by the role you are playing. Your direction is truly derived from within.

Dancing the role of the Nurse in Steven McMahon’s Romeo and Juliet was truly a gift. I was given the foundation of who my character was and the choreography by Steven, but was given the freedom to develop her and her relationship with each of the women playing Juliet. It was one of the first times on stage that I really felt like I was performing a character role that I continuously could grow and feed. Being in control of the evolution of my character from the beginning of the ballet to its tragic end created a new experience each time I stepped foot onto the stage.

The role of Cupid in Trey McIntyre’s The Naughty Boy is another character role that I find intriguing. Cupid is a mischievous, somewhat androgynous character who likes to take part in a little friendly meddling in the relationships of four different couples. The character is an interesting duality of both masculine and feminine qualities, not a far cry from my strengths as a dancer. The part is technically very difficult but is made easier with the fact that the style of the choreography and the character coincide with one another. I was fortunate to be involved in the creation of this part when it premiered in 2004 and had the opportunity to perform it here in Memphis and at the Joyce Theater in New York in 2007. I am very excited to have the opportunity to revisit this work at a different point in my life and career. Like all things that we do in dance, character role or not, it is our life experiences as human beings that so strongly define who we are as artists.

Pictured practicing The Little Prince at First Congo during one of Ballet Memphis' Open Rehearsals.

2BLoved

A little prince and a naughty boy...don't you think we can all say we understand something of both? The ability to be elegant and the ability to make mischief? Throughout the history of art, there are countless times where the youngest ones tell us what we need to see, hear, and do, in order to understand and value life. Often, it is the most innocent who are the closest to what is most meaningful.

Pairing these two pieces is no accident. In The Naughty Boy, Cupid is manifesting our yearning to make sense of our loves, our relationships, those extraordinarily momentous happenings that bring us together. Is it happenstance? Is there a plan? Even if we do not have the answers, there are certainly times where our hearts soar and life feels like a lark. Cupid shoots a weapon but is love a wound? After all, our hearts are pierced. The initial love potion is strong, and delightful, but a wound, nonetheless. And our Cupid in this ballet has a tongue-in-cheek twist--he's a girl! There are no hard answers here. Our assumptions, our secure and comfortable boundaries, must be set aside if we are going to romp along with this ethereal creature. Choreographer Trey McIntyre planted a coonskin cap on his all-girl Tennessee Cupid, and takes us on a mad dash, pell-mell through a work created on Ballet Memphis that only wonderfully trained professional ballet dancers can execute. It was a hit when we premiered it in Memphis in 2004 and it was a hit when we performed it in New York in 2007. We are pleased to bring it back as we launch our 25th main stage anniversary season.

Ballet Memphis Artistic Associate and former San Francisco principal ballet dancer Julia Adam has reshaped and restaged her The Little Prince for us. Based on the French classic by Antoine de Saint Exupery, how timely this story is! The narrator, a pilot who has crashed in the desert, finds his days there far from barren. The Little Prince has arrived from a very small and fragile planet, and he sees things so much differently than a world-weary grown-up. Things are not what they seem. With a simple message like that, when a hat is really an elephant swallowed by a boa constrictor, we are being told not only that things are not what they seem, but sometimes there are deeper messages we are missing while we are rushing around. And we are being asked if we are taking care of a small piece of the world given to us, as the Little Prince has done on his planet? We actually are living in a time when so much evidence points to the need for us to take care of our earth, yet there is a loud national cry against this very apparent truth. Today, I fear the Little Prince’s tenderness toward his rose would meet a chorus of fear and denial which might even overwhelm those who beg us to take responsibility for our actions on our planet.

Our Little Prince innately is drawn to accepting the world around him and is curious about other worlds. The geographer tells him that flowers are not recorded, "because they are ephemeral." I find this a particularly poignant place in this narrative, to hear the thought that things that are "ephemeral" are discounted. In reality, isn't everything on earth ephemeral? And our art form itself, one moment of beauty after another, seized and released as the dance unfolds before our eyes, is overwhelmingly so. Is there not something tellingly true about valuing each moment given to us, because that is all we have within each moment we are alive? This ephemeral quality, this moment by moment miracle, is a reason to value beautiful dance.

When the Little Prince "tames" the Fox, and makes him a friend, he learns how beautiful and how painful attachment can be. (Remember Cupid's arrows?) As he thinks of the rose on his planet he has loved, nurtured, and protected, his heart has been pierced by what he has loved. The fox teaches him a concept which great artists, and great spiritual leaders are deeply tied to---"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye...It is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important...You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

Think of the many things we love–and tame–in our lives. Do we waste our time on beauty? On the life earth gives us? The Little Prince knows that far away, unseen to him, are his planet and rose he loves. He believes in what he now cannot see. If there is one sacred thing that artist bring to our lives, it is the belief that there are worlds, people, things, and ideas we have not yet seen, things we cannot see. Our imaginations, fueled by love, justice, and curiosity, can be a part of creating these things, or illuminating them, or discovering them. We vividly picture deep within our hearts what we believe might be possible---and we write it, we sing it, we paint it, and dance it.

As we commence our main stage 25th anniversary season with these two beautifully crafted works by these internationally respected choreographers who have been closely associated with us over the years, let's promise to value what we cannot see, except perhaps in our imagination, our dreams, our hopes. Let's remember to waste time on the things in life that won't be "recorded" because they are "ephemeral." Art and heart sound very similar, don't they? Let's touch each others' hearts; let's use art to help us see what cannot be measured, but is incalculable.

-- Dorothy Gunther Pugh

Pictured top left, Ballet Memphis company members Crystal Brothers and Travis Bradley, as well as former company member Dawn Fay perform The Naughty Boy in New York in 2007.

Reaching the Community, One Child at a Time

This year, Ballet Memphis, in conjunction with the Junior League of Memphis and ArtsMemphis, started Connections:Kids, a new program that will focus on healthy movement and nutritional education to combat the everyday media influences. Karl Condon, our Associate Artistic Director, writes about some of his outreach experience with Connections:Kids.

I pulled up to the Whitehaven Community Center and immediately scouted for the rental truck, found the rear entrance, and scoped out the space. It was our third performance of Connection:Kids and “Yes!”, we were dancing in the gym! Boys were still playing some round-ball, but we could load-in shortly. We kicked out the floor and set up the large movie screen as several young ladies watched with interest, shyly dancing a jig and a jump so we could see, and I spoke to some young boys to ask if they would dance with us today, the answer being vehemently “no!”. I thought I had just found my first ‘volunteer’.

The clock hit the top of the hour and we were ready to perform. Although we had a small audience at first, it quickly grew with the wide open doors and corridors giving ample access, and the loud music garnering interest. Evan danced a wonderful minute-and-a-half solo to a witty cola commercial, and got the kid’s attention quickly. I strode into the space, iconic red labeled soda in hand, (I tell the kids I’m not picking on any particular brand), and called my young new friend up to join me. I handed him a box of sugar and a spoon, while I held a plastic baggy. I asked the audience to yell and stop his generous scoopings when they thought the sugar in the baggy equalled the sugar in the drink. “Six!” “No.” “Eight!” “No.” “TEN!!” “Well if it was a can, it’d be ten, but this was a larger bottle.” “Stop!”, came the final shout at twelve teaspoons full. Sure the teaspoons were generous, but it makes for an effective demonstration.

We danced our “Cola Montage”, the beautiful dancers clad all in white to “pop” under the dimmed lights and in front of the rear projected movies. The choreography breaks into a free-for-all with the ten professional dancers working into the audience for a spontaneous dance party to the music of Michael Jackson, on the Marley floor. It’s loud. It’s bordering on out of control. It’s just the way I like it. I kept the children in the space, taught them the choreography from the funny Jimmy Fallon commercial, and they performed for the company dancers. All of a sudden they weren’t so shy any more.

Our “Burger Montage” was next on the menu and the expected ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ when the dancers did the ‘splits’ were delightfully right on cue. We recited and learned the words to the Big Mac song, and shared a little interactive time, just a few things about exercise, play, good health, and being happy. Time was moving swiftly and we continued on to our final dance.

The kids are too young to remember the Saturday Morning Public Service Announcements I chose for the last montage. They are pithy and border on obnoxious, but are perfect for the dances and our message. Bryn performed her fouettes with aplomb and no one fell off of the seated grapevine lift in the ‘Square Dance’. The dancers introduced themselves, told where they were from and we all took a few questions from the children. Four of the professionals then broke the children into groups and taught them simple choreography which they performed for each other in front of the screen. I had a chance to mingle with the adults while everyone was so diligently working, accept some compliments and hopefully strengthen our relationship with the Center and its Director. The youngsters in the audience were given a homework assignment to create something for us, a song, dance, or commercial, to perform for us when we return. I can’t wait until the Spring!

--Karl Condon

Restaging and Reteaching a Work

One of the works in 2BLoved is Naughty Boy, a fast-paced favorite of many in the community. Since performing it last, however, we have many new dancers and a new, more intimate theatre. Ballet Mistress Tamara Hoffmann gives a glimpse inside the challenges of restaging such a piece.

What are my biggest challenges restaging and reteaching a work? It is an overwhelming amount of work!

Restaging or reteaching a work that has been done before is perhaps one of the most time consuming processes in dance. If there are nine dancers in a piece, and it is 25 minutes long, you have to make sure everyone knows exactly what, when, and where they are doing their steps for the entire piece.

In Naughty Boy, there are 4 different couples who dance as a pair, and at various times as an ensemble. There is also a soloist Cupid role who interacts with all the different couples. In 8 counts of music many, many steps can happen, and with several different people, you have to know the music, the steps, and the arrangement of the different bodies on the stage.

It is an enormous amount of information to learn, and teach. The dancers are very helpful in the process, and have to be quick on their feet (in more ways than one.) Someone has to have the overall knowledge of the entire piece and its many components or it can be chaos!

In dance, we have a very large vocabulary of steps that is understood by all professional dancers, but there are endless additional body movements and gestures that don't have names. They have to be learned in great detail.

Especially in more contemporary ballet based work, the movement possibilities are endless. It is a much faster pace than a classical piece like Swan Lake, which is also incredibly difficult – in its own right. However, in Swan Lake, there aren't as many different movements packed into a phrase of music.

Once the dancers know the steps, we work on the execution of the total piece. Like any professional athlete, the physical component has to be worked on and constantly perfected. Dance is an art form, and is made up of so much more than just difficult physical movement. It's made up of nuances, musicality, movement quality, emotions and the overall artistic vision. It's combining the two that makes coaching fun.

When choosing a particular dancer for a piece, I find that it is helpful to knowing their particular style and body. I know what individual dancers may excel in or struggle with in a movement or phrase, and that affects how we cast the ballet. Once we cast the overall ballet, we focus on a dancers' specific role. From there, I can anticipate problems with certain skills and just give that
section a little more rehearsal. Of course, there are always surprises.

In Naughty Boy, Stephanie Mei Hom is cast in the lead role of Cupid. It is a whimsical, playful part, but it requires incredible athleticism and complex musicality, which she has! Hideko Karasawa is also learning it. She has the technique, but now we
will work on more strength and her delivery, as well as finding her own personality.

Crystal Brothers and Rafael Ferreras are cast as the lead couple and dance one of the most difficult complex pas de deuxs I have ever seen; they are incredible together. With his strength, and her agility, it is truly magic! We are having lots of fun putting it together. Virginia Pilgrim and Brandon Ramey are also learning it, which makes another wonderful partnership.

We've been working on this piece for several weeks now, many hours a day. We can't wait to show this piece to you in a few short weeks!

--Tamara Hoffmann