Name something more beautiful than a well-executed ballet. I’ll wait.
I’m often blinded by the talent that exudes from almost any live show, but the men and women of Ballet Arkansas put on an objectively ravishing performance of “Swan Lake” Sunday afternoon to a near capacity crowd at Robinson Center in Little Rock. Sunday’s matinee was the dancers’ final show of the weekend and the group moved together like a well-oiled machine.
It’s the 45th anniversary season for Ballet Arkansas, and if Sunday’s showing is any indicator of how the rest of the spring is going to go, I have a pretty good feeling. “Swan Lake,” the famous ballet scored by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, hadn’t been performed at the Robinson Center for 20 years, and Ballet Arkansas attracted nearly 4,000 people to see the show over the weekend. People old and young came out, and Sunday’s crowd was excited to applaud the dancers, particularly during an impressive number of turns or an extended period on pointe.
Watching a ballet isn’t exactly a passive activity. Dancers are forced to tell a story without words, which means the audience has to pick up on slight gestures, changes in facial expressions and the physical push or pull between dancers. There was a lot to pay attention to in “Swan Lake,” and as someone experiencing it for the first time, I likely missed some queues that veteran observers caught. Regardless, the story of “Swan Lake” was both beautiful and harrowing.
In it, young Prince Siegfried is forced to select a wife from a group of princesses his mother has summoned. Siegfried, overwhelmed with the thought of choosing a partner the very next day, sees a flock of swans flying overhead and takes his new crossbow into the night. As he nears Swan Lake, Siegfried watches as one of the swans transforms into a beautiful woman named Odette. Siegfried learns that she and the other swans have been placed under a spell, cursed to exist as birds during the day and only able to return to their human form at night. But true love can break the spell, and Siegfried is prepared to deliver. No spoilers here for what happens next, but it’s a doozy.
Every time I attend a ballet performance I’m wowed by how effortless the dancers make it seem. This stuff is not easy. Like, have you ever tried jumping and spinning around for over an hour? I can barely last one minute of cardio toe taps and get nauseous just thinking about a merry-go-round.
The stage was occasionally crowded with dancers from beyond Ballet Arkansas’s 16-member professional crew. The playbill shouts out 90 local children involved in the production. And the worst part about having so many dancers on stage was that I couldn’t watch all of them at the same time. By choosing someone to focus on, I was bound to miss something great elsewhere. In hindsight, it’s not the worst problem to have.
Dancer Aldrin Vendt, who played Prince Siegfried, basically defied gravity on each leap, lingering in the air for longer than Earth typically allows as he clicked his legs together in an assemblé. Meredith Loy, who played both Odette and her dark doppelganger Odile, matched quick-paced numbers with ease. As soon as one foot rose, the other went down, and again and again in rapid succession.
Another highlight of the performance was the iconic four-person dance of the swan cygnets. Even though this was my first time at “Swan Lake,” the music was instantly recognizable. The dancers — Brittany Harano, Murray McCormack, Kerridwyn Schanck and Layla Terrell — completed their steps shoulder to shoulder and with their hands interlocked. One wrong step and everyone would have gone down.
And while the dancing is obviously the main attraction at these things, the costume and set design didn’t go unnoticed. Giant backdrops detailing a village, the inside of a castle and the Swan Lake all loomed large behind the ballet dancers. The attire was also colorful, eye-catching and interesting. Perhaps the most enticing costume of the whole lot was the one worn by Matthew Larson-Arziari, who played antagonist Von Rothbart. Dressed in all black, he donned dramatic fabric wings that glistened like an oil spill.
Ballet Arkansas will return to Robinson Center on March 9 for its 45th Anniversary Turning Pointe Gala, which includes a cocktail hour, signature performance and more. Tickets start at $225.
The next big to-do for the company will come in May, when they perform “Bravo” at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts alongside Fei-Fei Dong, a world-renowned pianist.