OCR Text |
Show 'Irish Fantasy' Civic Ballet Ends Happily metrical; in other words, something some-thing with dance, not poses? Do you agree that the present Firebird is $20,000 ill-spent despite its really thrilling backdrop (by Ronald Ron-ald Crosby) with its onion-domed Orthodox churches shining against a spectacular, flossy-pink sunset? We 11 not break the heart of our lovable, bourgeois grandmas who thrill to "The Sound of Music" and nice boys like Pat Boone, by telling them the awful truth that the Firebird is dead, is history, not life. But when will we ourselves face reality? iliar, cloying fairy tale or a cliche plot, but upon the creative and intellectual in-tellectual energy of a choregrapher with something to say and a fresh vocabulary with which to say it. Constructing a new ballet from brain-waves and visual images instead in-stead of from plot books is, therefore, there-fore, demanding; this is one reason it is so seldom done in some areas. But this is no reason for its never being done. D'Amboise has done it, and his Irish Fantasy is delightful and, most important, danced. It is not a mass of mime and gesture, neat little black and white plot. Its setting set-ting is simple beneath a leafy green canopy (David Hays' creation). crea-tion). But its steps are not simple, and are danced with verve by sprightly boys and girls. No story, no pretension, no formula thus, no boredom (because it happens, also, to be good). Contrast this with Firebird. Try to see the pure dance through the maze of monsters, enchanted prince-esses, prince-esses, golden apples, lords and ladies lad-ies splendidly costumed. Give up? Now, would you not rather watch "Pas de Six" in practice clothes, if it were less romantic and sym- By MARK WOODWORTH i The Utah Civic Ballet opened ; Wednesday night, beginning, as j life ends, with a whimper. Predic- tably, it ended, as life begins, with a bang. Jacques d'Amboise's ballet "Irish Fantasy," in which he starred, star-red, with Marnee Morris, was a ! happy climax to an otherwise sterile ster-ile affair. i "Pas de Six" and "Les Bijoux du Mai" were on display, like molting peafowl. And "Firebird" was exhumed, ex-humed, unwisely, from her grave after 57 years; no matter how she , be made to flap her wings, she remains re-mains a dead bird. Why knock a well-polished, prettily pret-tily designed and nicely danced program? pro-gram? Because the time has come for questions to be raised about the I Utah Ballet. ; Where is it going, for instance? i Has it an artistic, as distinguished I from a commercial, future? What does it offer to persons interested more in exciting dance art than in fairy tale endings and 125-year-old romances (such as Giselle, coming this spring "by popular demand")? None will dispute that a pure dance ballet of quality with struc-i struc-i ture and form is superior aesthetic-i aesthetic-i ally to the usual narrative ballet, with its precharged emotional con- tent, its drab story line, its stereo-j stereo-j types prince rescues princess I from evil genius proves love trium-! trium-! phant. j But abstract ballets are totally ; created, dependent not upon a fam- |