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Alexandra Tomalonis
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Washington Ballet’s Season Opener

By Alexandra Tomalonis
Special to The Washington Post
October 05, 2002

The Washington Ballet opened its 26th season Thursday night at the Eisenhower Theater with a double bill that reflected the company’s two-sided personality, and that showed it at its best. The dancers tore through Balanchine’s “Serenade” as though it had been made last Friday, not in 1934, and Septime Webre’s mammoth “Carmina Burana” was a theatrical tour de force. What a way to start the season!

WB has an honorable history of dancing Balanchine ballets, but truth to tell, they’ve often looked a bit soggy. “Serenade,” staged by Elyse Borne, opens a new chapter in the company’s encounters with the Russian-American master. The first few minutes were dutiful, carefully drilled, but then the dancers seemed caught by Tchaikovsky’s lush “Serenade for Strings” and turned into Balanchine dancers -- fast, bold, and unsentimental, stretching each movement to the fullest, taking risks, and looking as though they loved every minute.

Erin Mahoney, in the role nicknamed “The Dark Angel,” had the least to do, and made the most of it. Her long, long limbs, huge extensions and off-center balances made her seem part-predator, part-goddess, and one longs to see her in other Balanchine ballerina roles. Lots of them. Brianne Bland, small, quick and neat, flew through the Scherzo. Michele Jimenez, danced “the girl who falls down” beautifully, though with her customary reticence.

The men enter late in this ballet. Runqiao Du, was a spirited playmate for the women; Jared Nelson, in the Elegie, could have been a bit more mysterious. The corps included students and apprentices and they were indistinguishable from company regulars.

Artistic Director Septime Webre’s “Carmina Burana,” made for American Repertory Ballet in 1999 and first danced by WB two seasons ago, is his strongest work seen here to date. It has Webre’s trademarks: stunning sets, accessible music, energetic choreography. And it’s very good theater.

The score, by Carl Orff, sets medieval poems, many of them bawdy, written by monks and scholars in Latin and early German, to a pounding beat. It was sung with clear and exuberant brilliance by The Cathedral Choral Society and the Children’s Chorus of the Cathedral Schools (conducted by the Society’s director, J. Reilly Lewis). The singers are on movable scaffolding that seems to stretch to the Heavens. Regan Kimmel’s design and Vandal’s costumes literally set the stage for Webre’s idea of showing the underbelly of human behavior, of constantly contrasting façade with what’s behind it.

The ballet is a whirlwind history of human love and longing. The earth is seen as a sleepy angel, who wakes up only every other century, might see it: snapshots of humanity from the medieval period through today. Dancers search for each other, pair, and separate continuously. Jimenez and Du, their costumes changing as the centuries change, show the social side., the hidden lusts, in human courtship. Mahoney and Nelson, in flesh colored tights for her and briefs for him, portray the search for emotional as well as physical intimacy. The episodes are all linked by a constant traveler (Jason Hartley) who moves among the others yearning for his ideal love, Fortuna (Sona Kharatian), who’s lowered to the stage in a giant wheel of fortune (an apt medieval metaphor) at the beginning of the ballet.

The piece is entertaining, sexy and at times funny. (A giant Renaissance lady, or perhaps England’s Elizabeth I herself, her skirts covering the men on whose shoulders she stands, skitters about and gets a well-deserved laugh). The choreography itself is the weakest part of the whole. It’s basic, it’s repetitive, it’s punishing. Seeing Hartley slam into the floor again and again makes one wince for him after awhile.

Some of the duets are lovely and sensuous, though, and the energy of the work as a whole pushes the ballet along. The most interesting sections are based on social dancing, which Webre deftly varies to different ends. In the Finale, when Fortuna is hauled back up to the Heavens again with Hartley crouched at her feet, the dancers, who’ve barely stopped moving since the ballet began, suddenly no longer look like nice teenagers at a school hop and turn into demons.

The program runs through the weekend.