Out in the Arts
by. D. L. Groover

TWO-STEPPIN’ AT THE BALLET, HOLD THE TUTUS

If there are any skeptics out there who think classical ballet is dead and over, I give you the Houston Ballet. Under the sure and gifted hand of new artistic director Stanton Welch, the company has undergone an amazing transformation. Welch’s latest masterwork, coming on the heels of the February premiere of his heart-pounding Divergence, is the full-length Tales of Texas. It’s cause for throwing Stetsons in the air and boot-scootin’ till dawn. In three one-act ballets, the essence of our great state is set dancing.

“Big Sky,” using some of Aaron Copland’s most haunting proto-typical Americana music, has hard-scrabble pioneers rising from the earth to battle and persevere against those insurmountable odds of western expansion. As the background cyclorama of rocky vistas expands to Cinemascope proportions, the elemental themes of love, sacrifice, war, and death are played out in duets, trios, and striking group patterns. In vignettes both personal and universal, this Texan Rite of Spring is mysterious, subtle, and quietly powerful. A dramatic, sweeping pas de deux (between the radiant duo of Barbara Bears and Simon Ball) anchors the act and gives it heart.

“Cline Time” is a compilation ballet, on the order of Paul Taylor’s Company B or Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Songs, where pop standards are used as the musical score. Here, seven of Patsy Cline’s greatest hits are glossed, commented on, or given ironic meaning as various romantic relationships are dissected in an impressionistic country/western bar. In the phantasmagoric western-wear costumes of Pat Padilla, there are mismatched lovers, two-timin’ cowpokes, and a drunk cowgirl (a show-stopping Bears), among other denizens in this audience-gratifying work. You may think that classical ballet steps can’t meld seamlessly into line dancing. Welch makes it absolutely natural. The dancers, when not drinkin’ or smoking’ at tables by the fence, pirouette, jete, and/or two-step with abandon. When they cut loose, their joy is infectious.

“Pecos,” with a Copland-esque, stirring, and simple original score by Matthew Pierce, is the story of Pecos Bill, given an ingenious retelling by Welch and set/costume designer Kristian Fredrikson. Poetic, comic, poignant, Pecos (danced with most appealing charm by Ian Casady, pictured, left, in a photo by Jim Caldwell) is accidentally abandoned on his parents’ trek west. He is raised by coyotes, joins the encroaching community, rustles up a tornado, tames the wild horse Widow Maker (an Equus-like force of nature Nicholas Leshke, pictured, right), meets and falls in love with Slue-foot Sue (Mireille Hassenboehler in stunning tomboy mode), and, when Sue is bucked into the heavens, is ultimately left alone to howl at her rising star. The panoply of tall-tale western life abounds, and its cast of characters is infused with defining gestures or satisfyingly correct movement: dance hall girls, long-horn steers, city slickers, small-town flirts, and a surreal, mysterious two-headed figure of death as Undertaker. To show his passage to adulthood, Pecos’ outsized cowboy hat is simply replaced with a smaller one. When Pecos’ adopted mother coyote (a lithe and feral Lauren Anderson) realizes he must ultimately leave the pack, she cradles his neck and sweeps her arm out in front to show the awaiting possibilities; later, Pecos does the same to a smitten Slue-foot Sue.

Like all of Tales, “Pecos” is crafted with Welch’s boundless theatrical mastery, his surefire taste and imagination, and his limitless dance invention. There are only a handful of contemporary choreographers who can match him, fewer yet who are as entertaining, none whose works are as memorable.

END OF THE AFFAIR, FOR SURE

A rhetorical question for contemporary opera composers: Would it kill you to write some melody? The complaint swirled through my ears during Houston Grand Opera’s world premiere of Jake Heggie’s End of the Affair. Heggie is the hot new kid on the block, having taken the operatic world by storm ever since his Dead Man Walking burst upon the scene at San Francisco Opera in 2000. Although immensely dramatic, no aria from DMW will ever show up on a “favorite melodies from modern opera” CD. His latest, Affair, is exponentially far more listenable, accessible, and more subtlety dramatic, but it, too, suffers from nary a single memorable tune. We sit there, passive listeners with no thread to hold us close to his characters. Must all great music for the theater be relegated to Broadway? Musically, the most satisfying scene is an Act II male quartet that wouldn’t be out of place in a Sondheim show. There hasn’t been a great modern opera since the days of Benjamin Britten. No wonder audiences cringe at the thought of sitting through yet another one of these strident scores. Certainly HGO’s record of producing new works is laudable. But, be honest, name one you would want to savor again: Tod Machover’s Resurrection? Mark Adamo’s Little Women? Maybe a Carlisle Floyd or Daniel Catan’s Florencia en el Amazonas.

Graham Greene’s semi-autobiographical 1951 novel is ripe for singing. His capital-letter themes of Adultery, Jealousy, and Redemption are opera’s bread and butter. Heggie’s orchestrations are masterful and stylish, making the chamber orchestra of 24 sound as thick as Strauss (as does the loving conducting of maestro Patrick Summers). The libretto is adult. The production was slick and professional as they get. The singers were ideal in looks and voice. And any opera that begins with the curtain rising on baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes’ buff butt is not to be dismissed. But the music wallows in a nebulous tonality, as if real song is somehow “so yesterday.” Sarah’s redemption/death scene is off-handed and tame. Here’s an opportunity to finally knock our socks off, to explain her mysterious conversion to God when her human passion turns sublimely divine, yet Heggie and librettist Heather McDonald let it slide, depriving the opera of its climax. By that time, though, with scant memorable melody, the whole opera has already slipped away beyond their control.

D.L. Groover writes monthly on the arts for OutSmart.

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