90

Spring Showcase, etc.  

Peabody Dance 

Friedberg Concert Hall 

Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Maryland

March 19, 2016

 

by George Jackson

© 2016 by George Jackson

 

Peabody Dance, a training institution 102 years old, has an artistic advisor who is 90 years old - Barbara Weisberger. Her birthday was celebrated by the institute’s spring showcase and two adjoining events: a biographical, historical interview with her and, of course, a party. Ballet, modern dance and structured improvisation - the three sorts of dance featured at the showcase - were performed by trainees and faculty from Peabody Dance plus a couple of guests from the School of Pennsylvania Ballet (Weisberger was the founder of Pennsylvania Ballet) but also by Peabody musicians (the Peabody Institute’s music programs date back 159 years). It was a pleasure to have live music for half of the program’s eight dances! 

Wind instrument and bell sounds were particularly prominent for the first piece, “Facets”, Constance Dinapoli’s set  of modern dance variations for four women. Different from solo to solo were not so much the types of movement or actual steps, but rather their pace, phrasing and spacing. Also, the women wore bold, distinct colors for their lively yet overly tidy display to music by Marina Shmotova and some adapted from Marais and Hotteterre. Another female foursome  followed, a somber one: “Late Winter Prayer”. Dressed darkly in gowns that flowed over the body’s outlines but modestly covered much anatomic detail, the dancers established an impersonal ritual. It culminated in genuflection. The vocal music which the choreographer of “Prayer”, Elizabeth Montgomery (a Peabody alumna), used to propell her “nuns” was Hildegard of Bingen’s “O Frondens Virga”, both sung and played on a viola de gamba by Julie Bosworth.  

The program’s premiere piece, “Hit on All Sixes” was carefree, bringing show biz airs and ballet with a jazz bounce to the stage. A fairly large cast, led by Pennsylvania guests Jason Ferro and Kellie Fulton, enjoyed itself and entertained to tuneful music. Durante Verzola’s choreography had skillfully structured diverse piano pieces by George Gershwin into an effective score (played by Noah Dion). If some of “Sixes” resembles Balanchine’s  “Who Cares?”, Verzola undoubtedly was following the advice often given to young artists “to steal from the best”. Oscar Wilde was known to have prescribed that course to beginning writers. Balanchine gave such counsel to young choreographers and had followed it himself. Verzola, 20 years old, is still in the first flush of making dances. He performs with Pennsylvania Ballet 2.
 

Dinapoli, the choreographer of the opening “Facets”, has danced and worked extensively with Paul Taylor and is on Peabody’s faculty. For this program she also was a stager and rehearsal director, and performed a clever solo - Karla Wolfangle’s 1993 “Madame X” to Charles Koechlin songs. The lady finds herself in diverse situations: thoughtfully alone, putting herself together, partying graciously, being hectically busy and generally living life to the hilt. Dinapoli relished each experience. Her woman of mystery is a sensual, inquisitive being. The most casual move is finely textured, her hastiest action is musically phrased. Dinapoli was this program’s star.  

 

A big ensemble, “Reverie” to Glazunov music, was designed to show the ballet skills of more than a dozen Peabody dancers. Its choreographer, Katherine Morrison, is a Pennsylvania Ballet alumna. “Illumination”, a structured improvisation, was the outcome of collaborative effort by Peabody dancers and other dancers in Baltimore. Being both rigid and random were its drawbacks. 

 

The concluding work, Pearl Lang’s 1983 “Tehillim”  (to Steve Reich music), has a very varied movement vocabulary. There are runs, like in many late works of modern dance, but Lang uses lots else too. Her intent, undoubtedly, was to make a joyous psalm, a poem of praise. The biblical quote, “Praise him with drum and dance”, appears in the printed program along with the credits. The result, though, was more secular than sacred. Noelle Li and the six women she led appeared to be doing Lang’s bidding to revel in the richness of modern dance for its own sake.   

 

Prior to the showcase, Barbara Weisberger’s life in dance was presented by dance historian Lisa Green-Cudek. The story bounced back and forth delightfully between the two of them. Weisberger started dancing very young. Studying with the Littlefields in Philadelphia, she already starred as a glow worm at age 6. Later, she became Balanchine’s first child pupil in America and sat under the studio’s piano watching him choreograph “Serenade”. Much later, Weisberger founded the Pennsylvania Ballet. She had support from Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein and the Ford Foundation’s W. McNeil Lowry. Green-Cudek showed film of the first generation of Pennsylvania Ballet dancers in a passage from Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco”. Cleanly sharp, firmly tensile, purposeful – the dancing was and wasn’t like today’s. Our top professionals have that dynamic as a matter of course. There isn’t the sense of achievement I saw in the early 1960s film. After running Pennsylvania Ballet for 19 years, Weisberger quit due to conflict with the company’s board of directors. She went on to start and head the Carlisle Project for developing ballet choreographers. With her duties as Peabody’s advisor, Weisberger hasn’t yet retired from dance.   

 

Photos:
Barbara Weisberger today.
Barbara Weisberger teaching.
Barbara Weisberger, about 6.