'Spring' arrives now at GPAC
2/22/08
Dance preview: 'Spring' arrives now at GPAC
Nashville Ballet performs 'Rite' here Saturday night
By Christopher Blank
Friday, February 22, 2008
Paul Vasterling's file drawer is something of a choreographer's hope chest.
There, he keeps a list of dances he would someday like to add to the Nashville Ballet's already sizable repertoire. Some are from renowned choreographers such as Martha Graham or Twyla Tharp, and some are dances that he'd create himself.
The wish list is just one reason for the company's success in the decade since Vasterling became artistic director.
With a $2.5 million annual budget, Nashville Ballet is approximately the same size as Ballet Memphis.
Founded as a civic dance company in 1981, it went professional five years later. Under Vasterling, its resources have grown 300 percent in ten years. It was Nashville's first performing arts organization to purchase its own building, and now has a 16-member professional company, along with a 22-member pre-professional company.
On Saturday, Nashville Ballet makes its first excursion to West Tennessee to perform "The Rite of Spring" at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre.
The piece is one of the most popular works in the company's repertoire. Originally choreographed by Sam Aiello for North Carolina Dance Theatre in 1994, it has been restaged three times by Nashville Ballet.
"Someone gave me a video of it, and I thought it would work really well for our dancers," Vasterling said. "There are some poses from the original Nijinsky version (the original 1913 choreography survives only in still photographs.) Sal made up his own story of a primitive tribe. It's very modern and contemporary style of dance."
Though the company still thrives on classical ballets, like its upcoming "Romeo and Juliet," Vasterling says he has groomed his more tradition-minded ballet base to support modern-leaning work.
This season Nashville Ballet reported its highest subscription sales ever.
"For me to program ("Rite of Spring") a third time really says a lot about what people are getting out of it," said Vasterling. "It also made me realize that this is a really broad market for dance."
The program also features a meditative work called "Trois Gnossiennes" by James Canfield of Oregon Ballet Theater; "Octet" by Twyla Tharp; and a new work by Vasterling, "Time/Return/Memory," based on the Orpheus myth and set to piano music by Phillip Glass performed live. The dance critic of the The Tennessean called it the "best of show and testament to Vasterling's ability to turn a story into spectacular movement."
GPAC's artistic manager Tania Castroverde-Moskalenko saw the company's second staging of "Rite of Spring" in Nashville and decided to add it to the GPAC dance series.
She explained that one reason Memphis has never seen her sister city's ballet company (and vice versa) is simply a lack of communication between arts groups and venues.
Castroverde-Moskalenko helped establish the Tennessee Presenters, a nonprofit organization that unites producers from regional venues to discuss ways of making tours economically possible.
"The more dates you can book on a tour, the more affordable it becomes," she said. "That's why it's easier to get a major company out on a national tour than it is to get a regional company, which would have to go to a lot of trouble for just one performance away from home."
-- Christopher Blank: 529-2305
Nashville Ballet's "Rite of Spring"
8 p.m. Saturday at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre. Tickets are $25-$45. Call 751-7500
