Tina Kay Bohnstedt in Nikolai Kabaniaev’s Once Upon a Ballroom. Photo by Peter Samuels.
On life support only a year ago, Walnut Creek’s Diablo Ballet has rebounded with astonishing energy. The premiere presentation at the Lesher Center for the Arts last Friday (March 21) of co-artistic director Nikolai Kabaniaev’s full-length Once Upon a Ballroom effectively removes the organization from the sick list. Questions linger, of course, about the perils that await any artistic institution that depends for its sustenance on a single, private funding source, but I suspect that Diablo, which had pursued that kind of myopic policy, has been cured forever.
The company deserves a round of applause for breaking out of the mold and attempting something original in the way of full-evening (in this case, of 80-minute duration) fare, after its mixed efforts at revising and updating ballet classics. A dream comedy grounded in operatic music and lore, Once Upon a Ballroom definitely has its moments, but if you’re a sober-sided operaphile, you’re liable to be modestly offended. Kabaniaev has raided the repertory for recorded bits by Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Gluck, Bellini, Saint-Saëns (plus Khachaturian’s "Saber Dance") for his tale of a woman who falls asleep (standing?) during a fitting for a ball gown and finds herself in a fantasy world where operatic characters court her.
Among the other highlights one encounters are an ensemble of dancing dress models, a gaggle of Valkyries with spears gallivanting to Wagner’s ride music and the first triple duet unison in the history of ballet set to the sound of clinking ice cubes. The heroine (Tina Kay Bohnstedt) returns as Delilah, her dream lover (David Fonnegra) is reinvented as Puccini’s Cavaradossi; the man’s fiancée (Mayo Sugano) has become a Valkyrie, two tailors (Edward Stegge, Derek Sakakura, in his company debut) reappear in a variety of operatic guises.
The whimsy is agreeable but not exactly earthshaking. Musical literacy is evidently, not something you need possess in order to choreograph for the Diablo Ballet. If you can forget that the words accompanying these opera arias often have nothing to do with the uses to which Kabaniaev puts them, you can probably swallow this piece. However, Kabaniaev should know that Bellini’s "Casta diva" (heard in Renée Fleming’s recording) is a hymn to the chaste goddess of the moon, not the pretext for a sexy duet.
The worst moment of Once Upon a Ballroom offers the sight of Stegge in chiton mincing his way through Maria Callas’ sublime recording of the heart-rending "Che farò senza Euridice" from Gluck’s Orfeo. Call it reprehensible. If this music prompts that campy choreography, I would suggest the choreographer is in need of some kind of therapy. If burlesque was Kabaniaev’s aim, for music he might have looked into Offenbach’s operetta on the same subject. Too much here suggests a mad attack on Kabaniaev’s record collection.
Fortunately, Bohnstedt, who is Diablo Ballet’s secret weapon, was on hand to uphold technical standards and sometimes to exalt them. The turn-out is extraordinary, the agility astonishing and the personality pleasing; too bad, Kabaniaev lets Bohnstedt’s character get lost in the shuffle. The entire cast, which also included Jenna McClintock and Mariko Takahashi, dispatched this vaudeville with élan.
The physical production shows how much can be accomplished on a tiny budget, if intelligence is afoot. For the first act, Jean-François Revon designed a series of flying proscenium arches. The second part features a set of columns with eye appeal, all well lit by Jack Carpenter. The costuming is luxuriant, and, amid the dramatically receding perspectives, all those dress models suggest a famous de Chirico painting. At very least, this entertainment added up to more than the same old same old.
Diablo Ballet returns May 9-10 at 8 p.m. with Jazz Fever, dances by Bohnstedt, Victor and Nikolai Kabaniaev. (925) 943-SHOW.
