Golden bats and ballerinas, Death and the Maiden and dalliance in a setting of Edwardian gentility - all this and more await Ballet West audiences who attend the company's season of premiere works by American choreographers, scheduled for eight performances in the Capitol Theater Friday, Nov. 10, through Saturday, Nov. 18.
On the docket are "The Gilded Bat" by Peter Anastos; "White Mourning" by Val Caniparoli; and "Salut d'Amour" by Donald Mahler. Beautifully costumed, ranging from spoof to serious dance drama, from classical ballet to off-Broadway-style high jinks, this program promises to make new ballet go down in the most delightful way.Perhaps most eagerly awaited is the formal premiere of "The Gilded Bat," by a famous (notorious?) trio of creators: choreographer Peter Anastos, artist-author Edward Gorey and composer Peter Golub.
Anastos first came to national attention as the founder and artistic director of the all-male Les Ballets Trocaderos and has gone on to choreograph near and far, usually with a comic touch. Gorey is known nationally to fans of public television's Mystery Theater for his black comedy, black-and-white introductory drawings. And Golub is clever at devising pastiche sort of scores for theater in New York.
"The Gilded Bat" was danced by the company on tour last summer in Aspen, Colo., where it made a popular hit with the national audience that frequents the Aspen Festival.
The story (narrated in the style of high-class television by B.W. artistic director John Hart) concerns the adventures of little Maudie, who grows up to be a ballerina in a gilded cage and meets an untimely end. Her life is quite monotonous when she isn't dancing. The extravagant action spoofs classic ballet styles, so those who know the straight of things will find its sendups especially funny. But there's something for everyone in this collection of cliches clustered around the prima ballerina's life and accompanied by fractured dance tunes with a faintly familiar ring.
Peter Anastos calls the story "a fable without a moral." "Edward doesn't deal in morals," he said in a recent interview. "His work is very dark; what happens to everyone is very dark, a lot of his characters are sick or in the process of getting sick, and many meet a bad end, like Madame Trepidovska who goes to the lunatic asylum, or Federojenska who does a grand jete into the wings and is never seen again.
"Tragedy or comedy are pretty much intertwined with Edward; everything springs from his unique sense of humor. Better yet, he's laid back. He stays out of the choreographer's way, doesn't intrude his opinions, and he let me fill out the dialogue and rewrite, even take liberties with some of the scenes."
As for the sets designed by Gorey, Anastos finds them "outrageous. They read well from the back of the house, with the hallmarks of his style."
Anastos calls Jennifer Craig, Ballet West's new costumer, "the silent heroine of this piece. She has taken the book and brought the costumes to life, with a crazy kind of Transylvanian look, and she's done it with such finesse.
"You know that Maudie is happy only on stage, when everything goes to color. (Everything is beautiful at the ballet.) But Craig's blacks and whites and grays are never boring, very alive. Right now, Ballet West has one of the best costume shops in the country."
As personal friends and colleagues for 20 years, Gorey and Anastos have had their ups and downs. Anastos described their greatest success - a 1976 "Giselle" that premiered on Broadway, designed by Gorey for Les Ballets Trocaderos, when Anastos was director. "It was nutty, goofy, an endless cemetery with tombstones falling over, mountains of tombstones. The Wilis danced in with lilies sticking out of their heads, like flower pots. We had a great coffin, a Dracula coffin, and Albrecht followed Giselle underground."
But a little later the two did a work for the Eglevsky Ballet, which was a glorious flop. "We showed a party where every guest had something wrong with him, some deformity. The ballerina had a dress made entirely of safety pins! But if you're going to flop, you should flop big!"
Going back to "The Bat," Anastos professed faith in his project but a few butterflies in his stomach.
"I've wanted to choreograph this story for a very long time, and John Hart is one of the smartest and bravest people in the world to take us on," he said. "He immediately saw the possibilities, he's the godfather of this project. He commissioned me with no strings attached, put the whole company at our disposal - and then he personally saved the show by offering to narrate. He's perfect for it, with his sophistication and English accent.
"And Peter Golub's score is half major composers, half original. People who know classical music will get a kick out of how he captures and encapsulates moments from `Les Sylphides,' Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Schumann, Chopin.
" `The Bat' is not a big ballet, but we have many scenery changes, costumes and nutty characters. I like to think of it as a kind of Broadway play with dancing," he said.
For "White Mourning," the talented Val Caniparoli, resident choreographer of the San Francisco Ballet, follows up his highly successful "Ophelia" (which incidentally will be seen here again in the spring). This ballet for some 20 dancers represents a year of contemplation and work for Caniparoli, and is underwritten by Geoffrey Hughes.
Music is Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet, as orchestrated by Gustav Mahler. A trained musician who contemplated a musical career before turning to dance and with a wide-ranging literary background, Caniparoli does best when he has a score in mind to work to.
"Mahler took a lot of criticism about taste when he did that orchestration, but it serves our purpose well," said Val.
Schubert's music is highly programmatic, perhaps because of the art song associated with it, and to an extent Caniparoli follows the scenario of Death coming to steal away the Maiden. But he represents Death not as an untimely tragedy, but as part of the natural cycle of life that includes marriages and funerals as well.
He credits Nadine Baylis, the master costumer who designed his costumes, for getting him on track for this work.
"Baylis has worked a lot with the Glen Tetley Company, including their very successful `Alice' production," he explained. "When John Hart suggested I try getting her, she was working in Houston. I called her and explained my project, and the next day she agreed to do it.
"I went to London to meet her, and we talked. She said, `you know, I have this book that I've always wanted to pattern costumes on,' and brought out the book `White Mourning,' which shows peasant costumes and customs.
"That turned my imagination loose. It interested me that the peasants of eastern Europe wore white and some red for mourning and funerals, as well as weddings. Black is a recent, western development. The costumes are white and pale colors, contemporary like the ballet, with a certain hint of peasantry, and there's a mixture of abstract and story line. Audience loves a story line, and I like a wisp of story, but I also like to leave the imagination free to run wild. I like the feeling of wondering, `what is really going on here?"'
Caniparoli's choreographic life is constantly expanding. The San Francisco Ballet's spring season in April opened with his "Connotations," set to Britten's Violin Concerto, and he's to do a new ballet, as yet undecided, for the company next year.
The evening's other major work is a Salt Lake premiere, "Salut d'Amour" by Donald Mahler, a piece for three couples that lightly yet sentimentally evokes a pre-World War I feeling. Music for piano and violin is by Elgar, with costumes by Carol Vollet Garner.
The pas de deux from "Le Corsaire," a Petipa virtuoso showpiece, will complete the program. It will feature Jiang Qi, and Jennifer Demko in her first role with Ballet West.
Music director Terence Kern will conduct a live instrumental ensemble for this repertory program, in performances on Nov. 10, 11, 15, 16, 17 and 18 at 7:30 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees on Nov. 11 and 18. Tickets, available at the Ballet West box office in the theater (533-5555) or at Smith'sTix, range from $6 to $36. Students may buy seats for $4.