Young Chang Using what they call a...

Young Chang

Using what they call a “vocabulary of movement,” choreographers

and dancers at Ballet Pacifica will communicate about everything from

relationship struggles to arranged marriages through dance.

The 2002-03 Contemporary Ballet Series will open today with the

feature premiere of Dominic Walsh’s “Love Intr-fear.” Also on the

program are Paul Vasterling’s “Saltimbanques, Antony Tudor’s “Jardin

aux Lilas” and George Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante.”

“It’s an eclectic mix of pieces,” Ballet Pacifica’s artistic

director Molly Lynch said. “And I would say, in a way, it’s sort of a

broad look at relationships.”

The four pieces are mostly abstract, without a clear story line,

but still with essential characters that drive the flow and

interaction of dance. “Allegro Brillante” and “Jardin aux Lilas” are

what Lynch calls 20th-century masterpieces. “Love Intr-fear” is a new

piece developed for Ballet Pacifica’s Pacifica Choreographic Project

2001 and makes statements on relationships between people -- on the

compromises, dominance issues and intimacy between a couple.

The last piece is about clowns.

“They kind of have a good, slap-happy good time doing it,” Lynch

said. “It’s also kind of about relationships.”

Walsh’s “Love Intr-fear” was inspired by Franz Schubert’s Four

Impromptus. His pieces are almost always inspired by music and

created around it.

The eight-dancer piece is not a literary ballet, but there is an

intimate story between the two main dancers about moving forward in a

relationship yet remaining independent.

“I’m really trying to provide a visual explanation of the music,”

said the six-year principal dancer for the Houston Ballet. “Usually

my story sort of unfolds through that. This was very much an example

of that. I would say that the music gave me a vocabulary for

movement, as the movement develops on the specific dancers I had to

work with.”

Walsh said that any more information had by a choreographer when

starting to create a piece can be limiting.

“You’re not always open to development,” he said.

But when you leave a work illusive enough to allow audience

participation, in terms of attitudes and perspectives in receiving

the piece, “it ends up coming from an honest and humble place,” the

choreographer said.

Lynch said she finds Walsh’s work interesting, movement-wise,

while Tudor’s dance is psychological and dramatic, Balanchine’s is

musically dynamic and Vasterling’s is spotted with heavy character

development.

“I think that’s what sort of the beauty of a mixed repertory

program is,” she said. “It’s sort of like going to a museum and

seeing classical and contemporary work as well as a modern piece, I

guess. I like the variety.”