State Street Ballet will open its season at the Granada on Saturday, October 6, with one of the boldest programming decisions in the company’s history. Invigorated by the recent elevation of longtime collaborator William Soleau to the title of co–artistic director and inspired by the success of a string of substantial commissions over the last several seasons, founder and executive director Rodney Gustafson has said “yes” to Chaplin, an original, evening-length story ballet. What’s more, he’s given the job of choreographing the piece to three different people.
Before you start thinking there’s been some sort of mix-up, understand that the issuing of multiple invitations was entirely intentional. Each of the choreographers — Kevin Jenkins, William Soleau, and Edgar Zendejas — has an existing relationship with the State Street Ballet (SSB); for Chaplin, they are working together as a team. Collaboration among choreographers is relatively rare, and three choreographers working on a single project is virtually unheard of. Yet when I witnessed the enthusiasm with which this group described their creative process, it was easy to see why SSB has embraced this unusual opportunity.
For Soleau, the coordinating role comes naturally. A veteran choreographer with more than 100 ballets produced in his career, Soleau knows intuitively what will work and what won’t, and how to ask a lot of the dancers without crossing over into the dangerous territory of too much. It’s his organizational skill that keeps the complex process of collaboration on track. Strips of paper describing different dances line the big mirror in the studio conference room, written in Soleau’s hand and sequenced according to his sense of the show’s big picture.