Taking a bold new step for both the company and for the dance community, State Street Ballet staged a mini-festival of five premieres on Saturday and Sunday, May 14 and 15 at the New Vic Theater. In an eloquent curtain speech, Sara Miller McCune spoke movingly of her friendship with the late Leni Fe Bland, the dedicatee of Women’s Work, which featured dances by five women – Cecily Stewart, Sophie Monat, Brook Hughes Melton, Kassandra Taylor Newberry, and Andrea Schermoly. McCune’s history lesson put Fe Bland on a continuum of women acting as patrons of the arts that extended all the way back to Queen Elizabeth I, and she emphasized the extent of Fe Bland’s involvement not only in the founding and development of State Street Ballet, but also in the rebuilding of the New Vic and the Granada. State Street Ballet has already done a magnificent job of making the Granada’s big stage its Santa Barbara home, and it was a pleasure to see that Rodney Gustafson and his troupe have now also found such a great way to make use of the New Vic as well.
From just reading the program, Sophie Monat’s “Vista” looked to be the most traditional of the bunch, and in some ways it was. Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor packs plenty of that cosmic sense of order that Bach produces and that dancers seem to exist to embody. However, this dance, featuring six women and three men, had all kinds of slides and curves and slurves that tilted the whole thing delightfully off center. It was followed by “Moult,” a brooding, sexually ambiguous trio by Brooke Hughes Melton. What fun it was to see Meredith Harrill in men’s clothing (costumed by Nicole Thompson) competing with Thomas Fant for the attention of Leila Drake. Filled with floor work and edgy exchanges of weight, “Moult” was, as Rodney Gustafson had warned us, “not your grandmother’s ballet.”
dgy exchanges of weight, “Moult” was, as Rodney Gustafson had warned us, “not your grandmother’s ballet.”