Director's Choice

Photo courtesy of Tony Spielberg

Dell Hall at the Long Center, 701 W. Riverside
March 27

The last-minute change in program order that yielded Jennifer Hart's premiere, To Here, first on Ballet Austin's triple bill instead of last, was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Hart's poignant and skillful work, with vibrant designs that rivaled any of this season's wildflower displays, set a tone of ebullience and catharsis. On the other hand, it rendered the trajectory of the evening to a bit of a downslope. The second work, Artistic Director Stephen Mills' 2001 One/the body's grace, a moody sextet to Bach, Handel, and Gluck, is a good neoclassical dance – it has won awards – but juxtaposed with the freshness and sensitivity of To Here, One's grapply, manipulative partnering seemed tiresome and brash. The third ballet was a commission from Jimmy Orrante, who was a finalist in Ballet Austin's 2014 New American Talent/Dance choreography competition. I found his 2014 work, Ya Me Fue, more complex than his new piece, Threads of Color, which was just another black-skirted ballet to the music of Ástor Piazzolla.

To Here, Hart's first commission for the company (she's a member of the Ballet Austin Academy faculty and has choreographed for Ballet Austin II), displayed a deep and refreshing sensitivity to ballet's basic aspirations – grace and expression of the upper body, outwardness, pliability, ballon – rather than limit-pushing of line and steps. In an introductory video, Hart described the work as having to do with the way our bodies become maps, or records, of our lives. To Gavin Bryars' cello concerto Farewell to Philosophy, 10 dancers in brightly patterned costumes (by Susan Branch Towne) pulsed and bloomed as video projections (by the projection mapping company Blue Pony) of florals and greenery towered over them on three sides. Reaching behind them with their arms and turning their palms and elbows outward, they seemed to relish springtime and make offerings of their youth to the world.

But later in the ballet, the projections gradually changed to more desolate seasons and landscapes, and the dancers shed their bright patterns. In stark white, they became pensive; their gazes stopped short, they reached downward rather than up and out, and sun gave way to shadows (Tony Tucci designed the lighting). Left alone with Edward Carr, Jaime Lynn Witts gasped and let something fly from her chest: Everything inside was out, and Carr, an apparent witness to the whirlwind moment between life and death, followed this imaginary everything offstage. Witts, like a piece of paper distraught at having lost its life-giving breeze, floated down to the stage and to stillness in an up-moded Dying Swan pose: Kneeling and bent, her folded body faced the audience head-on, and her upturned arms were laid out before us.