Full disclosure:  I auditioned for Sarasota Ballet, probably about 10 years ago now.  I didn’t get into the company, but there are no hard feelings.

The main reason I was interested in the company was their extensive Frederick Ashton repertoire.  At the time, I was familiar only with La Fille mal gardée and Sylvia.  Since then, I’ve seen The Dream, Marguerite and Armand, Méditation from Thaïs, Birthday Offering, Symphonic Variations.  And, now, Monotones I & II.

With its distinctive unitards and swim caps for costumes, Monotones was the ballet I was most excited to see when my mom and I attended Sarasota Ballet’s performance at The Joyce last week.  To be entirely honest, I was disappointed by Monotones I & II.  Rigorously technical—I could feel the dancers’ nerves on opening night, terrified of a wobble—the two pieces are also a bit monotonous.  Their titles are accurate.  Choreographically, they are fairly seamless, studies in moving with sustained breath.  Line is critical, as is a placid exterior.  You can’t place a foot wrong because there’s nowhere to hide. However, it is these same qualities that make the pieces monotone.  There aren’t a lot of changes in movement dynamic.  The music (Erik Satie’s Trois Gnossiennes and Trois Gymnopédies) is lulling.  The ballets are true examples of abstraction:  see the beautiful shapes the human body can make, appreciate the skill of the dancers and their command of the technique.

Sarasota’s dancers delivered perfectly competent performances.  I don’t need to see Monotones ever again.  Give me the frolicsome countryside of La Fille mal gardée any day!

There was also a ballet by Christopher Wheeldon on the program—representing a more current British voice.  There Where She Loved, choreographed for The Royal Ballet in 2000 and set to songs by Frédéric Chopin and Kurt Weill, is not Wheeldon at his finest.  But it is very early Wheeldon, and so it’s fascinating to see how far he has come as a choreographer.  The ballet is a series of short dances to songs, each one with a different mood and suggestion of story.  This form doesn’t require him to create movement or emotional arcs for more than a few minutes at a time, and it allows him to indulge in multiple small groupings of dancers.  His one-act ballets are longer now, and more fully cohesive.  And, of course, he’s tackled full-lengths and Broadway as well!

Sandwiched in between the Ashton and the Wheeldon was the surprise highlight of the evening for me:  a ballet by Sarasota company dancer Ricardo Graziano, Symphony of Sorrows. The music, Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, Movement No. 3, which is sung, is beautiful.  You definitely feel sorrow.  The ballet opens and closes with the ensemble, but primarily it consists of five pas de deux.  The program notes explain that the piece is meant to “portray people’s reactions towards death and the loss of a loved one.”  Each couple has a slightly different take on it—one of them struck me as being particularly evocative of despair, the man entering carrying his partner as though it were she who had died.  And maybe that was the idea there, that a part of her had died along with the loved one.  The pas de deux were occasionally more acrobatic than I would associate with sorrow, but nevertheless it was so nice to feel after the coldness of Monotones.

Sarasota Ballet’s full run included a program that was devoted almost entirely to Ashton alongside the Wheeldon.  I don’t feel the poorer for missing it, but I would for having missed Symphony of Sorrows.

Sarasota Ballet:  Program A
Tuesday, August 14, at 7:30 pm at The Joyce Theater
Monotones I & II, by Sir Frederick Ashton; Symphony of Sorrows, by Ricardo Graziano; There Where She Loved, by Christopher Wheeldon

Watch an excerpt of Monotones II danced by The Royal Ballet here.