REVIEW: Joffrey, Civic Center team up for stellar UI benefit

By Diana Nollen

The Gazette

DES MOINES - Cheers, bravoes and prolonged applause provided the soundtrack to a breathtaking night of ballet Friday at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines.

Ashley Wheater, the Joffrey Ballet's artistic director, was right when he said in an earlier Gazette interview that he feels “the company is dancing at an all-time high.”

Every piece was stunning in a program designed to raise money and spirits for the rebuilding of Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City and for the University of Iowa School of Music.

The Chicago-based dance troupe has a long and glowing history with the UI and offered up its artistic services in benefits staged for an intimate gathering Sept. 3 at the Joffrey Tower studios in Chicago and for about 1,600 people Friday in downtown Des Moines. The Civic Center, which also extended an offer of aid shortly after the June 2008 flood, waived its rental fee.

The two organizations joined their helping hands in a most superb way.

Beginning with greetings from Chuck Swanson, Hancher's executive director, and Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, the evening's tone turned somber with a video of the flood's devastation on the UI performing arts campus.

And then the celebration began. A celebration of spirit, beauty, grace and artistry, accompanied impeccably by the UI Symphony Orchestra.

The program was eclectic in tone, but each piece showcased what the Joffrey does best, putting a contemporary twist on classical movements.

“Kettentanz,” a 1971 piece in nine movements, was the most classical work, featuring lively, lilting music by Johann Strauss Sr. and Johann Mayer. Choreography by Gerald Arpino, the Joffrey's late co-founder, gave a nod to Old Vienna with waltzes, gallops and polkas, while further developing the company's signature modern look.

Linear movements and joyous skipping by a dozen dancers gave way to beautiful lifts and gorgeous extensions as they paired off, then took solo turns with powerful, athletic spins and delicate pointe work, before coming back full circle, linking up in a spiraling chain.

The next two works, “... smile with my heart” and “Carousel Dance” from 2002, reflect the music of Richard Rodgers, injecting elements of a very modern dissonance juxtaposed with a very romantic, fluid feel.

Choreographer and UI alum Lar Lubovitch infuses “... smile” with whimsical foot positions, intricate arm work, unusual lifts from prone positions, sensuality and humor.

“Carousel” choreographer Christopher Wheeldon wraps a carnival atmosphere around Rodgers and Hammerstein's dramatic, melancholy love story. Dancers create the rides and their mechanisms, moving like pistons before giving the stage over to the lovers who waltz with poetic beauty through their pas de deux on “If I Loved You.” The company returns, cartwheeling to calliope music before forming the most gorgeous carousel with six women elegantly clutching golden poles and poised on their partners' right shoulder.

The evening's final work, “Age of Innocence,” choreographed by Edwaard Liang in 2008, thrusts the court and courtship dances of the late 18th/early 19th centuries into the modern musical stylings of Philip Glass and Thomas Newman. It's a marriage of powerful counterpoints, dissonance and curtsies, frenetic strings and delicate pointe, dizzying spins and lifts and leaps that defy convention as well as gravity.

It's an achievement that drew and immediate and well-deserved standing ovation. As did the entire evening.