ClassicAlive presents Gabriel Cabezas and Chloe Felesina

The cello was played by Gabriel Cabezas, who just had his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The dancer was Chloe Felesina, a member of the BalletX dance company. The matchmaker was musician (double bass) and teaching artist Mary Javian, the ClassicAlive curator, who looks for unexpected disciplinary collaborations in which one art form enhances another.

The performance was playful yet serious, choreography married with improvisation, classical movements with modern interpretations. Once again a BalletX dancer confounds expectations. Barefoot and wearing yoga pants, Felesina used her body to express a gamut of emotions, fluid grace and awkward angles. She and Cabezas played, in all senses of the word: his music called her to motion, while her motions evoked melody.

The two artists hadn’t known each other before they began rehearsing together, but they found a way to marry their styles and create a cohesive whole. And that’s the point of it, says ClassicAlive’s Javian — creating collaborations between artists from different genres to illustrate the ways that music crosses cultural boundaries and finds it own forms.

One of the highlights was a newly commissioned work, Prayer, composed by Alyssa Weinberg, which was inspired by this year’s One Book, One Philadelphia selection, Kevin Powers’s Yellow Birds. The music, said Weinberg, was meant to evoke the Islamic call to prayer and Gregorian chant, as a call to peace emerging from the horrors of war.

An unconventional setting

As if in a cabaret, waiters moved as silently as possible serving and clearing. An audience with kids is always tricky, but here they were mesmerized. Their parents could enjoy culture and community and some good food. And it wasn’t just available to those in the immediate audience — the performance was also streamed live over liveconnections.org/video.

This is just one of the programs put on by LiveConnections. Over 4,500 students a year for the last five years have attended Bridge Sessions, interactive concerts that serve urban youth grades two through twelve, as well as special needs populations, says artist and musician Melinda Steffy, LiveConnections general manager. Artists from different genres perform and engage the students in hands-on learning.

These various programs make the arts more accessible to those who might otherwise never get to see a live performance. Many little girls dream of becoming ballerinas — they’ve seen The Nutcracker, that holiday staple, designed to appeal to kids of all kinds and genders and their parents, and they think they, too, can become a princess twirling across the stage surrounded by magical toys. Some even take lessons and learn how to pirouette and leap. But when they grow up, how many of them actually go to see the ballet? And those who are not taken to see the ballet or given the opportunity to take lessons — does it even exist for them? Programs like LiveConnections, which help the arts become more humanized — not just that magical distant being on a stage, behind a curtain — are important in preserving the arts. And programs like ClassicAlive, which expand the boundaries of what is considered art, are an important part of developing new art forms and perpetuating existing ones.

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LiveConnections is presenting three additional ClassicAlive concerts this season, including the Kinan Azmeh Quartet, blending classical, jazz, and Arab styles, in March; violinist Kristin Lee, performing eclectic duos with steelpan, theramin, and spoken word, in April; and classical guitarist Jordan Dodson in May (at the Wilmington WCL).