PAB's 'Midsummer Night's Dream'

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LEWIS WHITTINGTON

George Balanchine brought as much choreographic magic to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the Bard himself accomplished with his poetic and whimsical dialogue. The ballet is a fine example of why Balanchine was as much a master storyteller as he was an abstract innovator.

He was also a master dance instructor, and Midsummer works an entire company in ways that few other ballets do. Act I is loaded with plot, characters and physical comedy, all floating the tale of the woodland kingdom full of sprites, fairies, princes, princesses, creatures and, of course, that devilish imp Puck. All dance performance levels are on display— from the simplicity of a throng of children playing twirling fireflies to the most demanding classical vocabulary designed to challenge seasoned prima ballerinas and danseur nobles.

Pennsylvania Ballet’s handsome full staging of Midsummer at the Academy of Music, with its top-drawer production values, has much going for it, but also exposes the company’s shortcomings. This is a transitioning year for PAB and artistic director Roy Kaiser seems sufficiently confident to know where his dancers’ artistic strengths and weaknesses will ultimately plateau. A work like this acts as a potent company primer and diagnostic.

On opening night, the corps de ballet, soloists and principals performed a beautifully paced lengthy first act, aided by robust symphonic appointments of the Ballet orchestra, under the baton of Beatrice Jona Affron. The arrangement of Mendelssohn’s incidental music was so strong that, for once, the universally known ”Wedding March” that opens the second act didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. The choral segments by the Philadelphia Kantorei, led by sopranos Amy Armstrong and Susan Polack, were also first-rate.

The driving violins kept the fire lit under Philip Colucci’s Puck in a riveting characterization. His acting was as quick and clever as his deft technical clarity. Balanchine’s genius lay in his ability to bring it all together in a role like this and make it a high-barre for the danseur, but that mark wasn’t hit in the second cast by an otherwise charming Jonathan Stiles. Both Colucci and Stiles were terrific in a hilarious swordfight dance with Matt Neenan and James Ihde (Meredith Rainey in the second cast). Christine Cox, as Hippolyta the Amazon fairy wielding her gold bow, was both light and butch with muscular fouettes.

After such a strong first act, the company failed to nail the demands of Act II, at least on opening night. Misaligned unison among the corps in the ballroom scenes and bumper-body transitions marred what should have been tight group formations. The men further sullied the pristine courtier-ladies scene with uneven jump sequences. (By the end of the run, as often happens, this was performed with more focus and attack.)

Arantxa Ochoa’s Titania possessed lovely passages, but she provided little dimension in the character and even seemed to lose focus in some of the phrasing. Ochoa’s husband Alexander Iziliaev, as Oberon, showed broad technical skill with the repetitive jumps and leaps, but his jeté battu variations were atypically heavy-landed.

The central pas de deux Act II divertissement, designed as the technical and romantic highlight, was danced by Martha Chamberlain and Alexei Borovik, who struggled through the extended adagio section. Chamberlain’s wobbly carriage was underlined by the drawn-out turn sequence on one pointe that had Borovik looking like he was ripping her arm out of its socket. In a matinée performance, Ochoa and Izilaev handled this duet with more ease, but didn’t execute the unadorned requirements totally without flaws.

Of course, whatever the missteps, nothing can take away from the captivating flights of the fireflies, all of whom ignited thunderous applause on this Midsummer Night.