THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604060047
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUE VANHECKE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 101 lines
WHEN THE dancers flit across the stage at the Harrison Opera House for Virginia Opera's production of ``Carousel'' on Thursday, it will be the final steps in a pas de deux between choreographer and director.
Choreographer Frank Bove began hammering out movement concepts for ``Carousel'' with the show's 10 dancers a couple of weeks before director Greg Ganakas arrived from New York.
Revisions and fine-tuning followed in what has evolved into a very cooperative effort, Bove said.
``We collaborate on ideas,'' explained Bove, who contributed the majority of the ballet movements. ``We'd been together 10 minutes and he says, `Let's go into the studio, I want to show you this.' He had a bunch of this clogging stuff. I'm not a clogger or tap dancer, so I learned that, then arranged it and put it in a different form.
``(Or) if he goes, `Now the guys here, they're drinking,' it's like, `Well, now magically we have to have some mugs.' So I did some problem-solving to make that kind of stuff work, as well. You have to think on your feet. It's a real dynamic process.''
And Bove is pleased that, in keeping with the spirit of the legendary Agnes de Mille's original choreography, all of the dance sequences are vital to the ``Carousel'' plot.
``It's really the true sense of musical theater,'' he said, ``using song and dance to move the story along.''
``Carousel,'' running Thursday through Sunday, is the final production of the Opera's 1995-96 season.
Veteran Broadway director Ganakas makes his Virginia Opera debut with ``Carousel,'' with Virginia Opera's assistant artistic director Jerome Shannon conducting the original Broadway score.
Choreographer Bove is artistic director and resident choreographer of Virginia Ballet Theatre. Eight of the 10 dancers in the show dance with Virginia Ballet Theatre.
Carousel,'' which premiered in 1945, was the second collaboration between composer Richard Rodgers and librettist/lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, following their wildly successful ``Oklahoma!'' The musical - home of such standards as ``If I Loved You'' and ``You'll Never Walk Alone'' - has since been made into a movie starring Gordon McRae and Shirley Jones and a television special with Robert Goulet. In 1994 the show was revived on Broadway and captured five Tony awards.
The story revolves around ne'er-do-well carnival barker Billy Bigelow. After losing his job, learning that his wife Julie is pregnant and becoming a desperate thief, he takes his own life and is sent ``up there.'' Billy restores the hope and dignity of both his child and Julie when he is allowed to return to earth for one day.
Choreographer Agnes de Mille's work on ``Carousel'' was profoundly innovative, making dance as essential dramatic element of the Broadway stage. Ballet had rarely been used in musicals until Rodgers and Hammerstein, impressed with de Mille's 1942 ballet ``Rodeo,'' hired de Mille for ``Oklahoma!'' That musical incorporated the very first ``dream sequence'' ballet.
``It didn't look like ballet,'' Bove says of de Mille's groundbreaking work. ``All of her movement in most of her choreography, the whole point of it was to really get across the story, to be very real about the movement and about the story you're trying to tell.''
Although the Virginia Opera's ``Carousel'' does not employ de Mille's original choreography, ``we're trying to remain real strict to that kind of (realism-based) concept,'' Bove says. For instance, to impart a rustic feel, de Mille often relied on idiomatic genres like tap and square dancing; a section of the local ``Carousel'' incorporates clogging.
``It sets up the real roughness of the play,'' Bove said. ``And it's a break from that company, ensemble feeling.''
And as it did in the original production, dance goes a long way to develop characters in the Opera's ``Carousel.''
``You have to like these people in the beginning of the show so that when Billy dies you can identify with every one of those people,'' Bove explains, ``every chorus member, as well as Julie. We've gone to great lengths to try to do that.''
Carousel'' is not the first occasion Bove and Virginia Ballet Theatre have worked with the Opera; he also choreographed the company's ``Die Fledermaus,'' ``Don Giovanni,'' ``Turandot'' and ``Salome'' productions.
``For the last three or four years we've been building alliances with a lot of the other bigger arts organizations here,'' he said. ``We work a lot with the opera and the symphony - that's part of our growth and development.''
Formerly the Tidewater Ballet Association, Virginia Ballet Theatre is now in its 35th year. Alumni include Michael Barriskill of the Houston Ballet and Broadway production of ``Cats,'' who portrays the young Billy in ``Carousel''; Stacy Caddell of New York City Ballet and the Twyla Tharp Dance Company; and Lorraine Graves of Dance Theater of Harlem.
On April 17, along with other distinguished guest artists, Barriskill, Caddell and Graves will reunite at the Harrison Opera House for an ``International Evening of Dance,'' a gala event held in conjunction with the 43rd annual Azalea Festival.
``Our vision is create a fully professional company here,'' Bove said. ``This is a springboard event to do that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
ABOVE: Choreographer Frank Bove, left, instructs dancers in
``Carousel.''
by CNB