Joffrey Ballet Chicago is currently staging Golden Hour at the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago through March 3, 2025. A wonderful, conceptually fulfilling and skillfully performed full dance concert, it’s a must-see event, beautifully accompanied by the music of the Chicago Philharmonic orchestra under the baton of Music Director and Principal Conductor Scott Speck, with guest conductor Robert McConnell.
The program opens with Nicholas Blanc’s Under the Trees’ Voices, 2021, set to the fiery music of Ezio Bosso. The cunning costumes, also conceived by Blanc, were masterpieces of the dressmakers art, opaque flesh-colored net leotard/tunics sewn over with black leaves. They resonate in Jack Mehler’s slightly dim spot/full lighting and stagecraft consisting of huge leaves that rest on the stage, rise to the ceiling, become a single leaf, descend to the stage to be danced behind, become opaque as well. The ballet is made up of 4 segments, in which classical ballet forms reveal individuals as well as several duet couplets who intermingle with a larger complement of dancers, in scenes of grace.
Cathy Marston’s Heimat, 2022, set to the powerful music of Wagner, under Jim French and Jack Mehler’s clear daytime lighting, reveals a seemingly simple scene of faux domestic life. 5 family members emerge, the 3 women dancers dressed in 1950-ish wrap dresses in ice cream colors., which swirl and drape becomingly as they are lifted and twirled. We see dad pas de deux with mom, awakened from a tableau where she’s poised with the kids on a park bench. And then the kids wake up! Parents’ break is over, and the offspring struggle for attention, pushing and shoving until they settle down. It’s clever and evocative, lighthearted, never grim, but with a coy overlay of reality.
The world premiere of Andante, 2025 by Yuri Possokhov, set to the strong sounds of Shostakovich, was a dance for 3 superb principals. This was a classic modern ballet, revealing en pointe movements, lovely, graceful lifts, impossibly long limbs in glides and poses under French/Mehler’s soft lighting,
The last piece on the program was the eagerly awaited world premiere of Princess and the Pea, by Dani Rowe who also composed the libretto with Garen Scribner. Fanciful music by James Stephenson and utterly original vegetable-plaid costumes by Emma Kingsbury fully lit by Jim French retold the fairytale, incorporating traditional aspects- all those mattresses! The linear progression of the newly anarchic story was a true delight and a charming, fun demonstration of the strength of this Company, which can dance in any genre. Spoofing on a wicked princess who wants everyone to eat only green peas, lest they get canned, the challenger-girl frees up the garden with the help of both her dads and a can opener. This co-production with Oregon Ballet Theatre was an instant crowd-pleaser, a paean to triumphant sagas everywhere, born of subversion, and championing- as does this Company- diversity in all its forms.
All photos by Cheryl Mann
For information and tickets to Golden Hour and all the great shows of Joffrey Ballet Chicago, go to www.joffreyballet.org
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