Elevate

In the afternoon Mary Beth and I went to see ballet by Collage downtown. The program was called Elevate and there were three pieces, the first two commissioned by Collage and the last a big international thing. First was called Luminescent and it was classical ballet contemporized. The music was by Joseph Bologne (a classical composer I wasn't familiar with) and the music as well as the dancing started off very light and carefree, but as the pieces moved on it got more depth so it was a nice progression. The colorful costumes (each solid color, velvet or whatever) were nice. The next was called Bluff City Blues and the music was self-explanatory (there were a couple songs by BB King, for example). It was, given the musical direction, my least favorite of the three, but it wasn't bad or anything. The last was called Chroma, choreographed by Wayne McGregor, and I guess it's a big international hit from 2006 with very difficult dance movements. The set is this big white "box" enclosing the stage and it's a big reminiscent of THX 1138. It had a cut out rectangle in the back (about the size of a big movie screen) and there were some things done with the color and shadow and screens to give it different effects. Overall a very minimal aesthetic. The dancers also wore single-color costumes. There was a lot of some dancers standing still looking in different directions while other dancers moved. I thought it was really good. It was my favorite of the day's dances though I liked 'em all. Oh, and the music for this one was performed by MSO and it's a score by Joby Talbot though a few parts of it are orchestrations of White Stripes songs, which was the only part that was a little distracting about it. I mean, as far as orchestrations go (especially given the source material) they weren't bad, not like cheesy pops stuff, but still. You hear The White Stripes melodies and you're kinda taken out of it in a weird sort of way. But that's only a minor quibble on my part. Um. I guess that's it for now!