Right on Track

BalletX's latest teems with seasonal energy.

by Janet Anderson

BalletX's paean to seasonal rebirth, Right to Spring, is a movement tone poem. The stage, covered by a large piece of white fabric, featured only the sleeping figure of co-director Christine Cox stretched out at the center. With a blue backdrop and black-and-white photo montage spinning out images of leaves, water and grass blowing in the breeze, it looked very much like a winter dreamscape. Three excellent musicians — Matthew Pierce (vocals, flute and keyboard), Michael Lowry (percussion) and Ed Harris (guitar) — added a magical minimalist sound that seemed just right for the stark setting.

Meanwhile bumps began to rise beneath the white cloth (snow), dancers squirming across the stage toward the reclining Cox. Like garden buds trying to shoot up through ice, they huddled around her. Cox, five months pregnant, walked slowly off the stage through the now-emerging figures, a lovely human emblem of regeneration.

Over an uninterrupted hour, Matthew Neenan's inventive choreography took his small troupe and spellbound audience from winter's frosty days into springtime. Neenan, who's never seen a ballet step he didn't want to play with or turn upside down, loves the X part of the game: His dancers leapt into huge grand jetés that shifted into playground skipping. The guys pulled their lady partners' legs over their shoulders and then swung the ladies around them like human whirligigs. Some dancers even played spin the bottle at one side of the stage, while terrific Tara Keating and Meredith Rainey performed complicated pas de deux.

A collage of original sound from Pierce and his Lake Trout compatriots plus Riot Trail and Mozart accompanied the dance. Neenan's aesthetic is spelled out in this unlikely combination: Riot Trail seamlessly segued into Mozart while dancers shifted effortlessly between haute ballet and hip-hop. It takes talented dancers to use, and confuse, their bodies like this, and Xers truly excel. This spunky, inventive troupe radiated confidence and, better yet, pure enjoyment. Right to Spring ended unpretentiously with a genuine laugh, thus remaining unexpected to the last moment.

(j_anderson@citypaper.net)

BalletX: Right to Spring March 26, Wilma Theater