A good hour and a half of company class with Mystic Ballet got my blood moving and my mind racing, a nice refresher for the first day back into a rigorous ballet regiment. Goran has brought in Eve Chan, who originally danced with the Hong Kong Ballet and has taught class at SUNY Purchase while earning her masters in choreography. She will be working with the company teaching class and rehearsal directing for the pieces that will be performed at Jacobs Pillow.
I also had the privilege of sitting in on the first day of company rehearsal. Mystic Ballet will be performing twice this summer at the legendary Jacobs Pillow venue in Becket, Massachusetts. So for the next two weeks they will be reconditioning one piece the company has performed this past year, an adaptation of Swan Lake by Sergi Vanaev. By teaching parts to the new members of Mystic Ballet 2 (the second company dancers recently recruited) and perfecting the existing material the hope is to continue to revitalize this excitingly unusual take on the classical ballet (please refer to the following link for a full premiere reviewhttp://www.theday.com/article/20130428/NWS01/130429570/1047 ). Mystic Ballet will also be premiering a new work by Lauren Edson, Imaginary Love(for more information on this choreographer please see her website http://www.laurenedson.com ). Once again Mystic Ballet will be challenged to hold onto the original sentiments of the initial setting of this choreographic work. It will be difficult considering that unfortunate injuries caused some of the dancers to sit out for this crucial learning process, but it will hopefully prove to be even more rewarding during this intense period of rehearsal. I look forward to seeing the way in which Goran and the rest of the company pull together to create their own artistic context for these previously set works of dance.
Both of these two works of dance were commissioned by outside choreographers. Therefore, throughout the rehearsal Goran is challenged to clean and polish the piece while maintaining the original intent of the choreographer.
Considering that Goran has had little formal training as a dancer I have observed that this man has an incredibly keen eye. It is obvious that the key to this particular success is in his ability to define what he wants to see in the movement of his dancers. He began his rehearsal by underscoring the importance of forgetting about the mirror and stating that, “if you have to use it, go through it.” For Goran understanding the mechanics of the step is not enough, his dancers need to possess knowledge of where the movement is initiating from, deep within the body. It is this organic and intuitive understanding that adds dimension to contemporary ballet work. Therefore, for most of the rehearsal I watched Goran provoke the dancers to change the quality and subtleties of the movement rather than focusing on the correct execution of steps themselves.
The dancers will be learning sixteen minutes of choreography by the end of the week: Choreography that includes difficult suspension partner-work and an intriguing combination of hefty physicality and vulnerability in movement. It is clear that the traditional hierarchy of ballet rehearsal management still exists here. However, in certain ways it appears that these dancers operate as a collective and truly understand the importance of adapting to assigned “power” if you will. For example, these individuals are not merely waiting around to do as they are told. Instead I see them take initiative to use time efficiently, teaching other dancers choreography so they can adapt to the movement style. It will be intriguing to observe how these social relationships change as new members of the Mystic Ballet family become more integrated as the rehearsal process progresses.
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