Premiering Friday night, the performance also played Saturday: one matinee and one evening.
With three separate acts including “Swan Lake” (Act II), “Duets” and “Rubies,” the show offered a variation in style and atmosphere. However, the technique and precision remained constant throughout the performance.
IU freshman and musical theater student Caleb Novell, said this was the first ballet he had attended in a while.
“I was really blown away by how beautiful everyone danced and the level at which they were dancing,” Novell said. “I can see every single one of them with successful professional careers, and I think it’s really kind of an honor to see them as a college student.”
The audience was captivated from the minute the conductor cued the orchestra and the second act of “Swan Lake,” a ballet by the famous Tchaikovsky, started the show. The tale followed the story of Odette, queen of the swans, played during the Saturday matinee by senior Elizabeth Edwards, and Prince Siegfried, played by IU sophomore Colin Ellis also during the Saturday matinee.
One of the highlights of the performance was the precision and effortlessness that came not only from the leads, but from every dancer on stage, as audience member Maryann Iaria said. As Odette and Prince Siegfried performed, the swans stood poised and completely at attention, or moved together in their rows with perfect spacing and their toes tapping in tandem.
“They were very together,” Iaria said of the swans. “They were ?excellent.”
True to its name, the second act of the show, “Duets,” consisted of several pairs of dancers taking turns stepping forward on stage. Their routines sometimes overlapped, with one couple chiming in with their dance in the midst of another couple’s routine, or one beginning their performance as another couple finished the last few seconds of theirs. The music was very simplistic, only drums playing throughout its entirety for a less conventional performance. Each duet had its own style and repetition, but overall they came together to produce a cohesive second act.
“They were very angular, like cubic art,” Iaria said of the dancers in the second portion of the show.
“Rubies” finished the ballet performance as the third act with a dramatic opening and the dancers clothed completely in red. The leads of this act included Katherine Zimmerman, Aaron Anker and Alexandra Hartnett.
“My favorite part might have been ‘Rubies,’” Novell said. “I just really liked the choreography, and the outfits were beautiful.”
With music by Igor Stravinsky, “Rubies” was a good a balance ?between act one and two with both duets and group dancing. The audience could hear the faint breath of the dancers at the end of the act.
A member of all three acts, IU sophomore Colin Ellis said preparation begins during the first couple of weeks in February, sometimes even directly after winter break, depending on when the repertoire arrives.
“You’re working the same thing over and over and over again, and the most rewarding thing is the things that you’ve been working on for months are clean and they feel stable,” he said. “And you’re like, okay, I’ve been working on this for so long and now it’s finally clean and refined, and the audience can see what I’ve been working so hard on.”
Ellis said being a part of all three acts of the show, with very different roles in each, has helped him evolve as a performer this semester. Aside from his large role in “Swan Lake (Act II),” he transformed into other characters as the acts ?progressed.
“I had to learn to be a sort of sultry, sassy character in ‘Rubies,’” he said. “And then in ‘Duets,’ it’s a little bit more free form. So the biggest difference is now I’m learning more and more things, and I have to be adaptable.”
