Fall Ballet features variety of music, dance during weekend

IU's ballet season is not limited only to "The Nutcracker" every Christmas. The IU Ballet Theater gave its first performances of the year Friday and Saturday at the Musical Arts Center which consisted of four pieces, including two world premieres. Many different styles of ballet were put on display by the dancers.\nThe night started off with "Winds from the South" created by Glenda Lucena, a second-year guest lecturer of ballet. The costumes and dancing were filled with variety, but the music -- played on a recording instead of live -- held the piece back just a bit several patrons said.\n"("Winds from the South") was pretty and all, but the music was distracting," said graduate student Emma Shansky.\nShansky referred to the quality of the music by Ernesto Lecuona. She said though the music fit the piece well, it sounded at times like the speakers could not handle the recording.\nFor the second piece, "Grand Pas Classique," Michelle Mahowald and Justin Zuschlag donned formal costumes and gave a very classical performance. The audience applauded throughout the piece and their solo performances.\nA live piano performance added a change of tune for the third piece, "Spring Water." Again, there were only two dancers, Lauren Fadeley and \nSamuel Turner, Friday night and Michelle Mahowald and Chris Nachtrab Saturday. The dancers took advantage of the large stage, and though the piece was only a few minutes long, it was filled with lifts and spins.\nThe last piece, "The Final Pointe," created by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms completed the ballet. It was one of the longer pieces, but time was the last thing on the audience's mind. \nSophomore Melissa Burnett explained how the last piece spoke to her.\n"I particularly liked 'The Final Pointe'," she said. "It was really beautiful. The lighting was fantastic, and the dancers were excellent. It kept my attention." \nThe lighting techniques of "The Final Pointe" added a certain amount of emotion the other pieces did not have. Also, the lighting helped highlight what was important. At the start, a lone ballet slipper lay in the spotlight, and at the end, the slipper is again placed center stage and isolated by the spotlight. \nThough reactions were that the show was brilliant, some parts appealed to the audience more than others -- particularly the solos. The sporadic applause throughout the pieces reflected an appreciation for amazing abilities of the dancers.\n"Some of the moves they did, I mean, are legs supposed to do that?" Burnett asked, incredulous, adding, \n"(Mahowald) was unusually flexible."\nThere were many moves and techniques which looked extraordinarily difficult, but all the dancers seemed, from the audience's perspective, to execute them flawlessly and effortlessly. This impression was not just in the audience's imagination. The cast members also felt the performances were well-executed.\n"I think the performance went pretty well," Zuschlag said about the opening night performance. "There's always the possibility of major mishaps, but the important thing is just to perform to the best of our ability. Everyone I know was pretty pleased with the show, and I think for the short amount of time we had to bring this production together, we did a great a job"