Choreography, dedication shine at IU Ballet season premiere

Lights shone on the faces of the IU Singers standing below the stage in the Musical Arts Center on Friday night.

A cacophony of voices filled the room as people found their way to their seats. Excitement was palpable in the air.

Kevin and Chris Nagy-Chow sat side by side in row 12, waiting eagerly for the first ballet of the fall season, “Light and Shade,” to begin.

Their daughter, junior Samantha Nagy-Chow, would not join them in the audience. She was preparing backstage. 

“It is so gratifying because for 20 years, we have all been working towards this,” Chris Nagy-Chow said. “We’re from California, and I can’t begin to tell you the family sacrifice it takes to produce a ballerina. It’s like mama bird standing on the edge of the nest going, ‘fly, baby, fly.’”

Samantha Nagy-Chow’s mother and father made the trip from California to IU to watch her perform in the first ballet of the season. Her rise as a ballerina began when she was three years old.

“For me, probably the most exciting part of this whole process was, at 14, we took her to go see San Francisco Ballet’s ‘Swan Lake,’” Kevin Nagy-Chow said. “She said to us — we were sitting up in the balcony — she said ‘boy, if I could ever dance on that stage, that would be so cool.’ At age 16, she actually danced ‘Swan Lake’ on San Francisco Ballet’s stage with the same principal dancers, which was her dream at 16, and that to me was the coolest thing ever.”

The audience grew quiet as the lights dimmed, throwing the room into darkness. A single performer in white stepped onto the stage.

“Sweet Fields” set the pace of the evening with a mixture of technically challenging steps, abstract lighting and accompanying live music based on 18th and 19th century hymns from William Billings, the Shaker tradition and The Sacred Harp.

The first piece, choreographed by Twyla Tharp, aimed at simplicity and was inspired by her Quaker origins.

Following “Sweet Fields,” a piece choreographed by Peter Martins called “Eight Easy Pieces” featured three female performers. One wore a green costume, one purple and one pink.

Samantha Nagy-Chow performed in this piece Friday night.

“She’s done so much hard work over 17 years of her life just pursuing her dream, and she’s able to do it,” Kevin Nagy-Chow said. “It’s pretty cool to watch.”

“Eight More,” also choreographed by Peter Martins as a companion piece to “Eight Easy Pieces,” followed and featured three similar characters.

Three male performers dressed in body suits, one pink, one purple and one green, and introduced an element of humor to the piece.

The music was the same for both pieces, except “Eight More” was performed to a version orchestrated by Igor Stravinsky.

The final piece of the evening introduced a different concept than the other performances.

“Appalachian Spring” told the story of a newlywed couple celebrating the building of a house in the spring.

A pioneer woman, a revivalist and his followers were other characters in the piece. Sophomore Carly Hammond performed the part of the bride.

“The last piece was definitely up for interpretation,” sophomore Stephanie Gedeller said. “They did a nice job. You could tell they were working really hard.”

Gedeller remarked on the colorful aspect of “Appalachian Spring” and said there was a reason for everything in the piece.

“There was a lot of variety,” junior Zarina Madan said. “You never got bored. They kept changing it.”

The ballet lasted two hours, with “Appalachian Spring” running for 30 minutes without a break.

Michael Vernon, chair of the Department of Ballet, said the performers looked “at home” onstage.

“I was really pleased with the performance,” Vernon said. “I think that it was a big challenge that the dancers rose to meet, and they looked very at home with the different styles they undertook.”

Vernon said attending a ballet is a wonderful source of education.

“One of the challenges is, they train six days a week, four to six hours a day, for a few minutes onstage,” Kevin Nagy-Chow said. “They only perform once or a couple times a year, so you have to really love the process of practice in order to stay with it. The reward isn’t much. It’s not like playing a basketball game every week or a volleyball game every weekend. If you don’t enjoy the practice, then you’ll never be able to go that far with it.”