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John Boyer   09/10/2003	Subject: There is a Raff ballet after all... Message: In another post, Jack Kelso suggested Raff would have been a good ballet composer (I agree). Well, read this article from the Irvine World News: Raff's Octet was used as the music for a ballet performance at the University of California at Irvine in February of this year! ----- Varied styles, premieres, revivals featured in UCI Dance Visions 2003 By Michael Rydzynski For Irvine World News A six-piece program equally divided between premieres and revivals and boasting modern dance, ballet, technology and jazz awaits fans of the annual UCI Dance Visions at the Irvine Barclay Feb. 20-22. "I'm very happy and excited about the program - the quality is very strong," said a pleased Donald McKayle, UC Irvine Claire Trevor dance professor, artistic director of the UCI Dance Department and co-director of this year's Dance Visions, which will include an early work of his, "Nocturne." "This will be a wonderful showcase of the depth of talent that is on the faculty," said David Allan, dance professor, head of ballet in the department and co-director of Dance Visions, which will include a revival of his first work for the university, "O-La-Know." The faculty choreographic concert also will include premieres of "Nightdriving," Lisa Naugle's contemporary dance combined with computer-based technology and animation; "Memorias," a contemporary ballet on pointe by Eloy Barragan; and "The 405," a modern dance by Christine Chrest, an alumna of UCI's graduate program in dance enjoying her first year on the faculty as a lecturer in modern dance. In addition to McKayle and Allan, Bob Boross will revive his work, "Love Fell Out with Me," a jazz dance set to five musical-theater and jazz standards sung by Sammy Davis, Jr. "Nocturne" was created in 1952 for Donald McKayle and Company, which premiered the 12-minute, three-movement, nine-dancer (five men, four women) dance in New York City. "It's a reconstruction of an early work of mine," said McKayle, whose first choreographic effort was a solo he made for himself, "Saturday's Child," in 1948. "It's an imagined mating ritual set in a grove of lacing friends. The palette is something I call 'after Gauguin': rich colors and umbras, sensual in its movement." The music, a mini-suite of canons for string quintet and percussion, is a recording made by Moondog and his wife, who perform on percussion instruments they created, along with string members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. "Moondog, whose real name was Louis Hardin, was this blind street musician I met in New York City," McKayle reminisced. "I followed this music I heard and found him huddled in a doorway, covered with blankets, crafting percussion instruments which he played." From such a meeting developed the musical inspiration for McKayle's "Nocturne," which is receiving its UCI premiere. "I danced in the original, as did Arthur Mitchell before he founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey before he founded his company, Christine Lawson before she became dance dean at Cal Arts, and so on," McKayle said, nonchalantly reeling off a "Who's Who in Dance" who began their careers as members of his early 1950s company. Members of McKayle's 19-strong UCI Dance Etude will perform "Nocturne," which they performed at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut Feb. 8 and will repeat in France in May as part of the university's exchange program with the Conservatoire National Superieur de Paris. Allan, initiator and director of that exchange program, likewise will go to Paris with his "O-La-Know" and its 19 dancers. "We will become the first American group to perform at the Festival du Danse de May (May Dance Festival) at the Conservatoire," said Allan, whose "O-La-Know" uses music he previously used for "Silver Lace," choreographed for Patricia Wilde, a Balanchine protegee, on the occasion of her 25th anniversary as artistic director of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater in 1995. The music in both cases is 19th-century German composer Joachim Raff's Octet in C Major for Strings, Op. 176 - a piece with a great deal of significance for Allan. "Among the big influences in my life was Joel Olanow, who was an advertising agent for a huge firm in Toronto and a real advocate for the arts," Allan recalled. "He ignited the thought that I could do something beyond dancing. He said I was the most musical dancer he'd ever seen and he introduced me to the idea of digging into my soul to express dance through music. In many ways, he opened my eyes and shaped my destiny." Olanow, who died in 1996, introduced Allan to his classical-music collection, from which Allan chose works to choreograph. "The next year, I was in my second year at UCI and wanted to do something in the spirit of how much joy dance gave this man," Allan said. "Up to then, every piece I choreographed, from 1982 to 1996, was to music I had found in this man's archives. So when the opportunity came to create my first work for UCI in the Winter Quarter of 1997, I was at first disappointed that I had already used the Octet, the last piece he ever introduced me to, for 'Silver Lace.' "Then I thought about it and wondered, 'Why not just re-choreograph to the same music?' And the result was 'O-La-Know,' using the sound of his name for the title, a play on the phrase, 'Oh, if only you knew' - that I'm a professor in a university. Because Joel would laugh, since he always corrected my grammar." Naugle uses overhead cameras, a projecting video and a downstage scrim to show her dancers live, live on screen and videotaped for "Nightdriving," an interactive dance video projection work inspired by "The Night Driver," a short story by Italo Calvino. "I play between the real and the virtual," Naugle said. "I've recorded my 10 dancers (eight women, two men) on DVD several months ago and manipulated their imagery. And I have four overhead cameras picking up the dancers as they're performing live on a big platform upstage. "This live video feed will connect to projectors in back of the hall that we're using for the first time and projected onto a downstage scrim which we're also using for the first time. In this way, we're creating a world based on Calvino's story." Helping Naugle on the technical side will be John Crawford, doing the video and projection designs. The music is especially written by Alan Terricciano, chair of dance and co-chair of music at UCI. "This is very complicated to have everything come together," admitted Naugle, who will have almost as many people working behind the scenes (nine) as dancing on stage. "But I wanted to work with projection and integrate that with the dancers. Luckily, Donald (McKayle) was able to purchase this new scrim, on which you can see the projection but through which you can also see the dancers live." Naugle plans "Nightdriving" to be the first in a trilogy involving the new scrim, which she said helps "create different environments." Set to two of Tomaso Albinoni's late-Baroque concertos for oboe, strings and harpsichord, "Memorias" is Barragan's tribute to his late mother and, according to McKayle, "qualities she had deep in her that shaped him. "It's a very fluid, contemporary use of classic ballet technique," McKayle said of Barragan's six-woman piece, which will have a double cast - hence, 12 dancers. That's one less than Chrest calls for in "The 405," set to music by The Doors and reflecting the trials and tribulations of her commute to and from UCI on what has become one of the worst freeways to travel during "rush hour" in Orange County. Originally choreographed for Western Kentucky University in 1998, "Love Fell Out with Me" has been updated and expanded for Dance Visions by Boross, head of jazz, tap and musical-theater dance in the department. The work features 16 dancers in an upbeat battle of the sexes set in the 1950s to Davis' renditions of "A Lot of Livin' to Do," "Begin the Beguine," "Too Close for Comfort," "Love Me or Leave Me" and "Falling in Love with Love."
Mark Thomas   11/10/2003	RE: There is a Raff ballet after all... IP: Logged Message: Of course Raff's "Samson" is a Grand Opera and, if he was following the French model, it would have included a ballet. I've never seen the score, though, and there's nothing in the usual sources to indicate whether there is a ballet or perhaps some dances. I suspect not. It just wasn't the German way at the time. IIRC, even the ballet which you rightly pointed out Wagner wrote for Tannhauser was penned as an afterthought specifically for a French performance, wasn't it? OTOH, if you count Rubinstein as a German composer (not an unreasonable thing to do) then he wrote a ballet for at least one opera - The Demon.
Eric Schissel   11/10/2003	RE: There is a Raff ballet after all... IP: Logged Message: Ballets also for his operas Feramors and Nero. Zemlinsky was working on an incomplete ballet (Triumph der Zeit) around 1901.
FERNANDO OLIVA   13/10/2003	RE: There is a Raff ballet after all... IP: Logged Message: I remember Reinecke (he was born in Schlewig-Holstein)have wrote a Ballet for his Opera "King Manfred". Surely, almost for Balkirev and his friends, Rubinstein was a German Composer, but despite this, Ballet music to Fereamors have a very oriental flavour, and "The Demon" includes a typical caucasian dance: "Lezghinka". Cheers. Fernando