Small wonders Getting intimate with Festival Ballet BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Local dance companies and fans alike have murmured for years about needing more small venues in the Providence area, and Festival Ballet Providence’s studio series, "Up CLOSE, on HOPE," has become one successful response to that quandary. As production staff at Festival continue to make improvements to the space — including lighting, sound, and stage set-up — it adds a professional polish to the presentations.

Not that the choreography or the dancing seen in this space last season ever lacked for polish. Indeed, this fall’s program (which continues on October 2) highlights the creativity of two of the state’s dance treasures: Misha Djuric, also artistic director of Festival Ballet Providence, and Colleen Cavanaugh, once artistic director of the late but great Cadence Dance Project. This show features two pieces by each choreographer, and two of these dances are both longer and larger in scope than most of what has so far been seen at "Up CLOSE."

The evening begins on a somber note. Cavanaugh premieres Suspended In the Quiet, which she set to an original score by Elaine Bearer, with castings by Christiane Corbat serving as very effective mood-setters. Corbat made these sculptures for the Globalheart Project to represent "personal gestures of peace." Each of the three has a white torso that’s a body cast, one with an arm raised, one with arms clasped tight to her bosom, the third with arms cradling a globe (Earth) in her hands. The castings are set on structures that allow for long black skirts to drape and pool below the torso sections. Each is lit from within so the heart painted on the front (not red but like a piece of the globe from above) is more visible.

Into this scene steps dancer Leticia Guerrero, clad in a silvery gray leotard. When the music begins, initially it’s just the soft ping of a small Buddhist bowl being struck, and Guerrero’s movements are delicate but precise: two hands cupped around something as fragile as a sleeping bird; one hand holding the other up and out, palm open, as the dancer seems to be releasing it to the wind; then a quick, sharp pose of wide plié with arms overhead, palms facing, forming a circle. This section of the dance is called "the gift."

Next a lovely pas de deux ("Will you catch me when I fall?") unfolds between Elizabeth Jessee and Mark Harootian, also in shades of gray and silver in the low light between the statues. The music is now the insistent throbbing of a heartbeat, sometimes like a giant’s roar. Jessee does, in fact, fall onto Harootian and then shakes his loose-limbed body. The characters’ tender exchanges give way to those of control, as they try out different ways to throw each other off balance as well as to catch the other person.

When Guerrero rejoins them onstage, there’s a fast-tempoed interchange, as the trio turn under each other’s arms in intricate patterns, while the music incorporates the rhythmic clacking of subway cars and then a soft twittering of birds. Now all three repeat Guerrero’s hand, in a canon-like phrase that settles the mood into the "quiet" in the title. The emotional content in this piece is vividly conveyed by the dancers; the sculpture and movement combine to make unforgettable images.

Cavanaugh’s second piece, Scarlet Tangents (1997), closes the evening. It’s a sharp contrast to the first, a spritely mingling of pas de deux sections (first with Harootian and Emily Bromberg; then with Gleb Lyamenkoff and Jennifer Ricci); a duet with Carolyn Dellinger and Marissa Gomer; and a bright, fast-paced musical chairs-like sequence in which all three duos execute a few quick foot-turning folk dance-like steps and then change partners to repeat that combination with the next person to their right. Cavanaugh has set this delightful dance to Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet, Op. 47, with its varied tempos inspiring lingering romantic interchanges and bouncy, joy-filled moments.

Djuric’s Loose Ends (1993) incorporates those moods as well as the sullen pouts and intense arguments that ensue between couples. With four couples all in white (guys in white jeans and muscle shirts, women in simple dresses), to the music of Tomaso Albinoni, this dance has Djuric’s characteristic humor in places and his heart-on-his-sleeve earnestness in others. The opening sets the storytelling mood, with a rag doll-like swinging of the girls by the guys; a knee-swaying, almost finger-popping jazzy step by them; and a few broad ballroom dance whirls by each couple.

The pantomime of conflict and misunderstanding between the sexes escalates to pushing, shoving, and fist-pounding. But at a certain point, the partners shift several times, until Heather O’Halloran and Lyamenkoff end up together and become totally enamored with each other, he looking up with a question on his face, she shyly casting her eyes down. Their pas de deux is full of reaching and swooping, as he carries her aloft and then holds her in an embrace. In the final sequence, Djuric returns to a lighter vein, as the women keep trying to get away and the men pull them back, ending with the men on the ground in an exhausted heap!

Djuric’s second piece is also from his days with Ballet New England in New Hampshire. Upon Dark (1996) was specifically commissioned by the NH State Council on the Arts and set to the music of Paul Moravec and Northern Lights Electric. With five women and three men in blue leotards, dappled with shadows, this dance builds its intensity in ever-shifting partnering and in spiraling, circling movements. Moravec’s music sprang from seeing the northern lights and, similarly, Djuric re-creates that sensation of pulsing energy and swirling shapes with his dancers.

All four pieces in Festival’s program give audience members a rare chance to experience dance "up close."