Timely tale The sweeping emotion of Festival Ballet’s Widow’s Broom BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Mihailo (Misha) Djuric, artistic director of Festival Ballet Providence, knows a good story when he sees one. Though he has presented some stunning abstract pieces of his own during his six-year sojourn at the company, Djuric understands the power of a good narrative, and he also has a soft spot for the whimsical, fantastical tales often categorized as "children’s literature."

Thus, when he read Providence author/illustrator Chris Van Allburg’s The Widow’s Broom, he began to dream about a ballet built around this simple story, which Djuric sees as a fable about accepting things that are different from the norm and not caring what other people think. Though Djuric’s dream has been a few years in the making, it has now come to fruition in ways that even he couldn’t have envisioned.

Van Allsburg himself adapted the story; Tony Award-winning set designer (and East Side resident) Eugene Lee weighed in on the scenic design; and Boston Ballet principal dancer Viktor Plotnikov returns for a command performance as choreographer after doing last year’s successful Carmen for Festival. An original score composed by Aleksandra Vrebalov will be performed by an 11-piece chamber ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Edward Markward. RIC’s Alan Pickart has designed the lights (an all-important element to a Halloween story). And Ka Yan Kan, a recent URI graduate, has come up with costumes that enhance the characterizations created by the dancers.

The movement, steps, mime, and gestures that Plotnikov has woven together for the dancers to advance the narrative are terrifically captivating, full of emotional content, whether they get across an archetypal fear of witches and ghosts, the playfulness of a young boy, the kindness of his mother to a stranger in distress, or the ugly bigotry of townspeople who only want to destroy what they can’t comprehend or control.

The story begins with an All Hallow’s Eve dance around a steaming cauldron by a group of a dozen witches. The scene opens with most of them crouched on the floor, heads lowered so that only the steep point of their black hats is visible, their arms akimbo and then bent at the elbow, in an angular, spider-like pose. The head witch, Pingrel (played alternately by Karla Kovatch and Marissa Gomer), raises her arms, fingers pinched as if she’s just about to drop a bit of newt’s eye into the brew, and begins their dance.

Maintaining the vision of witches cavorting, stirring, riding their brooms, and flying (yes, flying, with no strings attached) is trickier than it might seem. As Plotnikov repeatedly reminded them during the run-through I saw last week, the dancers must keep their backs rounded, their bodies low to the ground, and their feet moving as quickly as possible. At one point, they handle the brooms almost like baton-twirlers, as they pass them around their bodies.

Djuric assured me that with proper lighting, it will look as though the brooms are flying around them. And I can also confirm that, even without any special effects, I definitely had the sense that the witches themselves were flying (shades of the Wicked Witch of the West and her minions).

The broom of the head witch, however, loses power during their flight and both fall out of the sky into the widow Minna Shaw’s garden, where she and her son Owen find them the next day. The widow (Leticia Guerrero/Jennifer Ricci) and her son (Emily Bromberg/Heather O’Halloran) do not realize that the broom they stash in their closet is enchanted, and when the witch wakes up and picks up their household broom, only to find it totally incapable of flying, she tosses it away and tromps back to her hilltop abode.

Meanwhile the witch’s Broom (Gleb Lyamenkov/Davide Vittorino) comes out of his closet. His movements are a delight to watch: the sweeping motions of his hands, the shudder that runs through all his limbs, the leaps with a twist, the jumps with a mid-air spin, the arabesques off the kitchen table that shake the bristle-like bottom of his costume.

And then there are the Spiveys, the nosy, jealous and spiteful neighbors, a father (Mark Harootian/Piotr Ostaltsov) and his two boys (Elizabeth Jessee and Caitlin Novero/Erica Chipp and Carolyn Dellinger), whose motions are large and clunky, as they mutter and skulk. They spy on the Broom doing chores for Minna and Owen (even chopping wood!) and decide the Broom has to die. The men of the village build a huge bonfire (the metaphor of "dancing flames" is not lost on ballet-maker Plotnikov), though the women are angry that they can’t have such a broom themselves and that the men are being so aggressive. The elder Spivey chases Minna around her kitchen until she surrenders the Broom (or so he thinks), and he and his boys gleefully toss it into the fire.

Rather than spoiling the ending (a happy one all around), let me emphasize that the ballet’s finale, a lovely pas de deux between the Broom and the Widow Shaw, poignantly conveys the comfort and companionship that Minna finds in accepting the friendship and help offered by the Broom.

This ballet sustains the magic with which it began: pumpkins that glide offstage (seemingly on their own); whirling, dancing brooms (also, seemingly under their own power); props and furniture that appear onstage as if in a cloud of smoke. The Widow’s Broom succeeds as a marvel of collaboration, in Plotnikov’s imaginative choreography and the dancers’ skillfully expressive interpretations of it; in Lee’s always-ingenious way with set design; in Vrebalov’s wonderfully evocative score; in Van Allsburg’s magical and haunting story; and in Djuric’s original vision of translating the written word into movement.

The Widow’s Broom will be performed on Friday and Saturday, October 22 and 23 at 7:30 p.m., and on Sunday, October 24 at 2:30 p.m. at the Providence Performing Arts Center. Call (401) 353-1129.