Toe to toe Festival Ballet’s stunning showcase BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

When toe shoes were first introduced to ballet in the mid-19th century, they were intended to lend a sensation of flight and airiness to classical dances. In the current program of Festival Ballet Providence’s Up CLOSE, On HOPE series, it’s captivating to see en pointe used with a bluesy piece set to Janis Joplin’s rendition of "Little Girl Blue" and with a full-tilt jitterbug to the music of Fats Waller.

The Joplin piece, a work-in-progress, was choreographed by Colleen Cavanaugh as a solo for Karla Kovatch. It’s a stunning translation of Joplin’s style into ballet. Kovatch begins with that trademark arms-overhead posture, and then the bluesy rhythms slither down her body, through her arms, back, hips, all the way to those toe shoes. But here, being on toe doesn’t extend the line of an arabesque; it’s more apt to give Kovatch’s long limbs another sinuous curve, such as leaning up onto her toes, knees bent, back bent, arms swaying. Another expressive gesture that recurs is when she sweeps both hands back along the top of her head, through her hair and out behind her. This dance is a heart-tugging interpretation of the soul Joplin poured into her songs.

The Fats Waller piece, "Ain’t Misbehavin’," was restaged by new company member Mark Harootian from a work he created in 2003 for Utah Ballet, where he performed during his student years at the University of Utah (he graduated in June). This up-tempo, feel-good dance is based on five tunes by Waller, with his characteristic piano-pounding and sassy lyrics. Harootian weaves in the Charleston and the Lindy with contemporary ballet and mime, and it’s great to see those swing steps in toe shoes. Leticia Guerrero and Ty Parmenter combine movement and mugging for a hilarious he-did-her-wrong sequence. Later Guerrero and Harootian himself do some eye-popping partnering, as do Kovatch and Parmenter. But all seven dancers (including Carolyn Dellinger, Jennifer Young, and Cameron Baldassarra) are terrific. They’re having fun, and it shows.

The other Up CLOSE piece that matches that energy is also by a Festival company member, Caitlin Novero. Titled Commons, after the Jethro Tull song to which it’s danced, it has six female dancers in mini-skirts and one male dancer (Parmenter). Last spring, Novero performed a solo she’d made titled Busy Being Born that was a frenetic blend of twists, runs, and turns. In this new work, the pace is still fast, but there are pauses in which dancers walk rhythmically across the stage. This is in sharp contrast to a flurry of hops, leaps, and jumps; arms that windmill up and over; and quick-steps that mimic the flute’s trills.

The mood of the other work in this program is not quite as light. Cavanaugh has expanded on Schumann Songs, which she first presented at Up CLOSE last March. It’s based on a song-cycle by Robert Schumann, in which he set to music a group of poems by Adalbert von Chamisso, Frauenliebe und Leben (A Woman’s Love and Life). The sections in the dance correspond to the feelings in the songs: a young woman dreaming of her first love; three young couples falling in love; the young woman and her mate sharing their joy over her pregnancy; and the young woman, distraught in her grief over her husband’s death, comforted by her friends.

Jennifer Ricci is the young woman and Gleb Lyamenkoff is her mate, with Guerrero and Davide Vittorino, Heather O’Halloran, and Parmenter as the other two couples. Cavanaugh has lavished the first two parts of this piece with romantic gestures as well as classical movement: looks of longing, holding hands, leaning on each other, embraces. But there are also exuberant leaps and turns and that dramatic turning away by one member of a couple and then running back.

The most poignant segments in Schumann Songs are the two pas de deux by Ricci and Lyamenkoff: one that conveys their happiness and excitement over a coming child and the other in which he is gone, into the "sleep of the dead." As a spectre he cannot touch her, but he dances alongside her, his arms stretched around hers. Eventually, he floats sadly downstage, still longing, and her friends come on to hold her and support her. A very moving piece.

Another new company member Andrew Skeels is featured in a short solo from La Bayadere (1877), with choreography by Marius Petipa; and company apprentice Erica Chipp takes the spotlight in Musings (1995), with choreography by Mihailo Djuric and music by Vivaldi. Both give sprightly and polished performances.

Company member Piotr Ostaltsov weighs in with the premiere of Casta Diva, to an aria by Cesare Bellini, from the opera Norma. Ostaltsov made this dance as a tribute to Maria Callas, with Jennifer Ricci in the role of the exalted singer and Baldassarra, Harootian, Lyamenkoff, and Skeels as her quartet of courtiers. Throughout the piece, Ricci is almost always held aloft by one or more of the male dancers, sometimes as if she’s a monarch seated in a coach, sometimes as if she’s a fragile package. Casta Diva is a showcase of complex partnering, and the dancers do it justice.

This edition of Up CLOSE, On HOPE has the kind of innovative work we’ve come to expect in these Festival Ballet Providence presentations, alongside some very fine examples of more traditional pieces. It continues at the company’s Hope Street studio on November 20 and 21.