Toe to toe Romance is in the air at Festival Ballet BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ

Since Valentine’s Day has become synonymous with romance, Festival Ballet Providence has come up with two ballets for next weekend (February 11 through 13) that could certainly put you in the mood. Though one is comic (Con Amore) and the other tragic (Schéhérazade), both will captivate you with their stories and lure you with classical chestnuts that recall everything from a chase scene in a Bugs Bunny cartoon (a Rossini overture) to stereotypical Middle Eastern images, such as harem girls and snake charmers (Rimsky-Korsakov).

Well, snake charmers don’t appear in these dances, but chases and harem girls do. Working with choreologist Virginia Johnson from the San Francisco Ballet, Festival’s artistic director Misha Djuric has restaged Con Amore from the 1953 choreography of Lew Christensen. Seen in rehearsal last week, Con Amore is full of satire, slapstick and surprising plot twists. Christensen’s inspiration was "opera buffa," a comic opera form from 18th-century Italy. The dance opens with 12 Amazons in full regalia: the Captain (Karla Kovatch) is packing two small pistols in holsters, her lieutenants are brandishing large silver swords and the others hold rifles at the ready. Rossini sounds appropriately martial as the Amazons drill in formation and salute one another, just before a thief (Davide Vittorino/Gleb Lyamenkoff) rushes in with a small blade in his hand.

The thief tries to get past the guards but is summarily captured by the lieutenants and brought to the Captain, who almost immediately falls for the handsome thief and tries to seduce him. He’s not having it, however, and tries again for his freedom (the chase music kicks in). He maneuvers past the rifles and jumps over the swords but is eventually drawn back into a one-sided duet with the Captain. She pulls him toward her but after she is repeatedly rebuffed, she pulls her pistols on him, and he prepares to meet his fate.

But wait. All action in this story is suspended as we’re plunged into the next scene, in which Leticia Guerrero alternates with Jennifer Ricci as a fashionable lady who is less than satisfied with her husband’s attentions. He no sooner bids her farewell than she lets in one, two, three other suitors: a dandy, a sailor and a student. The quick raps in Rossini’s score are used to great advantage as each shows up at her door and then deftly establishes his character through mime and movement: the Charlie Chaplinesque waddle of the sailor (Mark Harootian), the knee-knocking shyness of the student (Ty Parmenter), the teasing, playful banter of the dandy (Andrew Skeels). All at once, the master of the house (Cameron Baldassarra) returns, and he is quite stunned by the presence of the three other men.

But wait, yet again. Suddenly we are in the third scene, and we watch as Cupid (Heather O’Halloran/Emily Bromberg) shoots arrows every which way, causing characters from the first two scenes to interact and fall madly in love with each other! Festival’s dancers really get into the comic storytelling of this ballet, and their timing is spot on.

Schéhérazade is a change in mood, not only because of the somber outcome of a stolen love but because of the sensuality that drenches the movement at every turn. The story involves a sultan and his harem and the sultan’s brother (Zeman), who informs him of an affair between his favorite wife Zobeide and one of the slaves. A trap is set, the lovers are caught and the consequences are not pretty.

But the ballet itself is beautiful, in the sinuous arcs of the harem girls’ arms, in the high leaps by Zeman (using Eivar Martinez’s strength for such to great advantage), in the dramatic gestures of the eunuch (Ty Parmenter) and in the lovely and tender 10-minute pas de deux between Zobeide and her Golden Slave (Leticia Guerrero and Gleb Lyamenkoff in the rehearsal I saw).

Boston Ballet company member and a choreographer for their cutting-edge Raw Dance series, Gianni Di Marco spoke during a rehearsal break about his interpretation of what had been a standard piece in the repertory of the Ballet Russe. "I made the duet with Zobeide and the Golden Slave more intimate, a little sexually avant-garde, because we live in a different age now. People see reality shows and want to be part of it. I wanted this to be as if the audience saw themselves involved in this relationship, for them to relate to it more.

"In trying to bring emotional feeling into movement, you have to make the dancers understand what it is about," Di Marco emphasized. "A rainbow has to have different colors. This time you have to feel sad; this time you have to feel happy. I want to create dancers who are well-rounded and true to the art form."

And if everything is not tied up in neat bows at the end of a ballet such as Schéhérazade, that’s part of Gianni’s intent: "It’s important to go home thinking about it. We live in a society where everything has to be instant coffee. It’s nice to live with a question, because we don’t usually want to try to figure it out."

So why not ponder all of this with that special someone in your life?

Festival Ballet will perform on Friday and Saturday, February 11 and 12 at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, February 13 at 2:30 p.m. at the VMAArts &Cultural Center in Providence. Call (401) 353-1129.