"Modern Masters" - Sacramento Ballet

Photo by LEZLIE STERLING at the Sacramento Bee.

Caption: Sacramento Ballet dancers Richard Porter and Megan Steffens perform choreographer Stefan Calka's "The Three and the One" in the Modern Masters program at California State University, Sacramento





Very nice show Sunday afternoon at Sac State. All the dances were pleasing, but in different ways.

Unconscious Surrender - I particularly liked this dance, choreographed by Nicole Haskins. A constant flux of people suggested the flux of time, with incidents and accidents affecting people along the way. Certain dancers seemed to stand out in various ways (e.g., John Whisler). Yes, in my estimation, the best of the dances!

There was an unscheduled duet between two dancers [I believe Ethan and Nikki Trerise White]. Very good dancing, particularly as the lady seemed capable of great elastic feats of body, and the man was very strong.

The Three and The One - This was the longest dance, choreographed by Stefan Calka. This dance was the most problematic, because no one seemed to understand quite what it was all about. In the meet-and-greet following the show, Calka tried to explain a bit, but his answers, if anything, were even more cryptic than the dances. What I interpreted as yellow leaves (towards the end of what I interpreted as a lifetime) Calka said were blossoms. Hmmm..... Calka seemed satisfied to let people come to their own conclusions. Myself, I thought the dances and vignettes were the arc of a lifetime of a man (Richard Porter), the Lady in Red (elegant Megan Steffens), the black gloved and white gloved lady (the electric Amanda Peet), and the cryptic teacher (?) In this lifetime arc, certain themes suggested themselves: society, money, and loneliness.

It's Not A Cry - A duet featuring Stefan Calka and Amy Siewert, to music written by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen: "Halleulujah" (I love Leonard Cohen!) Well done, but like I say, I preferred "Unconscious Surrender".

The dancer that caught my attention the most Sunday afternoon was Megan Steffens: very elegant; very pretty. I need to send her a bouquet, or something.

Jim Carnes wrote a preview of Modern Masters in the Sacramento Bee. Jim Carnes also reviewed the Friday performance:

Nolan T'Sani, who teaches dance at CSUS and is a character dancer with the company, choreographed "Futabashira" to music by Watsonville Taiko and Kevin Kmetz. Some of its movements were stereotypically "Eastern" – bows, arm gestures and the like – but well- suited to the taiko music. The dance took on a burst of male energy perfectly timed to a deepening rhythm in the drumming at one point, and at another featured Timothy Coleman and Heidi Zolker in a very slow and elegant pas de deux.

Ballet company member Nicole Haskins choreographed "Unconscious Surrender" to music by Samuel Barber. Employing an ensemble of 15, Haskins began the piece with dancers in seeming nightshirts, slowly crossing the stage as if sleepwalking. Periodically they'd give themselves to the music, alone or as couples participating in brief encounters. The movement gradually returned to the dancers' solitary sleepwalk. It was lovely and touching and sad.

Stefan Calka's "The Three and the One," to music by Gabriel Fauré and the White Stripes, was perhaps the evening's most ambitious – and challenging – work. Dramatically lit and inventively staged with quick vignettes apparently detailing some dark deal being made, the dance is a dreamlike piece of theater in which love is desired, won and ultimately lost. The jarring White Stripes music sets up a nightmarish scene that sends the dance toward its sad and unsettling finale when the devil gets his due. Richard Porter, Megan Steffens, Amanda Peet and Richard Smith are featured – Porter most prominently – with 14 dancers in the ensemble waltzing through.

Yuri Zhukov, a onetime dancer with the Kirov and the San Francisco Ballet companies, reworked a piece he created for City Youth Ballet into a six-woman dance called "With Time We Go." Performed to music by Vladimir Martynov, the dance had an air of coolness about it as the women performed in solo and group work. The choreographer's use of a musical cue for little hops in the steps was the only light moment in an elegiac dance about longing and separation. Zhukov's dance, at once contemporary yet classically grounded, is a perfect fit for the company.

Former Sacramento Ballet dancer Amy Seiwert proved once again to be an audience pleaser with her work "It's Not a Cry," which she created for the company last year. Danced by Calka and Chloe Horne to Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," the dance drew four curtain calls at its conclusion. Seiwert's dance is sculptural in design and demanding in execution. It's a beautifully erotic pas de deux that relies on the geometry of the relationship between the dancers' bodies to create a physical tension that mirrors the emotion of the piece. It was exquisitely performed by Calka and Horne, who expertly covered for a slipping jacket sleeve that could have wrecked the balance.

The final piece on the program is Sunchai Muy's "Os Rufos," performed to an entirely percussive score. With men dressed in what can best be described as underpants and corsets and the women adding tank tops to their attire, it's a lighthearted – but seriously conceived – work. It's the program's only piece that has dancers on pointe for any amount of time, and it's also very athletic. Among its demanding moments is a duet featuring Christopher Nachtrab and Brik Middlekauff that is a rush of jumps and spins performed first by him and then matched by her. It's some feat.