Dance-theater review: Music, movement meld in 'Orpheus and Euridice'
The singing of Norah Long is a standout in this collaborative telling of the classic Greek story
By Camille LeFevre, Special to the Star Tribune
The Greek myth of "Orpheus and Euridice" receives a tender staging in a new collaboration between Minnesota Dance Theatre and Nautilus Music-Theater. The hour-long production, with intermission, is awash in a palette of pastel loveliness: the men wear pink shirts and beige khakis, the women floaty pink dresses, Orpheus (Sam Feipel) and Euridice (Melanie Verna) are in gauzy white, and the props are white, yet warm.
Within this dreamy milieu, the dancers swirl, scoop and slide through repeating phrases with little dramatic variation. The tragedy of the doomed couple is largely conveyed through the music (classical and engaging) and lyrics (a contemporary narrative of vernacular poetry) of New York composer Ricky Ian Gordon, performed with artistic perfection on stage.
Pianist Mindy Eschedor and clarinetist Pat O'Keefe play from one side of the stage, giving the score such a lush treatment. The superb vocalist Norah Long often moves with the dancers while singing the lovers' story, her facial expressions pitched perfectly to the emotions at hand as her gorgeous voice modulates from romantic love to tragic horror.
The dancing protagonists, Feipel and Verna, pale beside Long's compelling performance. Like the six-member chorus of dancers, who echo Orpheus and Euridice's movements, the couple has a lovely but largely monochromatic movement vocabulary to work with. Created by Cynthia Gutierrez-Garner, the frolicky, light-hearted choreography features small shoulder rolls that unfurl into floating or swooping arms; legs that kick up behind hands holding bodies from the floor; arms that wrap around torsos in a total embrace; and high jumps, with knees tucked up, from benches.
The marble-looking benches--which the dancers reconfigure into a bed, a casket, a living room -- are effective to a point: they obscure the dancers when they're lying on the floor. The white awning-like scrims come into play during the Act Two, when the faltering, rag-doll-like Euridice dies and Orpheus -- trailed by the chorus -- travels behind the green-tinged scrims to Hades to bring her back to life.
The fateful moment of doubt, when Orpheus turns and Euridice is lost, finds its drama not in the keening, clutching movements of the dancers, but in the changing intonations of Long's voice. By turns ethereal, cackling, sinister, girly and richly operatic, her singing infuses Gordon's final lyrics with a dazzling interpretation, making Long the star of this genteel production.
Camille LeFevre is a Twin Cities dance critic.
[return to Orpheus and Euridice press page]
By Camille LeFevre, Special to the Star Tribune
The Greek myth of "Orpheus and Euridice" receives a tender staging in a new collaboration between Minnesota Dance Theatre and Nautilus Music-Theater. The hour-long production, with intermission, is awash in a palette of pastel loveliness: the men wear pink shirts and beige khakis, the women floaty pink dresses, Orpheus (Sam Feipel) and Euridice (Melanie Verna) are in gauzy white, and the props are white, yet warm.
Within this dreamy milieu, the dancers swirl, scoop and slide through repeating phrases with little dramatic variation. The tragedy of the doomed couple is largely conveyed through the music (classical and engaging) and lyrics (a contemporary narrative of vernacular poetry) of New York composer Ricky Ian Gordon, performed with artistic perfection on stage.
Pianist Mindy Eschedor and clarinetist Pat O'Keefe play from one side of the stage, giving the score such a lush treatment. The superb vocalist Norah Long often moves with the dancers while singing the lovers' story, her facial expressions pitched perfectly to the emotions at hand as her gorgeous voice modulates from romantic love to tragic horror.
The dancing protagonists, Feipel and Verna, pale beside Long's compelling performance. Like the six-member chorus of dancers, who echo Orpheus and Euridice's movements, the couple has a lovely but largely monochromatic movement vocabulary to work with. Created by Cynthia Gutierrez-Garner, the frolicky, light-hearted choreography features small shoulder rolls that unfurl into floating or swooping arms; legs that kick up behind hands holding bodies from the floor; arms that wrap around torsos in a total embrace; and high jumps, with knees tucked up, from benches.
The marble-looking benches--which the dancers reconfigure into a bed, a casket, a living room -- are effective to a point: they obscure the dancers when they're lying on the floor. The white awning-like scrims come into play during the Act Two, when the faltering, rag-doll-like Euridice dies and Orpheus -- trailed by the chorus -- travels behind the green-tinged scrims to Hades to bring her back to life.
The fateful moment of doubt, when Orpheus turns and Euridice is lost, finds its drama not in the keening, clutching movements of the dancers, but in the changing intonations of Long's voice. By turns ethereal, cackling, sinister, girly and richly operatic, her singing infuses Gordon's final lyrics with a dazzling interpretation, making Long the star of this genteel production.
Camille LeFevre is a Twin Cities dance critic.
[return to Orpheus and Euridice press page]