While other companies were still rehearsing their Sugarplum Fairies, Smuin Contemporary Ballet's Brennan Wall strutted onto the Lesher Center for the Arts stage in red heels, trailing a 42-foot-long feather boa. Eartha Kitt purred about wanting a platinum mine and a yacht; Wall bumped her hips for men in trench coats who handed over the goods, rolling across the floor like a human treadmill for her to glide across their backs in high style.
The first half 'Classical Christmas,' costumed in white, is generally reverential and grand, launching with Bach's 'Magnificat,' proceeding through a hushed staging of 'Veni, Veni, Emmanuel' with the women walking hand-in-hand, and coursing, this year, to a triumphant 'Joy to the World' finale choreographed by former member Nicole Haskins.
Smuin found a place for his wonderfully comic treatment of a klezmer candle blessing, danced with uninhibited zaniness by Cassidy Isaacson, whose lonely idyll was broken by the sudden appearance of four high-stepping men.
The greatest joy... was in the fine dancing of an 18-member company in its best form ever under artistic director Amy Seiwert, who took the reins last fall.
#christmas-ballet #smuin-contemporary-ballet #amy-seiwert #traditional-performance #contemporary-dance
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