By Paul Horsley

The Harriman-Jewell Series has been responsible for several great artistic experiences during the current season, even in advance of its glittering 50th anniversary next year. We’ve already reported on the fascinating performances by Pinchas Zukerman with the Royal Philharmonic and by violinist Gil Shaham. Another program we’ll remember wistfully for some time to come was the May 22nd Kauffman Center appearance by the Trey McIntyre Project, a dance company based in Boise, Idaho that was making its final tour—at least in its current form. This 11-member group performed two recent large-scale works by Trey, a Wichita native who has choreographed for dozens of the most significant dance companies of our time. The two works could not have been more different from each other, but together they summarized at least part of Trey’s artistic legacy so far—with its emphasis on fresh new movement shapes, its foundations in ballet tradition as translated by Taylor, Forsythe and others, and a pop sensibility that is as much about striking visuals as it is about playfulness and fun.

More dance theater than ballet, perhaps, The Vinegar Works: Four Dances of Moral Instruction is a set of darkly humorous retellings of illustrated stories by the late Edward Gorey, a gifted American writer whose “children’s books” are deemed by many to be unsuitable for children (unless your children live with the Addams Family, to reference another illustrator and fellow New Yorker contributor whose murky visions are often compared to Gorey’s). In “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” the recorded voice of actor Alan Cumming is heard reciting Gorey’s ghastly verses detailing 26 terrible fates that can befall a child, each name representing a letter of the alphabet (“E is for Ernest, who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech”). Brett Perry, dressed in little-boy shorts, pantomimes a stylized version of each horrific event, not so much acting it out as reacting to it; he is eventually joined by Kristin Aune.

In “The Beastly Baby,” dancer John Speed Orr is dressed in a sort of sheep-like fat suit that makes him look more like an egg than the obese child of the story. Shostakovich’s music begins here—the Piano Trio No. 2—with its mysterious opening followed by quicker but no less serious music. The recalcitrant baby, whom no one seems to want, rolls, leaps, and examines his feet, until a giant figure on stilts with a skeletal face and top hat approaches menacingly. Three brown-clad dancers appear with a stick-puppet of a carrion fowl, which they manipulate to attack the baby. The bird carries the child away—in Gorey’s story he pokes him with his beak and the kid explodes, to everyone’s delight, umm—and death enters to claim him. “The Deranged Cousins” depicts a trio (Travis Walker, Elizabeth Keller and Rachel Sherak) dressed in ’20s garb and dancing Gatsby-style to Shostakovich’s jarring scherzo. True to Gorey’s story, one by one, the cousins die horrible deaths, the first murdered (which the remaining two celebrate with a frenetic pas de deux), the second poisoned (and mourned by the remaining cousin), the third swept out to sea. Gorey’s “high tide” is enacted by the stilt figure from the second story, this time with a huge tent-skirt that envelops the final cousin like the tresses of a ghoulish Mother Ginger.

This death-figure returns for “The Disrespectful Summons,” a tale of a woman who essentially sells her soul to the devil and spends her days making fudge from “pencil-stubs and sludge” and creating voodoo dolls of her neighbors. The whole company takes part in this macabre dance of death, and eventually they all end up under the giant tent-skirt, until death moves to the side to reveal them all lined up like a forlorn chorus. They’re all dead, we realize with a start: Death is a commanding figure here because it’s really the subject of a great deal of Gorey’s work anyway. Much credit goes to Bruce Bui’s costume design and the dazzling puppetry of Michael Curry and Dan Luce. As for the dance, Trey has fused a wide array of contemporary vocabularies—determined but deliberately un-fluid, with an occasional balletic break-out—and ratcheted them up to breathless speeds that border on the frantic.

When it comes to frenetic virtuosity, though, Trey has outdone himself with Mercury Half-Life, a nearly hour-long ballet to the music of Queen that serves as a sort of compendium of the choreographer’s creative variety. To the backdrop of six vertical rows of blue light upstage, women in skirts and men in white shorts tap, twist, and veer into ballet, even unison occasionally, to the tunes of “Bring Back That Leroy Brown,” “Under Pressure,” “We Will Rock You,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and several other songs. Especially lovely was the brief duet by Chanel DaSilva and Amber Mayberry, who are joined by the rest of the company who join in a jolting unison at the big climax of “Under Pressure.”

For “Love of My Life” Trey has created florid, ironically courtly dances to mimic the faux-Baroque quality of the piano part, with its veiled sensuality. The remaining songs are danced as fantastically detailed solos, duets and ensembles, to the point where the eye begins to weary from what appears at first to be an excess of movement. For “Another One Bites the Dust,” three pairs of dancers stride back and forth across the stage, forcefully. For “We Are the Champions” the six break into heroic duos. Chanel is again outstanding in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” where she mourns as if she were the poor mother of the song’s assassin. A final medley includes “We Will Rock You,” aided by rhythmic clapping of course, and a series of final bows that are actually brief little individualistic solos by the leads.

HE, TOO, WILL ROCK YOU: Cellist lends surprising coherence to dark Shostakovich Sonata

The Harriman series was also responsible for one of the highlights of the 2013-2014 musical season, the masterful recital on March 14th by Armenian cellist and Tchaikovsky Competition gold medalist Narek Hakhnazaryan. This Discovery Concert revealed even more of the young artist’s skill—and his personality—than I’d heard in his (albeit fine) performance of the Schumann Concerto a couple of years ago with the Kansas City Symphony. The free program, which featured pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera, opened with a Schumann Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70, that revealed right away Narek’s gleaming, luscious tone, as sweet and decadent as a chef’s richest dessert. The elegant repose in the Adagio was apt, though in the Allegro I could have used a bit more forward-motion. Beethoven’s Op. 69 opened in an understated manner, due partly to Noreen’s too-leisurely approach: In these sonatas one expects the pianist to “take the lead” just as often as the cellist does, instead of playing in the background. Both musicians displayed big-hearted affection in the Scherzo, though, and in the Adagio cantabile introduction to the finale Narek demonstrated a fetching simplicity and sweetness.

The program’s second half was anchored by Shostakovich’s monumental D-minor Sonata for Cello and Piano, which Narek played from memory and with technical command and focused concentration that were truly remarkable. Both musicians were closely tuned-in to the barren stillness of the first movement’s central section, and Narek showed, in the following Allegro, that this sonata’s technical demands—from delicate glissandi to ferocious martellati, from lyricism to depths of despair—present little problem to him. In the Largo he demonstrated an uncanny ability to draw a warm, tender tone even with no vibrato. The rousing finale found both cellist and pianist completely in their element.

The final short works were bound to seem light in comparison: Paganinni’s Variations on One String (on a theme by Rossini) makes a nice novelty piece but it’s as dull as dishwater. In the spirited Impromptu by Alexander Arutiunian, Narek showed justifiable pride in the achievements of the long-oppressed Armenian people. And “for fairness” he performed a Russian encore, Tchaikovsky’s D-minor Nocturne, where again we heard the cellist’s warmly natural phrasing and stylistic depth and care. I have great hopes for this musician. Even though, as one of my Park University students astutely pointed out, he sometimes seems to “know his instrument better than he knows himself,” with time he has the potential, the drive and the tools to become one of the leading soloists of his generation.

IN THAT SLEEP, WHAT DREAMS: Russian company brings solid principals, passable corps to classic

Personally I was grateful that the Harriman-Jewell Series brought back the Moscow Festival Ballet for Sleeping Beauty this past January 24th, because I had missed it at JCCC last season—though it seemed odd to bring back the same company to perform the same work. In any event the company performed as we have come to expect, with excellent principals steeped (still) in the grand Russian tradition, and a passable corps de ballet. Performed to a recording of Tchaikovsky’s music, this production is billed as a staging by former Bolshoi principal dancer Elena Radchenko of the Petipa/Ivanov original. Visually it is perhaps as close to the 19th-century version as one is likely to get in America these days. The five fairies of the Prologue, for example (representing beauty, courage, mischief, and so on) are dressed in very stiff tulle, each in a different pastel, and the set designs (mostly just painted drops, with three painted wings on either side) convey a look of bucolic landscapes and ancient architecture. Moreover, the storytelling is interpolated with variations and other traditional items.

On the night the company performed here, at the Kauffman Center, Maria Sokolnikova was the Aurora, which she danced with tender assurance. Eldar Sarsenbaev was a shining Prince and Maria Kluyeva was a delicate, forceful Lilac Fairy. Alexander Daev is the suitably enigmatic Carabosse. Eldar was spectacularly strong and in full control in Act II, and his pas de deux with Aurora’s “apparition” was a highlight: Maria seemed well-suited to her part, too, as well as “comfortable in her own skin.”

The cast of characters in Act I of this piece is fascinating: Florine and Puss in Boots, Blue Bird and White Cat, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf—they’re all here, and all were danced with enough clarity to get a sense for what the original choreography might have looked like. Exactly how much is Petipa and how much is an accretion of 150 years of historical layers will remain a mystery to most of us.

For tickets to the Harriman-Jewell Series’ remaining two concerts call 816-415-5025 or go to hjseries.org.

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