Cincinnati Ballet’s most recent production, the frothy Alice (in Wonderland), boasted the largest paid attendance in the company’s history of subscription series productions.
This weekend, Artistic Director Victoria Morgan contrasts another potential blockbuster, Adam Hougland’s full-length Mozart’s Requiem.
It’s set to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s powerful “Requiem Mass in D Minor,” composed just before (and some say completed after) his death. The passionate and theatrical ballet for 18 dancers is matched with a serious theme — the exploration of mortality.
Mozart’s Requiem, world-premiered by Cincinnati Ballet in 2010, has never been performed by any other company. Once again, the Cincinnati Ballet Orchestra (featuring the Xavier University Concert Choir), conducted by Cincinnati Ballet Music Director Carmon DeLeone, is set to enrich the thrilling aural, theatrical and operatic dynamic of the production.
Hougland, a young choreographer first brought to Cincinnati Ballet by Morgan in 2002, was appointed resident choreographer in 2009. He has already choreographed extensively to significant music from composers like Beethoven, Stravinsky and even rocker Peter Frampton.
A few of those working hard to make the onstage magic happen again — choreographer Hougland, soloist Dawn Kelly and corps de ballet dancer Jimmy Cunningham — took time to chat on the floor of an empty studio.
Though most companies use video assists and written notes to restage ballets, it’s the personal touch that brings the essential nuance to a work. Hougland talks about his ballet’s creation.
“The Requiem felt like a story to me,” he says. “So the ballet is about that story — about loss, about grieving, about cycles, about life. It’s about that unanswerable question, ‘What happens when we die?’ ”
“For me,” he continues, “it’s like the whole thing comes back in minutes after five or six years, once you put the music on. And I think, well, ‘What’s the beginning of this phrase?’ and as soon as I get the first movement, I’ve got it again. I think it’s all kind of connected in your subconscious. It’s stored deep down. But as soon as you access that file, it’s like the whole thing comes back.”
Hougland explains that when he first choreographs, he comes into the studio with the dancers bringing no specific movements. He will have tried not to listen to the music too much, because he doesn’t want to get bored with it.
“I want to discover it in the room with the dancers. I want things to feel ‘right.’ Generally, I like things to feel connected and organic, you know? I think that’s why it is easier to remember, sometimes. Sometimes I do a change-up, it sort of switches very quickly — the force is interrupted, but that’s for dramatic emphasis. So it’s easier if it doesn’t feel awkward, but if it does it’s for a reason.”
Kelly agrees. When she began reviewing the piece to help teach it (only a handful of the cast has performed the ballet before), she found that seeing just one step led her to the next step.
She describes a point she coached in the ballet where the dancers enter with suitcases (which they later abandon, much as the ballet suggests we all must abandon earthly weight at life’s end).
“At first, it felt to me like everybody was just walking because I told them to walk,” Kelly says. “I had to explain that they needed to enter as if something was drawing them, as if there was a purpose. They were going somewhere. Their movement quality needed to find the inside motivation.”
Cunningham agrees that the dancers need to bring a reason to their movement.
“Sometimes you learn a dance or ballet,” Cunningham says. “They’ll tell you what step to do and on what count and where to do it. But then, you are like ‘Well, how do I do it?’ ”
“That’s so important,” he says. “Because, ‘Why do I do this arabesque?’ or ‘Why do I run all the way to stage left?’ There has to be a reason. For everything you do. And that’s another way dancers remember all the steps.
“Because each step has a meaning. And a purpose. And a feeling about it. If you are feeling those things in a sequence, in that sequence, you know exactly what to do.”
Cincinnati Ballet presents MOZART’S REQUIEM Friday and Saturday. Tickets and more info: cballet.org.
