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The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s Dance Festival begins with cutting-edge modern dance and concludes with the elegance of classical ballet.
The festival covers two weekends, with performances by Rochester’s two professional dance companies. Garth Fagan Dance will perform “Days and Nights in Rocinha,” with music by Philip Glass, on Jan. 24 and 25, with guest conductor Aram Demirjian; and Rochester City Ballet will dance excerpts from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, conducted by RPO music director Andreas Delfs.
This new festival exemplifies Delfs’ commitment to bringing the RPO together with other local arts groups. The orchestra’s audiences had a preview of this in January 2024, when Garth Fagan Dance joined the conductor and the RPO in a very successful performance of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”
“Andreas spearheaded that ‘Rite of Spring,’” says Norwood “PJ” Pennewell, the Garth Fagan company’s artistic director. “He wants to create for integration in the performing arts community, so he thought it made sense to join Garth Fagan and Rochester City Ballet in a festival.”
Glass’ operas, symphonies, and piano pieces are very popular. “Days and Nights in Rocinha” is one of his less-known works, but it’s a major piece, 23 minutes long, for a large orchestra with plenty of percussion. It’s a good match for the other works on this “American Masters” program, Bernstein’s “Dance Episodes from ‘On the Town’” and Copland’s Symphony No. 3.
It’s a slow-burning piece, beginning with “a somber, haunting theme,” in Pennewell’s words, over a Latin bass ostinato (a constantly repeated rhythm) adding more and more instruments until the full orchestra kicks in.
“Glass uses his famous repetitions to create the aural environment of this neighborhood in Rio,” Pennewell says. “The more I listened to it, the more I fell in love with it.”
To work his way into choreographing such a long unfamiliar work, Pennewell says he began with several vignettes, or “movement swatches”—videos of five short dances suggested by five sculptures, which he created for an upcoming Memorial Art Gallery exhibition dedicated to the sculptor John Rhoden. Those dances were abstract; “Days and Nights in Rocinha” evokes a particular place and atmosphere.
Rocinha is a favela—a large, impoverished neighborhood—in Rio de Janeiro, where immigrants from many countries live. Despite their cultural differences, and their neglect by Rio’s government, they have created a vibrant urban culture.
Glass visited Rocinha several times and was impressed by the creativity and diversity of the people of Rocinha, as well as the neighborhood’s samba schools that perform each year in Rio’s Carnival. The dance is, in his words, about “the coming together of a diverse group of people, just as in the real-life Rocinha.”
Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” had a rocky road to its first production in 1938, and Delfs reveals that this weekend’s City Ballet performance also hit an unexpected bump.
The RPO and RCB wanted to perform a condensed version of the three-hour ballet, with the excerpts selected to follow the story. But Prokofiev’s score, published in 1939, is under copyright until 2029, and his estate recently decreed that conductors must perform one of the three suites compiled by the composer instead of creating their own, as, Delfs points out, he and other conductors have done for many years. The “Romeo and Juliet” suites are popular on their own, but present the pieces in random order.
Delfs assures audiences that, heard in any order, Prokofiev’s music remains romantic, colorful and highly dramatic. (RCB will perform Prokofiev’s other great ballet, “Cinderella” —all of it—on April 25 and 26.)
“We will be performing Prokofiev’s Second Suite,” says Delfs, “but it still includes some high points of the drama and music, including the familiar ‘Montagues and Capulets,’ dances for the young Juliet and Friar Laurence, and Romeo and Juliet’s death.”
Drama and color also fill in the first half of next weekend’s concert. Along with “Romeo and Juliet,” the RPO is presenting a leading contemporary pianist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, in the premiere performances of Aaron Jay Kernis’ Piano Concerto No. 2. This major new work by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer is one of the orchestra’s “Voices of Today” commissions.
Pennewell says any dance ensemble performing on the Kodak Hall stage faces a number of challenges—especially when, as in both concerts, the dancers share the space with a 90-piece orchestra.
But, he adds, there are also great advantages. “Each performance will be slightly different,” he notes. Working with live music, the dancers are “creating on the spot. It makes us work harder, but it makes the experience so fulfilling and rewarding.”
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra presents a Dance Festival with appearances by Garth Fagan Dance (Jan. 24 and 25) and Rochester City Ballet (Jan. 31 and Feb 1) at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, Tickets and information: rpo.org
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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