Arts & Living

On a balmy summer night in 2009, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet took to the stage at Wolf Trap, the nation’s only federally-mandated national park for the performing arts. Located just outside of Washington, D.C., Wolf Trap is known far and wide for its prestigious dance series, including performances by top companies from the Kirov, which made its first U.S. appearance after a 22-year absence in 1986 at the height of Cold War. Others regularly on the Filene Center boards have been Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, Trey McIntyre Project and Ronald K. Brown/Evidence. This summer ASFB returns to the popular outdoor theater in the woods two years after its Wolf Trap premiere. That evening in 2009, Barbara Parker, Wolf Trap’s director of operations and artistic initiatives, sat in the rear orchestra with ASFB directors Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty.

“They started the day with a phenomenal master class, which JP taught,” Parker recalled. “It was a really, really lovely day. At intermission, we had a conversation about when they would come back. I realized if they come back in 2011 it would coincide with the company’s 15th anniversary. What could be more perfect than a commission on the company’s 15th anniversary?”

Parker admittedly doesn’t typically invite a first-time company to return before the performance has finished. But she felt a special affinity for ASFB, its directors and the dancers, who exuded grace, energy and artistry in realizing the fearless choreographic selections.

Why not a new work by Jorma Elo, the much sought-after choreographer, Parker suggested. Elo’s elegant but forward-thinking ballets have elicited praise world-wide in recent years. Parker noted that Wolf Trap is among the few presenting organizations in the country that consistently commissions new choreography on an annual basis.

“I admire the human side of Jorma’s work,” Malaty said recently. “For some reason, a lot of critics find the work so mechanical and abstract ... but I find his work very human, musical and very poetic at times.”

What rubs detractors the wrong way may be the quirkiness of Elo’s movement language and antithetical way he approaches music, sometimes circumventing a crescendo with the simplest of gestures, other times reverting to silence, or even getting the dancers to speak. Many others, though, including Parker, find Elo’s work a cool blast of fresh air breathed into the musty balletic canon.

Malaty continues, “If you look behind [Elo’s] occurrences of quirkiness and business, you can peel that off and really find a human connection.” Some people, Malaty thinks, get caught up in the hyper mobility and busyness that strikes them on a first viewing. “You need to go deeper; that’s why I like his work.”

In May, Elo received the dance world’s Oscar, the Benois de la Danse Prize for best choreography. He was recognized for his first full-length choreography, a new realization of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the Vienna State Opera Ballet, and “Slice to Sharp,” praised for its exhilarating virtuosity.

At the Boston Ballet, where Elo is choreographer in residence, artistic director Mikko Nissinen says: “Jorma’s understanding of classical ballet and contemporary dance create a unique voice … and his vision is moving the art form forward.”

In the studio, the Finnish-born choreographer and hockey fan likes to begin with a blank slate, only the music serving as his foundation. He reports that he rarely listens to music for fun or relaxation. When he’s in the midst of a work – which is almost always, Elo makes between four and six new works a year for Boston Ballet and companies around the world – he listens like a student, replaying sections, taking notes, dissecting the score, and drawing out images on which the choreography will be built.
But the real creative work doesn’t begin until the choreographer has his dancers in the studio.

“I really try not to block my mind with any set form. I really want to rely on the moment of being in the studio with the dancers together with the music. I love that. I love to simply dance,” he says.

Often, Elo uses his own body to demonstrate and he still enjoys taking company classes with his dancers whenever he can, simply because he says it’s fun to move with them and notice their personalities as they work through combinations and exercises.

A month before he was set to return to Aspen to create the new work on the dancers, Elo was still debating on his musical choices. “I have to have a natural, instinctive, almost primitive relationship with the dancers,” he says. And when he gets in the studio, he relies on the beauty of the music and the skills and personalities of the dancers to inspire and transport him.

No music, no choreography, no title and an impending world premiere. Is Wolf Trap’s Parker worried? Not a bit. “We get our best commission work when we allow artists to do what they do best,” she says, “which means giving them resources and letting them go freely to create. Not knowing anything at this stage is totally fine with me because what I do know is that it’s going to be amazing.”

ASFB performs Jiri Kylian’s “Stamping Ground,” Nicolo Fonte’s “Where We Left Off” and a world premiere by Jorma Elo on July 12 at Wolf Trap. For more information, visit www.wolftrap.org.

Lisa Traiger writes on dance and the arts from the Washington, D.C. area.