By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
As the seasonal favorite “The Nutcracker” is prancing out from the pandemic, the Black Swamp Fine Arts School is pirouetting in a different direction by stepping off into space.
The school’s pre-professional students will present “The Planets” Saturday, Dec. 11, with shows at 11 a.m., 2, 4:30, and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 12 with performances at 3 and 6 p.m. in the banquet room at Simpson Garden Park. Tickets must be purchased online. Click for tickets.
Artwork inspired by the planets created by students in the studio of Rachel Schmitz will also be on display.
The ballet is based on the music of Gustav Holst. The orchestral masterpiece has worked itself into the popular mind as music from it has often been used in film scores or inspired composers of film scores. “‘The Planets’ is known to be a suite that a lot of modern soundtrack writers have drawn upon,” said Hayley Havener, the director of dance at the school.
Havener said that the idea of choreographing “The Planets” first came up last spring. She was looking for music from the 1920s for another program and school founder and director Sophia Jarrell, included the Holst piece in the music she suggested.
The music didn’t fit what they were doing then, but it inspired Havener’s desire to choreograph the entire seven-movement suite. (There’s no movement for Earth.) “I like the big scope of the music.”
Kaitlynn Pisarski and Feather Weldon contributed with Pisarski choreographing “Mercury” and part of “Jupiter” while Weldon did “Neptune.”
The opportunity to realize the project this winter came because the school decided to present its 2020 production of “The Nutcracker,” which was canceled last December because of COVID-1, this past July.
Performing “The Nutcracker” again this December would have meant immediately turning around and starting to prepare the new staging.
“The Planets” offers the pre-professional company the chance to be involved in a different kind of long performance, more neo-classical than narrative.
The company includes dancers as young as 9 up through high school
“I think my older students really liked it like it,” Havener said. It meant building more stamina as well as demanding more from them mentally.
The littlest dancers had more of a challenge, she said, but came through.
Inspired by the work of George Balanchine, the choreography is “streamlined and athletic and simple to let the artistry shine through,” Havener said.
That carries into the costuming. The dancers will wear, she said, “simple dresses that show off the intricacies of the choreography the kids are doing. You won’t be distracted by glitter and sequins. … Their dancing is on full display.”
In “The Planets,” Holst sought to depict each planets’ astrological character.
Havener tied this to the season, and its own astrological connections involving prophesies of Jesus’ nativity and the journey of the Three Wise Men guided by a star.
The school didn’t totally forget about “The Nutcracker” this December.
Seventeen dancers from the school were featured along with two adult dancers from the Toledo Ballet in selections from the ballet during the Bowling Green Philharmonia’s two performances at ArtsX this weekend.
Next year, Havener said, “we’re planning on ‘The Nutcracker’ as usual.”
