By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
After a year of pandemic restrictions, the dancers from the Black Swamp Fine Arts School are swinging open the garden gate and stepping out in a full scale production of “Peter and the Wolf.”
Presented at the Bowling Green Performing Arts Center, the 40-minute ballet spills out with the joy of being back on stage, whether it’s the littlest dancers – who get a spot of their own in the middle of the production – or the dancers in the school’s pre-professional training company.
Limited tickets are available for today’s (June 12) shows at 1, 2:30, 4 and 5:30 p.m. No tickets will be sold at the door. All must be ordered online.
The stage design is spare. The dancers set the scene as the flora and fauna outside the house that our hero Peter ( Bella Burkholder and Grace O’Connell ) shares with his grandpa (Rose Montion / Allison Kurfis) and his sister (Hannah Halsey). The dancers swirl about and rush across the stage as if swept up in a breeze.
The piece, which includes narration, was originally written by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev as an introduction to the instruments of the orchestra. So each character has an instrumental signature. The production uses a recording.
During a Friday dress rehearsal of the cast for the two early shows (listed first in the credits), the dancers took their cue from the music, using their bodies to project their characters’ personalities.
Peter is strutting and confident with not an ounce of the fear his grandpa works so hard to instill in him. The grandpa is depicted has hunched and hobbled, but is performed with agility that belies the character’s age to comic effect.
The Bird (Ann McCartney / Lydia Lommel)) and Duck (Aliyah Bridges 1/Libby Roth) are playful rivals, and both rightfully wary of the Cat (Bianca Bass/Delanie Allen). The Cat is a coy observer, at once domestic and wild and ever watchful.
The danger comes from the Wolf (Emma Ross / Emma Montion), who arrives to an ominous French horn tune. This is the menacing, sinister wolf of European fairy tales. Grandpa has warned Peter of just this danger, but that doesn’t stop the youngster from taking matters into his own hands.
While the show is presented as a ballet, a couple other styles are mixed in – tap dancing hunters and a bit of Irish dance.
All performed with the exuberance of young dancers showing off their new moves.
