What with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre celebrating its 50th anniversary, that provided an impetus to bring back The Dancers’ Trust, an organization that raises money for the inevitable transition that virtually all dancers must make.
To its credit, The Trust, run by members of PBT from soup to nuts, which means from programs to lighting to programming. We haven’t seen this format, which has raised over $100,000, in three years.
This edition, which began in 1992, shows some serious thought, according to spokesperson Ernest Tolentino, former PBT soloist and now part of Point Parks University’s adjunct faculty. For those that don’t know, PBT actually originated at then-Point Park College, with two preview years at the recently-demolished Pittsburgh Playhouse.
Saturday’s performance, full of history, will come full circle in several ways. It will be presented at now-Point Park University’s George Rowland White Theater Downtown. And, in honoring the 50th anniversary, the cast will replicate an event that will recreate the original auditions for the ORIGINAL Point Park company. It will be staged by Eileen Reynolds, performed by PPU students, and will honor PBT founder Nicholas Petrov, who also established Point Park’s much-vaunted dance program, and current artistic director Terrence Orr.
Look out for PBT soloist Corey Bourbonniere, who will be performing a song and tap routine to L.o.v.e., made famous by Frank Sinatra and numerous other stylists over the years.
The connections won’t end there. The evening will include a performance of Maestro by PPU’s Garfield Lemonius, current head of the dance department. Inspired by movements of a conductor and orchestra and featuring a dozen dancers, the cast will include both PBT and PPU performers, a first in their collective histories.
The Trust’s tendrils will also include a duet, Wim, by Alan Obuzor and Katie Miller of Texture Contemporary Ballet. Both came through PBT, he a member of the corps and she a graduate student.
Of course there will be hallmarks of the ballet tradition with several more duets, including the breezy and flirtatious Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, by George Balanchine, featuring corps member Amanda Potts Morgan and newly-initiated company member Colin McCaslin, and the big, bold, Bolshoi showpiece, Spring Waters, with corps members Jessica McCann and Jack Hawn. McCaslin will also pair with PBT grad student Eliana Tolentino in Lisa de Ribere’s Long Ago and Far Away, a nod to the Patricia Wilde era at PBT. Technical wizard Masahiro Haneji will offer the iconic virtuosic solo from La Bayadere, Bronze Idol.
But the Trust has frequently nurtured PBT dancers’ creative impulses. Corps member Cooper Verona will have an encore of Side By Side, a contemporary quartet that debuted at the pearlPRESENTS Dance Festival earlier this summer in Pittsburgh. New company member Allie Durand will provide the premiere of Plume and principal dancer Amanda Cochrane will likewise make a choreographic statement with Not So Simple Thoughts.
For the first time, there will be live music, so important to dance, with violinist Maureen Conlon Gutierrez and pianist Rodrigo Ojeda, who will provide the accompaniment for principal dancer Hannah Carter’s The Dying Swan.
They will also provide the tango atmosphere for the finale, soloist Joanna Schmidt’s premiere of Self Portrait, set to the seductive music of Astor Piazzolla and putting an exclamation point on a program that leaps from past into the future.
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