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May 13--The end of the season is a new beginning for the Orlando Ballet in a year that has seen the company lose its renowned artistic director Fernando Bujones to cancer and gain another stellar name in American ballet, Bruce Marks, as his successor.
The program that opened Friday night -- one day after the company named Marks its permanent director -- seemed to say hello to the new with a wink and a prayer, and adieu to the chapter just ended with a gracious classical bow that would have made Bujones proud.
The wink came in the form of choreographer Val Caniparoli's Going for Baroque, a playful, contemporary take on classical ballet that also is a 20-minute endurance test for its dancers. The title is a play on the expression "going for broke" -- risking it all -- and Caniparoli throws all manner of imaginative challenges at his dancers. He has them perform hurtling jumps and daredevil turns with unexpected quirks -- a hip thrown out sideways here, a knee drawn up midleap there. Then he ups the ante by asking them to make it look nonchalant.
With lively music by Vivaldi, guys dancing in short-sleeved, brightly colored shirts and pants with suspenders and girls in equally vivid-colored, flare-skirted dresses, the high-spirited ballet has the look of a baroque hoedown. No one captured its impish spirit better than Marshall Ellis in a part-Opie, part-Baryshnikov solo. A word about the simple, classy, changing, color-block background: Cool.
The prayer was Bruce Marks' stunning visual meditation on Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, a ballet that fuses physical and spiritual so aptly that you wonder if you're seeing the essence of souls dancing. Jessica Sibley's ethereal lyricism was made for this ballet; her bourees float, her arms quiver and then find majestic form as wings. One, then another among five men partner her, while the other four frame them as sculptural pillars. And when at last she rises, an archetypal figure, she bears aloft our hopes.
Then there were the classics: the Don Quixote pas de duex brought down the house -- this was one of Orlando Ballet's most enthusiastic audiences, if not its largest -- for the clean, dashing performances by Katia Garza and Andres Estevez. She is an infectiously dazzling performer and a turning dervish; he is a solid danseur who could allow himself more largess. If you've got it, you might as well flaunt it.
Eddy Tovar brought bravura spirit and scintillating technique to the male lead of Raymonda Act III and formed a fine pair with delicate, exotic-looking Chiaki Yasukawa as the wedding couple in this lavish, pageant-like excerpt staged by Bujones. Yasukawa delighted in a solo of impeccable balances and precise chains of intricate footwork. Caitlin Valentine caught the ballet's high spirit in a solo of tiny hops on pointe and tough fouettes made to look easy.
The alternating folk-infused and classical ensembles were lively. A men's variation could have looked sharper, and it made one wish for a live orchestra that might have picked up the pace for them. All in all, though, a fine and fitting farewell to Maestro Bujones.
Diane Hubbard Burns can be reached at dburns@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5459.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
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