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The first Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) chose the arts revolution in Paris circa 1910-1920 as its theme. PIFA offered more than 140 performance groups, exhibits, symposia and a period street fair capped off with an aerialist show atop a five-storey crane à la Cirque du Soleil.

The Parisian esprit was infectious. There was even a looming model of the Eiffel Tower lit with incandescent bulbs that pulsed to street sounds and French music, attracting spectators well into the summer. Most of Philly’s dance companies weighed in at PIFA, with themes ranging from Ballet X’s surreal dance play of Appolinaire’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias to Jeanne Ruddy Dance’s Montage à Trois, a dance interactive as part of a gallery exhibit.

Many companies focused on the history and mystique of the word of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes as representing the penultimate symbol of a post-classical era. One of the main events was an update of the commedia dell’arte warhorse Pulcinella, with Igor Stravinsky’s pivotal score choreographed for Diaghilev by Massine in 1919, with costumes by Pablo Picasso. Boston Ballet resident choreographer Jorma Elo conceived Pulcinella Alive, which was PIFA’s kickoff event, using the full Stravinsky score. It marked the first official collaboration between the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the city’s two main performing arts organizations.

The in-demand Elo, on the red-eye to Holland that very night, spoke by phone about Pulcinella’s premiere from his home, on a day stopover before his setting a new work on the Basel Ballet in Switzerland. Elo said that he initially didn’t know that his work would be part of a themed festival, but wanted the chance to work with the live orchestra onstage,  to conjure the unique direct energy between dancers and musicians. Rossen Milanov, associate conductor of the orchestra and veteran ballet conductor, also felt being onstage with the dancers generatea a unique synergy between musicians and dancers. 

Verizon Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s regular venue, is not proscenium and the orchestra is tightly grouped at the back of the concert stage. Elo gave clean lines to the players as part of the aesthetic. “It’s never how you envision and it developed during the process,” he says. “The starting point, for me, was orchestra and dancers together and how to make it one whole thing. For the dancers to literally feel the music, the sound field right at their back can create something unique and spontaneous.”

Elo choreographed the piece for 10 dancers and kept it a ballet in the abstract with strategic character phrases to tell the story. Mostly, he freed it from its previous incarnations, animating the story without costumes or sets.

At the opening night festival gala, roughness remained around the edges owing to last-minute changes when one of the dancers sustained an injury two days before the opening. Elo’s assistant, Benjamin Sotto, stepped in, but Elo had to retool some of the choreography. The choreography, much like the opening passages of the music is faux mannered, but just uncorks with crystallized ideas. Elo gave each dancer something of his or her own. It received generally positive responses from audiences and critics.

Pennsylvania Ballet soloist Ian Hussey, catching the first Eiffel Tower light show that was switched on by Philly Mayor Michael Nutter, described what it was like to dance the premiere: “Well, when the musicians are this good and playing Stravinsky, it is an amazing feeling. It was exciting to work with our counterpart in this city. To have a full orchestra right on top of you is different than what we are used to, but the full sound at our back makes our end so much more electric.”

Another centerpiece performance, also featuring music by Stravinsky, highlighted the close of the festival. Three of Philly’s burgeoning fine performing arts groups, Center City Opera Theater, Orchestra 2001 and Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers, collaborated on a programme titled Rites, Rhythm … Riot!

The dance troupe was on a bill with a new opera about the event that epitomized the arts revolution in Paris, the night Le sacre du printemps premiered. Lin was commissioned for new versions using Stravinsky’s ballet scores to Renard (The Fox) and Ragtime. The troupe performed onstage with Orchestra 2001 and an opera vocalist sang Renard’s narrative.

Andrew Kurtz, musical director of Center City Opera Theater, approached Lin after seeing one of his company’s sold-out dance concerts the year before. Lin first established Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers in New York and three years ago decided to move to Philadelphia and started the Chi Movement Arts Center in South Philadelphia. Coinciding with the PIFA premiere, the company was preparing for a six-week cultural exchange and tour in China.

Weeks before the premiere, Lin sat in his office at the Chi studios looking at archival illustrations from the original Ballet Russes’ production of Renard, he was getting the feeling he would “need a director.”

Kurtz wanted him to choreograph Renard specifically, because he felt “there was a ‘sensuality’ between the Stravinsky piece and my choreography,” Lin says. Lin has collaborated in dance with a choral work only one other time, two decades ago in his native country. “It’s been interesting taking on the challenge. And, of course, for me, the inspiration is the challenge.”

Lin, born in Taiwan, often imbues his choreography with spiritual components, as well as pan-Asian traditions and modern idioms. In style and content, these works were a departure for him and his company. “I always move away from labeling my work. I immediately started to see the connections with opera and other historical components that were happening at the time Stravinsky made this music,” he explains.

As Lin delved deeper into Stravinsky’s oeuvre and the circumstances of the original ballet productions, he says he realized Stravinsky’s music seemed “particularly designed for dance language,” adding that, “some people think I try to break the boundaries between traditional and contemporary dance. Now for me contemporary, modern, classical, you know these labels we applied afterward. It’s more important to realize it as a truer, internal experience.”

Renard was “the first piece that brought theatre into the Ballets Russes,” Lin notes. Lin thoroughly researched the literature, history and circumstances of the original works before he started the choreography. “There was no money and no pay for anyone. Stravinsky was commissioned to write this music for a princess. The culture was changing politically and economically, so it had to be small scale,” he says.

“Ragtime is playful and with the symbolic meaning of two people coming together. When you think about how he created the piece, inspired by his view of America, his multiculturalism coming together. Renard was more difficult in that he wants to make this folk tale a political statement. The libretto is nonsensical and words do not make sense, on the surface. It actually is criticizing religion and the church,” Lin says.

 Since this wasn’t a reconstruction, Lin wanted to reference certain things, but essentially “create a different dance language for it.” Stravinsky’s music is fragmented; they totally deconstruct. Kenneth Metzner, executive director of the company and Lin’s partner, explains, “Kun-Yang really remained true to the intention and spirit of Stravinsky, in terms of examining the themes.”

And those themes — greed, corruption and power — symbolized by Renard, resonate more than ever.

 

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