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WORLD PASSIONS
By JONATHAN DONALDSON
del.ico.us
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For those of you who only know how to be romantic on February 14th, you may go back to your video game. For the rest of you, there is still time to see World Passions with the Boston Ballet.
A highlight of the program is the duet, Tsukiyo ("Moonlit Night"), an original work by choreographer/actor Helen Pickett. Pickett rose to prominence in the '90s with the Ballet Frankfurt/William Forsythe before actually launching her Boston Ballet choreographic career with 2006's Etesian, followed by her Eventide, commissioned by the Ballet last year.
"I want people to feel the beauty of possibility," says the choreographer. Inspired by elements as diverse as Francis Bacon's rich colors and a Japanese fairytale called The Woodcutter's Daughter—about a girl raised in a bamboo forest—Tsukiyo is itself a creation out of thin air. Says Pickett: "The way Bacon puts together colors is fantastic, so I put together a palate of purple and iridescent green. I always had that color palate in my mind because I wanted to base [Tsukiyo] on some kind of fairytale." Set to contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in Mirror"), Tsukiyo takes the otherworldly aspects of the fairytale to express the lack of resolution in any relationship.
Other pieces include the premier of Pino Alosa's reworking of Petipa's Paquita, Boston Ballet alum Viktor Plotnikov's Chopin-based Rhyme and Jorma Elo's Carmen/Illusions. World Passions promises to be a night of intrigue for star-crossed lovers, embodying, as Pickett herself puts it, "the walk up the stairs that is the best part of the affair."
[World Passions by the Boston Ballet. Through Sun 11.1.09. The Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston. 617.695.6955. Times vary/all ages/$25-$132. bostonballet.org]
