Boulder – A single dancer can tell a story or touch the heart with the simplest acts – merely walking or moving an arm.
But with considerably more resources at their disposal Saturday evening in an ambitious, crowd-pleasing production of “Carmina Burana,” Frequent Flyers Productions struggled to find emotion and meaning.
The notion of bringing together two of Boulder’s most widely recognized arts organizations – the Ars Nova Singers and Frequent Flyers – to create a dance work set to Carl Orff’s popular 1937 choral work was a good one.
As Thomas Morgan, Ars Nova’s artistic director, noted in his introduction, Orff conceived the piece with dance and theater in mind, and many choreographers have created works based on it, including a famous one by Loyce Houlton.
Nancy Smith, Frequent Flyers’ artistic director, believes this production, which ran for two performances at Macky Auditorium, might be the first one to employ aerial dance with its array of trapezes, hoops, swings and ropes.
While it seems entirely feasible that an aerial-dance work could convey the visceral power and emotional sweep of Orff’s 25-section work, this one, quite simply, doesn’t. In fact, much of the time, it seemed oddly dissociated from the music.
There were certainly some eye-catching moments as the 11 dancers took turns climbing up and down the ropes and swinging on and balancing off hoops, trapezes and a kind of suspended platform, but too much of the aerial work was posing and spinning.
Also hampering the production, which was choreographed by Smith and six of the dancers, was the movement on the ground. It was mostly banal and cliché, with no distinctive style or conceptual voice – and it was poorly executed.
While the dancers are certainly adept with all the company’s equipment, their dance technique was often lacking and sometimes amateurish, with too many feeble leaps, awkward partnerings and clunky falls.
In the end, the production was less a dance work and more of a circus-like spectacle that happened to be set to “Carmina Burana.” It left attendees with no new insights into the music and nothing really to take home.
If the dance left much to be desired, there was little to fault about the music, except the size of the forces. Instead of the usual full orchestra, there was only a five-member ensemble, which sounded thin in the cavernous hall, despite its best efforts.
Ars Nova, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, is one of the area’s top choirs, and it certainly lived up to its reputation. Led by Morgan, the singers imbued this work with the immediacy and insistent energy it demands. The three soloists were all effective, with countertenor Robert Sussuma delivering an especially poignant solo.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-820-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
