“We want to see evil,” said choreographer Septime Webre, doing an exaggerated impression of Bela Lugosi’s menacing Count Dracula pose that was more humorous than frightening.
During a rehearsal earlier this month in the Colorado Ballet’s main studio, he also demonstrated a crazed move he wittily labeled “mad-cow disease” and the familiar Egyptian dance – all intermingled with jetés, assemblés and other traditional ballet steps.
If it all sounds like a strange mix of movements, well, it is. But such a stylistic conglomeration was exactly what Webre wanted when he set about creating a ballet version of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s story, “Where the Wild Things Are,” in 1996.
“I wanted the (movement) vocabulary to be quite personal and idiosyncratic to me,” Webre said. “So, throughout it, there is a whole lot of ballet technique but then there’s a kind of groundedness and two-dimensional shapes.
“The book was written in 1963, and I wanted it to have a feel from that period. So, it’s got a kind of jazziness that is not jazz of today but a retro- jazziness, which is used in a bit of jokey fashion.”
Beginning Friday in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, the Colorado Ballet will offer 13 performances of an encore production of Webre’s 45-minute ballet, which the company first presented in 2001. Featured will be two casts of 31 dancers each.
The choreographer spent two days in Denver coaching the dancers, who learned the piece earlier from one of his assistants, and making sure the movement had the look and feel he intended.
Also on the program will be “Bruch Violin Concerto,” a 25-minute neo-classical work by Clark Tippet, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre in New York City, where the work premiered in 1987.
Webre, 44, artistic director of the Washington (D.C.) Ballet since 1999, has earned a national reputation for his choreography, especially “Fluctuating Hemlines” and his adaptation of “Peter Pan.” His works have been performed by such companies as Pacific Northwest Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and Atlanta Ballet.
Although a big fan of Sendak’s book growing up as the seventh son in a large Cuban-American family, Webre never gave any thought to adapting it as a ballet until he got a call in 1996 from Sendak asking if he might be interested in such an undertaking. Webre jumped at the chance.
The choreographer traveled to Sendak’s farm in Connecticut and spent an entire day with the famed author and illustrator, who is now 78. They discussed possible approaches to the story of a boy named Max, who takes an imaginary journey to the place “where the wild things are.”
Unlike most literary adaptations, in which a story has to be distilled to its essence to function as dance, this tale was already very simple and needed to be bolstered.
“And, so,” Webre said, “a premise that we agreed upon during that first day together is that we had to extrapolate on the story and develop additional characters to provide for a 45-minute dance experience that would be kinetic.
“I knew the drawings were so vibrant, and we knew that the set would look like the book, so the dance had to be very physical to compete with the designs.”
More all-day retreats followed. Early on, the choreographer arrived bursting with ideas for bits that would please young audiences, but Sendak quickly offered some advice that Webre took to heart.
“He stopped me,” Webre said, “and said, ‘Septime, don’t approach this like a kid’s story. Give Max the respect he is due. He is a real character. You’ve got to treat it like an adult story. The kids are going to get it.”‘
In addition to his work as an author and illustrator, Sendak has designed productions of several operas, including “The Magic Flute” and Oliver Knussen’s adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are,” and collaborated on an innovative version of the ballet “The Nutcracker.” Such experience proved invaluable to this project.
“Having Maurice involved was a spectacular joy and pleasure,” Webre said. “I was about 30 at the time – so relatively young in my career – and he was … still at the top of his game. I was just like a sponge.”
The two continued to trade ideas, developing additional characters, making sure they fit into the story in an integral, cohesive way. They agreed to add a section, for example, in which Max’s relatives, rendered as vaudevillian caricatures, come over for Sunday dinner.
Webre and Sendak, who designed the production’s scenery and costumes, also agreed the ballet should preserve the book’s sense of scale. To keep the size of the monsters on stage in proportion to Max, some are as tall as 12 feet, with the dancers inside using armatures to animate them.
“I learned the joy of gross motor movement – it’s definitely simple movment,” Webre said. “It’s a challenge to try to animate those big things. So, you’ll see that each one has a personality.”
The ballet was originally set to Knussen’s operatic version. But after a 1996 preview of the ballet by the American Repertory Ballet in New Jersey, where Webre was artistic director at the time, both he and Sendak realized it needed its own music.
The commission went to Randall Woolf, a protege of composer of David Del Tredici. He created an eclectic score with influences ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach and Sergei Prokofiev to klezmer to themes from 1960s television shows.
Since its 1997 premiere, Webre’s ballet “Where the Wild Things Are” has become one of his most popular works, with performances by at least 10 companies across North America.
“I don’t think of it as my ballet getting out there,” Webre said. “I think of it as Maurice’s work getting out there. Because of Maurice, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ is a cultural icon.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Where the Wild Things Are”
“Where the Wild Things Are”
BALLET | Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets; 7:30 p.m. Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Feb. 25; 7:30 p.m. March 2; 2 and 7:30 p.m. March 3; 1 and 6 p.m. March 4; 6:30 p.m. March 7; 7:30 p.m. March 9; and 2 and 7:30 p.m. March 10 | $27-$143 | 303-837-8888 or coloradoballet.org.
