While some ballet choreographers set out to sculpt sweeping love stories or redefine classicism for a new generation, Peter Anastos has had a more humble goal. He just wants to make people laugh.
Since serving in the ’70s as the founding director and choreographer of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male drag dance troupe, Anastos has made a career of ballets spoofing the form.
None is better known than “Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet,” a 1976 work that the Colorado Ballet performs this weekend, one of three works in its “Triple Crown.”
“I don’t understand it exactly,” Anastos said, “except that it just taps into some goofy level. Every place it’s been danced — abroad, at home, you name it — people laugh.”
The program features the Colorado Ballet’s debut at DU’s Gates Concert Hall. The facility has 977 seats compared with 2,268 in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, the company’s usual home.
Switching to a smaller venue saves the company rental fees and other costs, but artistic director Gil Boggs said other factors were in play.
“As you know, it’s south of town, so it’s to reach down into that area, to get closer to Highlands Ranch and people who may be a little averse to traveling all the way to downtown. We’re trying to get a little closer to them and make it a little more convenient.”
Besides “Yes, Virginia,” which the company has performed but not as part of its subscription series, “Triple Crown” includes two recycled works — Clark Tippet’s “Bruch Violin Concerto” in 2006 and Jessica Lang’s “From Foreign Lands and People” in 2005.
Boggs said the company typically purchases performance rights to a ballet for three to six years, so encore presentations make financial sense.
“If you take them to a different venue,” he said, “and hopefully a different type of audience, a new audience, they’re going to see these wonderful works, and you get mileage out of them.”
But Boggs admitted that devoting a significant portion of the program to recent offerings could be a box-office risk. That is why he balanced them with the previously unseen “Yes, Virginia.”
Anastos is a well-known figure in the ballet world, having worked with such companies as the American Ballet Theatre and Royal Ballet of Flanders.
He focused on freelance choreography for 12 years but returned this year to artistic administration, taking over the nascent Idaho Ballet.
Anastos created “Yes, Virginia” for the Broadway debut of Les Ballets Trockadero. The 20-minute work was a send-up of Jerome Robbins’ “Dances at a Gathering” (1969) and other piano ballets that became something of a trend in the 1970s and ’80s.
Anastos saw these works as trying to present the dancers as everyday people — a notion he quickly rejected.
“All these ballets were appearing in New York,” he said, “and I thought, ‘Wait a second, this is ridiculous.’ No, they’re not like you and me. It is an extremely, highly specialized skill. It’s brutally difficult and hard. No, they’re not just regular people. They’re extra- ordinary people.
“So, I made this ballet to make fun of the idea that dancers are actually normal.”
In the work, set to Chopin, all kinds of mishaps befall five dancers, but they continue on valiantly as though nothing were wrong. The challenge for performers is perfecting the comic timing and not overselling the visual humor.
“The trick to ‘Yes, Virginia’ is that you have to keep a straight face, while all this mayhem is happening around you,” Anastos said. “You can’t break down. You can’t laugh. And you can’t go, ‘Oooh.’ There’s no clown stuff in it.”
The choreographer was convinced the work would flop, but it quickly became a hit. Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov subsequently performed it on his showcase tours, and at least a dozen companies added it to their repertoire.
Three decades after its premiere, the comedic ballet is more popular than ever.
“‘Yes, Virginia’ is still being done all over the world, and people don’t even know what the model is anymore,” Anastos said. “At some point, this ballet took on this goofy life of its own, and you don’t have to know anything about what the parody is. The jokes all sort of work, because they’re genuinely funny.”
Triple Crown
Ballet. University of Denver, Newman Center for the Performing Arts, 2344 E. Iliff Ave. The Colorado Ballet presents its first subscription-series performances of Peter Anastos’ “Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet,” as well as reprisals of two works from its 2005 and 2006 seasons. 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday. 1 hour, 45 minutes. $19-$145. 303-837-8888 or .
