See the music, hear the dance

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Music written for ballets was largely undistinguished, frothy, insubstantial and not particularly memorable – that is, before Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed his triptych of masterful ballet scores in the late 19th century.

Ballet Arizona this season presents all three Tchaikovsky ballets, starting this weekend with Swan Lake. The others are Sleeping Beauty, scheduled for February, and of course, Nutcracker.

Tchaikovsky himself loved to dance, which may have had something to do with his innate feeling for shaping melodies that mirror human movement. The dour-seeming Russian, who looks prematurely old in pictures taken of him in his early 50s, was self-deprecating and in nearly constant turmoil over aspects of his sexuality. Yet from all reports, his outer life was that of an exuberant man embracing life in all its rich meaning. That attitude is palpable in his music.

He was also a composer of highly dramatic scores, and ballet — not capable of telling complicated stories — needs all the dramatic help it can get. Choreographer George Balanchine’s famous statement, “We don’t have synonyms in dance,” was intended to put the onus of theatrical tension on some other aspect of a ballet’s production; namely, the music. The evil Von Rothbart in Swan Lake cannot express in movement the complex character of his evil. But the music can.

Timothy Russell, who will conduct The Phoenix Symphony in live accompaniment to Ballet Arizona’s Swan Lake, puts it this way:

“”First, and foremost, Tchaikovsky was a great composer. He wrote glorious melodies, and infused the sounds of the stage with infectious driving rhythms that tug at your heart sleeves at a very visceral level. As a ballet composer, Tchaikovsky provides sonic inspiration that offers both a sense of lift and a sense of line, always propelling both the story forward and the dancers onward.

“His mastery provides for a total aesthetic experience of sound and sight, creating a magical melding of music and motion.”

Click below for a video preview of Ballet Arizona’s Swan Lake.