April 06, 2006
"Guy" Ballet
The Twin Cities' classy ballet company, The James Sewell Ballet, got a good review in today's New York Post.
IT'S A 'GUY' THING
By Clive Barnes
April 6, 2006
The James Sewell Ballet
The Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., between 18th and 19th Streets;
(212) 242-0800. Season runs through Sunday.
If it were on "Jeopardy!," the mix of Garrison Keillor and ballet might well prompt the question, "What is Swan Lake Wobegon?" But at the Joyce Theater Tuesday night, this oxymoronic pairing of humorist and dance came together wittily and well in "Guy Noir: The Ballet."
The James Sewell Ballet — one of the Twin Cities' cultural gems like the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra — was actually founded in New York by Sewell and his wife, Sally Rousse, in 1990, but three years later relocated to Sewell's native Minnesota.
Sewell, trained at the School of American Ballet and for many years the leading male dancer of the Eliot Feld company, is a dyed-in-the-wool classicist with a modern dance streak and a sense of humor.
The latter came to the fore in this collaboration with Keillor, who wrote and recorded the voice-over commentary that has his all too public private eye, Guy Noir, mixed up with a dance contest involving . . . power tools.
It's a fun piece, with the dancers led by Benjamin Johnson in neat Raymond Chandler trench-coat mood, and balanced the other two works, both richer in choreographic density and structure, "Anagram" and "Involution."
This is a company well worth catching. It wears its charms with a difference.
posted @ 8:15 AM
