Columbia Repertory Ballet's fall production marks its return to performing on campus

Upper West Side NY

16 December, 2021

4:00 PM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY EMMA DANON DECEMBER 13, 2021 With feet ablaze, dancers from Columbia Repertory Ballet burst onto the screen in choreographer Durante Verzola's "Spirited Syncopations," signaling the club's dynamic return to in-person dance rehearsals and ballet performances on campus for the Columbia community. On Dec. 9, CRB premiered its Fall 2021 Performance in a two-part production where pieces were filmed in one take and then the entire performance was livestreamed on Zoom and YouTube. Audience members were greeted by eight enthusiastic members of CRB's leadership team, who welcomed viewers with a nostalgia-filled speech as they counted down to the video premiere. The performance that followed featured a variety of movement styles ranging from the traditional ballet "Don Quixote" to the more neoclassical work of choreographer Claudia Schreier's "Splinter." CRB, Columbia's newest ballet group, gives dancers the opportunity to perform rigorous, pre-existing works that have not been offered by other campus performance groups. The group was founded in 2018, and this semester marks CRB's first performance as a University-recognized group. Its mission prioritizes the dancers, allowing them to, in the words of co-director Maria Blankemeyer, BC '23, "do what [they] want to do." "We try to provide big roles to each dancer who participates. I think that's one of the biggest missions, just so no one's on the side," co-director Maki Ishibashi, CC '23, said. "You already come from the ballet world where half the time you're standing on the sidelines." To ensure that no one felt sidelined, CRB leadership tried to capture the complete performance experience for their dancers. After spending the past year and a half creating video projects, the CRB leadership team knew they wanted to take full advantage of access to studio space and the ability to dance together again. "We didn't want to be doing the same thing that we had been doing where we were just filming outside," Blankemeyer said. "We wanted to get back to that performance feeling … [and try] to capture that performance feeling for the audience, but honestly, mostly for the dancers because I feel like the ballet community on campus is so special, and fostering that community is one of CRB's missions." The hybrid production setup brought CRB one step closer to capturing the pre-pandemic performance feeling. One of the choreographers, expressing concerns over technical difficulties compromising the choreography, proposed a hybrid production setup, as it gave CRB the opportunity to troubleshoot and overlay music. "Livestream would have been more accurate to [the] performance aspect," said Blankemeyer. "But I think for the sake of the choreography and respecting the kind of intention behind everything, it was the safest option to pre-film." From the perspective of the dancers and audience, the procedures that CRB used closely replicated those of a regular performance. Each piece was filmed in one take, giving the dancers just one chance to perform their pieces. As if the virtual audience was in the room, viewers could watch as dancers prepared to enter from the sides, notice hiccups in partner work, and hear coughs and sneezes typically cut from filmed performances. CRB also held a full dress and tech rehearsal, and provided the audience with a virtual program. From the introduction speech to the closing bows, the experience of a live performance was finally revived for both CRB and the audience. Like the gala-style show that CRB typically organizes in a theater for a large audience, this semester's performance brought together traditional ballets, such as excerpts from Gerald Arpino's "Birthday Variations" and Marius Petipa's "Don Quixote," with newer, more modern works, including "Spirited Syncopations," "Splinter," and Therese Gahl's "Cerulean Contemplation," to create an hour-long program of five distinct pieces. A unique aspect of this semester's performance was the collaboration with the Barnard dance department for the performance of "Birthday Variations." The CRB board inherited this collaboration from the 2019-2020 board. Although they intended to perform the ballet in its entirety, the Gerald Arpino Foundation did not want the full ballet on video, meaning CRB was only allowed to perform excerpts from it. CRB was grateful to have the opportunity to perform the work in any form, especially because it was a second chance for the cast that only got to perform once to dance again. In the department show, "Birthday Variations" was double-casted, meaning dancers' roles alternated between performances. Since the department show had an odd number of performances, one cast performed twice, while the second performed just once. "The Arpino Foundation and [our restager] Nicole [Duffy] were very generous to CRB because they did not have to give us the rights at all," Blankemeyer said. "We're just a student-run club, and they trusted us with the costumes. They trusted us with the music, the choreography, with taking pictures, and everything that they usually control pretty tightly with professional companies. They kind of just let us have fun with it. It was a big privilege." Despite being a student-run club, CRB organized a professional showing with little technological trouble from the audience's view. The matching black masks, energetic and well-rehearsed dancing, and synchronous group bow gave the show an overall clean-cut look, allowing viewers to feel like they were sitting in the audience of a theater, rather than watching a livestream of Barnard Hall's Studio 305 from their homes. "[It was a lot of] troubleshooting and working through logistics," Ishibashi said. "But I think given all of that, I'm proud of what we put out, and I'm proud of all the dancers and so thankful for them being so flexible and dancing with us in Riverside Park in the cold when we had to." As for the future, CRB will continue to prioritize their dancers by providing them with the opportunity to perform next semester––hopefully live and in person. 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