Tag: Ballet Memphis

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Ballet Memphis Overton Square Design Plans Revealed

CREDIT: Archimania

From the street, Overton Square patrons and passers-by will be able to watch Ballet Memphis dancers and students practice in their planned new building at the old French Quarter Hotel site.

Plans for the new studio space, which is being designed by Archimania, were unveiled in a meeting on Thursday night at Memphis Heritage’s Howard Hall. The new studio that would replace the long-abandoned and blighted hotel will feature large windows on all the studios and public courtyard spaces between each studio. 

Archimania

Proposed Ballet Memphis Overton Square facility daytime view

The current hotel building would be demolished, and a new two-story, 27,000-square-foot studio space would be constructed in its place. In keeping with the Midtown Overlay standards, the new building would be closer to the corner of Cooper and Madison, and the parking lot would be moved to the back, blocking the lot from view and creating a pedestrian-friendly area in front of the building. The parking lot would be blocked off from the alley that runs behind the building by a masonry wall. There will entrances to the parking lot on both Cooper and Madison.

The new space will serve as practice space for Ballet Memphis’ professional company, and it will also serve as classroom space for the ballet’s younger students. Ballet Memphis intends on keeping its current facility on Trinity Road to serve students who live in the suburban areas. Most of the ballet’s professional company shows are held at the Orpheum or Playhouse on the Square, so the new Overton Square space won’t host many performances.

But at Thursday’s meeting, Ballet Memphis Director Dorothy Gunther Pugh indicated that they may host some smaller events and performances there for donors. She said she may also rent the space out to other nonprofits for events.

Archimania

Proposed Ballet Memphis Overton Square facility nightime view

Several Overton Square neighbors in attendance raised concerns about the sudden change in plans from a new boutique hotel, which was announced for the site a few months ago, to the Ballet Memphis facility. Some expressed disappointment that the 1.73-acre site was no longer going to be a hotel since Midtown is lacking in hotels.

Brenda Solomito, the land planner on the project, said the hotel deal just didn’t work out but didn’t really elaborate. The property owners purchased the hotel land in 2013, and she said they were toying with different versions of a hotel for the site and had even gained some of the necessary approvals to go forward. 

“Everything [with the Ballet Memphis deal] has happened in the last three weeks. It’s been a very compact process,” Solomito said.

Gunther Pugh couldn’t give an official timeline for the project, but she said she’d love for construction to break ground in the spring and be in the building by the summer of 2017.

“No one needs to worry that this isn’t going to happen. We’re not going to do that to Midtowners,” Gunther Pugh said.

The project goes to the Shelby County Land Use Control Board on July 9th at 10 a.m. If there’s no opposition, it should get approval on the consent agenda. But the final site plan will also have to be approved.

Archimania

Proposed Ballet Memphis Overton Square floor plan

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Ballet Memphis’ River Project

As New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay noted in his 2012 review of Ballet Memphis’ River Project, “sometimes a great tribute has nothing to do with the subject.” Macaulay was responding to choreographer Matthew Neenan’s “Victoria Avenue, CA, 12/25/70,” a new work that had everything to do with a wild party in Los Angeles and nothing to do with the mighty Mississippi, which, in theory, gives the River Project its name and purpose. It’s precisely the kind of response Ballet Memphis founder and artistic director Dorothy Gunther Pugh anticipated when she launched the ambitious project with an idea that her hometown is an American crossroads that transcends geography, creating an opportunity for Ballet Memphis to become a “launching point” and “creative center of American dance.”

“River Project: Moving Currents”

On the other hand, sometimes you have to “dance with the one who brung ya.” For “Moving Currents,” the third, and final installment of the River Project, Neenan has crafted a haunting new piece called “The Darting Eyes,” inspired by fading photographs of river baptisms collected in the book/CD package Take Me to the Water by Lance Ledbetter and Luc Sante. Juxtaposing American folk music with selections from Handel and a vintage sermon, it’s no more literal than “Victoria Avenue” but just as arresting.

“Flyway,” choreographed by Ballet Memphis regular Steven McMahon is a whimsical, colorful work inspired initially by avian migratory patterns, but more specifically by “the many peculiarities, behaviors, and patterns that birds exhibit in this setting.”

Also taking to the air, “Night and Day in FedEx City” is an intermittently surreal glimpse into the world of overnight package delivery. In his choreographer’s notes, Petr Zahradníček says his ode to Memphis’ largest employer is inspired by the “movement of commerce” and the “ballet of packages.” Though the tone is oddly dystopian, it aims to take audiences neatly boxed parcels, above the clouds.

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Art Exhibit M

Erin Harmon’s Latest Project

River Project model

  • River Project model

Erin Harmon makes her work in a green garden-shed-turned-studio, a location that seems fitting for an artist whose dioramic painting/collages often depict botanical cabinets of sea-anenome-shaped neon plantlife. Harmon’s botanicals are, for lack of a better word, “oogly”— full of acidic dots and undulating yellow lines; seductive and poisonous-looking.

In the past, Harmon’s work has been mostly small-scale and confined to the page. She breaks this habit with her latest project, a collaboration alongside choreographer and dancer Steven McMahon, of Ballet Memphis. McMahon’s original ballet, (working title) BIRDS, premiers in mid-October as a part of Ballet Memphis’ River Project. Harmon designed the set, per McMahon’s request, with “not a feather in sight.”

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When I saw the in-progress model for the set, Harmon was in the process of developing two 18-ft tall, movable, Mississippi-Delta-inspired “arbor shapes” (“like a pair of abstract bird wings…[they] create this channel through the middle, so it is kind of an open flyway”)

Here is Harmon talking about her set with a slideshow of sketches from her studio:

“I knew I wanted floating shapes so that it kind of related to my work and collage work… I wanted it to be real and unreal. This piece is influenced by, or inspired by the Mississippi flyway; the route of migration that birds take along the Mississippi. It is a very luxurious route for birds to take; it it kind of like a vacation in that there are no mountains; there’s not a lot of resistance, it is fertile it is fruitful, there’s water.

“I am constantly trying to move the landscape away from the real. So things like: I started with an X shape that is kind of like a cactus, but that just continues in the work to evolve. I like how graphic it is, and how awkward. [Steven] is really interested in the kind of weirdness of birds, how kind of awkward and sometimes disturbing these things can be.”

River Project, October 18-26 at Playhouse on the Square

[slideshow-1]

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Memphis Ballet Companies Perform with Renowned Artists, Receive National Attention

Memphis has a diverse and enduring dance community, and some of the cities brightest exports and most exciting regional innovations are have their roots in a full-on collision of classical dance, music, and street cultures.

In recent weeks dance fans have seen classical companies like Ballet Memphis and New Ballet Ensemble taking their place on larger stages.

New Ballet Ensemble students ages recently performed with the Memphis Symphony at the Cannon Center and 13-year-old TJ Benson joined the world renown cellest Yo-Yo Ma for the encore.

New Ballet meets Yo-Yo Ma

  • New Ballet meets Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma has previously performed with NBE alum Li’l Buck.

Meanwhile, Ballet Memphis’ River Project lands some high praise and some prime real estate in the New York Times. An excerpt:

An introductory film suggests that the plan for these three new ballets was to reflect three zones through which the river passes: one ballet (Steven McMahon’s “Confluence”) on the central area around Memphis, one on the Delta and New Orleans (Julia Adam’s “Second Line”), and another on — what? This third ballet (Matthew Neenan’s “Party of the Year”) proved the least obviously river-connected: its setting was a party in Los Angeles. This didn’t make it a disappointment, however. Instead, it was both the evening’s biggest hit and one of the most beguiling new American ballets of our day.

This week dance fans can check out Company D’s “Let it Be a Dance” or the work of MacArthur Genus grant-winning choreographer Bill T Jones, both at the Buckman.

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Was 2011 the year of the Memphis dancer?

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Lil Buck

  • Lil Buck

2010 was a great year for Memphis dancers thanks in no small part to some great headline-grabbing performances by Ballet Memphis. 2011, however, was the year of Memphis Jookin’ and Charles Lil’ Buck Riley whose molten flow is informed by sounds from Orange Mound and shot through with classical sensibilities he honed working with Katie Smythe and the New Ballet Ensemble. Madonna has spoken. And so has Yo-Yo Ma. And Margret Thatcher. And even Dance Magazine.

On top of all of that look at the love Time Out Chicago is giving to Ondine Geary.

Best. Year. Ever?

I don’t know about all that but 2012 has its work cut out.