Tag: Steven McMahon

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Ballet Memphis’ Dracula Returns to the Stage

Ballet Memphis’ Dracula (Photo: Ziggy Mack)

Ready your garlic, sharpen your stakes, and replenish your Holy Water stock because Ballet Memphis is kicking off its 38th season with Dracula this weekend.

Inspired by Bram Stoker’s novel, Ballet Memphis’ performance features original choreography by artistic director Steven McMahon, with original music, set design by Beowulf Borritt and Nate Bertone, and costumes by Hogan McLaughlin. This will be the second time Dracula hits the stage with Ballet Memphis, having premiered back in 2022 to great fanfare.

“The community response to it last time was just fantastic,” says Ballet Memphis president and CEO Gretchen Wollert McLennon. “We thought we’d be bringing it back in three or four years, but we had such a great community response to it that we brought it back only two years later.”

Dracula, it turns out, translates perfectly to ballet. “You take a story like Dracula, which already has so much emotion behind it,” Wollert McLennon says, “and you just can imagine that a story that has that much depth to it, the opportunity then to explore it physically as artists and dancers really just takes that story to another level, right? So we’re feeling it. We’re seeing it in ways that allow Bram Stoker’s classic story to really come alive.

“Our sets and costumes are intentionally very simple so that the performance really immerses you in the thrill of the story of Dracula, and the dread and expectation that the story builds is really resonant in our work.”

The production is less than two hours, and attendees are encouraged to vamp it up by wearing a Halloween costume. The performance is not recommended for guests 12 and under.

Up next on Ballet Memphis’ schedule, though, is The Nutcracker, a 40-year, family-friendly tradition for the company. “Everyone loves The Nutcracker,” says Wollert McLennon, “and we love bringing it to the community because it brings families together. Sometimes the only time people experience dance in their lives is that moment when their parents took them, their grandmother took them, their neighbor took them. And so we know how important it is to everyone at this time of year; it’s really a centerpiece of everyone’s holiday tradition.”

Last year, Ballet Memphis introduced new costumes and set designs, plus a few new Memphis elements to the story, and the company will continue with these changes this December.   

In February, Ballet Memphis will perform its Winter Mix, which will be a mixed repertory of contemporary and balletic dance, and in April comes the company’s Angels in the Architecture, a double bill of works by master choreographers and composers. For more information on the upcoming season and to purchase tickets, visit balletmemphis.org.  

Dracula, Orpheum Theatre, 203 S. Main, Friday-Saturday, October 25-26, 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, October 28, 2 p.m., $16-$91.

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Ballet Memphis Live and in Person (At Last)

Ballet Memphis rehearsal. Photo by Ziggy Mack.

Ballet Memphis’ first in-person program in a little over a year is “Paquita in the Park,” a program of three diverse works that will be done on the stage of the Levitt Shell this weekend.

“The dancers are so excited to perform in front of a live audience,” said Steven McMahon, artistic director of Ballet Memphis. “‘Paquita in the Park’ is outdoors, and the audience will be socially distanced, so it is not quite a return to ‘normal,’ but it feels like we are working our way towards it.”

The program will include:

Water of the Flowery Mill, choreographed by Matthew Neenan. The ballet was inspired by the Arshile Gorky painting of the same name, and is set to music by Tchaikovsky.

Being Here With Other People, choreographed by McMahon, is set to music by Beethoven.

Paquita, the ballet classic, is being staged by Julie Marie Niekrasz and McMahon after the choreography of Marius Petipa.

“We are optimistic about the future and hope that we will be able to present a regular season later this year,” McMahon said. “Until then, we are thrilled to be able to share our work in this capacity.”

The performance is an hour and a half and will include two short intermissions.

Attendees can bring lawn chairs, blankets, and picnic baskets, or get food from food trucks that will sell only prepackaged food.

There is a reduced capacity of 400 tickets per show per Health Department guidelines, and masks are required.

Performances are 7 p.m. on Friday, April 9th and Saturday, April 10th. Gates open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $15 on the Ballet Memphis website.

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Theater Theater Feature

Lights! Camera! Nutcracker!

Pivot is a common term in dance, but at Ballet Memphis, it’s taken on a crucial new meaning. In these days of pandemic, it means taking a reliable annual favorite (Nutcracker) and reimagining how it can be presented with all the grace, charm, music, and wonder people are accustomed to, while keeping things safe for the performers and audience.

“When nothing is certain, anything is possible,” says Gretchen McLennon, CEO and president of Ballet Memphis. “For some people, Nutcracker is it for them, a holiday show that is their entrée into ballet and Ballet Memphis. It might be the only time we see them all year, but they’re committed to it.”

So she gathered the staff and asked how to get it out into the community. At first, there was the idea of doing a video of the stage performance, but McLennon wanted something different. “Ours is a more immersive, cinematic version,” she says. 

Rather than on the Orpheum stage, this production was filmed at the Mallory-Neely House and at Ballet Memphis. And its first showing will be Friday, December 11th, on WKNO-TV, free for all to see.

For Ballet Memphis artistic director Steven McMahon, the task was to significantly adapt the choreography for a shorter and slimmed down version of the classic. The usual huge cast has dozens of children, but because of safety considerations, the scenes with the little ones are absent. There were other parameters as well, a key one being that the dancers weren’t partnering with each other, so it is solos all around. Further, the party scene of Act One was restaged to fit the contours of the Mallory-Neely House.

Mei Kotani as Clara in Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

“There were obviously limitations in space and how we use the space and where you could dance and how you could dance,” McMahon says. “And even the camera can become the dancer at a certain point.”

It was an additional challenge to bring in the filmmakers who literally provide different perspectives and methods to the process. “I would stage something that I thought looked okay,” McMahon says, “but then you would see the camera angle and it’d be beautiful and so warm and inviting and not what I’m imagining, but so much better with the choice of lighting or camera movement.”

For the performers, it was a different mind-set entirely. Dancers are accustomed to one-and-done. “When they do something, then it’s done, whether it was good or bad,” McMahon says. “But here they would film it from one angle and then the whole thing from another angle. It was challenging to keep their energy up and to keep their consistency. But they rallied behind it. Nutcracker performances are special to people and the dancers want more than anything to dance.”

That’s why the performers were willing to do things differently during the production as well as to go through the process of testing, of wearing masks until the moment the camera started rolling, to slip it back on when the director said, “Cut!”

There are other benefits to having Nutcracker on a different-than-usual medium. “We have seven or eight international dancers [who] could not get home this year,” McLennon says. But now that the film version will be online, far-away friends and relatives will be able to see the dancers perform in a year that has largely taken that privilege away.

Cecily Khuner as the Dew Drop Fairy in Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

McLennon had been tapped some time ago to succeed Ballet Memphis founder Dorothy Gunther Pugh in the summer. She has long been involved with the organization and the idea was she knew it well enough to keep it vital. But the status quo fell victim to a global health crisis and clearly the immediate mission McLennon faced was to weather the situation and maybe even make the most of it.

Looking ahead, she says, “I think everyone recognizes we’re in a pandemic and arts organizations just want to be present and be part of their community and still top of mind. There’s grace and mercy around how people are monetizing this year for us to build friends and keep engagement going.”

Brandon Ramey as Herr Stahlbaum and Eileen Frazer as Frau Stahlbaum in Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

In February, Ballet Memphis will release additional virtual installments that are part of the “Say It” series of six short dance films by company members. Usually in April there’s a major presentation at the Orpheum, but that won’t happen in this atypical year. But there will be an alternative. “We all have to be flexible and be ready and be nimble for changing circumstances,” McLennon says. “Maybe in April we could do a ticketed event at an outdoor venue, like the Botanic Garden, like the Grove at GPAC, and offer a night or perhaps even a weekend of dance. Our dancers are so hungry to perform live again.”

Ballet Memphis’ Nutcracker

Friday, December 11th, at 8 p.m. on WKNO-TV. Subsequent TV showings are listed here. 

Then beginning at 8 a.m. on Saturday, December 12th, and throughout the holiday season it’s available for streaming on the Ballet Memphis website.

New Ballet Ensemble’s Nut Remix

The production starring Charles “Lil Buck” Riley will screen at the Malco Summer Avenue Drive-In December 10th and 17th. Set on Beale Street, Nut Remix is a modern reinvention of Tchaikovsky’s classic Nutcracker. The fundraiser is a pay-what-you-can event to support scholarships at New Ballet. Gates open at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 6:30 p.m. Tickets must be purchased online in advance here.

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Intermission Impossible Theater

Steven McMahon Named Artistic Director Of Ballet Memphis

CREDIT: Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue

Steven McMahon and Dorothy Gunther Pugh at grand opening of new Ballet Memphis headquarters.

“I long ago recognized that I needed to groom the right person to guard what we have built and what we value at Ballet Memphis,” Ballet Memphis’s founding CEO Dorothy Gunther Pugh was quoted as saying in a prepared statement about the dancer and choreographer who will succeed her as artistic director. The person in question is Ballet Memphis’s 34-year-old Associate Artistic Director Steven McMahon.

“Steven has come up through this organization and grown as a dancer and dance-maker; he’s the best choice as well as the right choice,” Pugh concluded.

McMahon, who has choreographed more than 30 works for Ballet Memphis including, favorites like The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan, officially assumes his new position July 1st. Pugh will continue her work at Ballet Memphis as CEO.

Video: McMahon discussed choreographing a past production of Romeo & Juliet for Ballet Memphis:

Steven McMahon Named Artistic Director Of Ballet Memphis

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Ballet Memphis’ Places

Ballet Memphis is in an interesting place right now, both physically and metaphorically. There’s currently an empty, freshly grated lot at the northeast corner of Madison and Cooper, where the dilapidated French Quarter Inn once stood, and it won’t be long before construction begins there on the growing dance company’s new permanent headquarters. Last fall found Ballet Memphis on tour, visiting Washington, D.C., and Manhattan, earning rave reviews along the way. New York Times dance writer Alastair Macaulay was surprised by the places choreographers took the dancing, claiming that the company “shatters basic rules,” with work that is “unorthodox, peculiar, fresh, and large-spirited.” This week the dancers of Ballet Memphis will essay where they’ve been, where they are now, and where they’re going in greater detail with Places, the first installment in a series of new works by young choreographers.

Ballet Memphis

In his descriptions of the work, Ballet Memphis dancer and choreographer Steven McMahon has made it clear that Places isn’t just about geographical locations. It also considers moments in time and stages of life. “It’s a fascinating topic to explore through dance, literally and physically,” he said.

McMahon curated Places, bringing together new work by Arch Dance Company’s founding director Jennifer Archibald, Princess Grace choreography award-winner Gabrielle Lamb, and Dallas-based dance star Joshua L. Peugh.

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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

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