Classic Oz, Snow White to dance at Adler

Ballet Quad Cities will present a special double bill for their final performances this season.

“Dorothy Goes to Oz,” choreographed by artistic associate Emily Kate Long, and a new “Snow White,” created by artistic director Courtney Lyon, will be danced at Davenport’s Adler Theatre on Saturday, April 13, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.

“Dorothy” was first done on the lawn of the Outing Club, Davenport, in September 2021, and used as a bullying prevention program in a three-year partnership with Pleasant Valley schools.

Choreographed by Emily Kate Long, it has a variety of musical selections, but none from the classic 1939 film, “The Wizard of Oz.”

Dorothy is portrayed by Kira Roberts, the whirling tornado at the start will be embodied by Sahsha Amaut, Stephanie Eggers, Jayne Friscia, Madeline Kreszenz and Jillian Van Cura.

Glinda the Good Witch is Eleanor Ambler, the Scarecrow is Madeleine Rhode, Tin Man is Christian Knopp, Cowardly Lion is Mahalia Zellmer and Wicked Witch is Sierra DeYoung.

“This version is very bright, fun and animated,” Lyon said Tuesday. It’s never been done at the Adler before.

The story is about friends who are very different from each other, finding a common bond.

Saturday, the “Dorothy” ballet is about half an hour and “Snow White” is 37 minutes.

DeYoung is in her third BQC season, and her credits include Kansas City Youth Ballet, Oklahoma City Ballet, and two seasons with Northwest Arkansas Ballet Theatre.

She was in the first “Dorothy” ballet, then dancing in the tornado and one of the flying monkeys. The tornado features a lot of circular movement, spinning, and creating pathways to pull Dorothy.

“When you spend so much time together, you can really feel the movement together, and the energy that everybody has,” DeYoung said Tuesday.

“I’m very excited about it,” she said of getting to do it with the lighting of the Adler. The tornado costumes are black, white and gray.

DeYoung also is thrilled now to be the Wicked Witch, as a big fan of the musical “Wicked” (which she’s seen live three times). Jillian Van Cura was the witch the first time (they basically switched roles).

“It is pretty fun. Jill and I have done a lot of dancing together and shared a lot of roles,” DeYoung said. “It’s fun to have the person who created the role still here. When I was watching the video, she is like a living resource I can go back to.”

She’s not in green makeup but has the big pointy black hat.

Long told her the witch never had to work very hard for what she wants, and she shoots magic out of her fingers, DeYoung said.

She prefers the traditional indoor venue compared to being outdoors on the lawn.

“There’s something so magical about being in the theater, getting ready on stage, getting ready in the dressing room. It’s the classic, magical pre-show routine,” DeYoung said. “Our Outing Club shows are a ton of fun though, but the traffic noise can get crazy sometimes. There’s also something so fun and freeing, certain pieces I absolutely loved performing outside.”

On the lawn, they used the natural setting as part of the story, with the bushes, she said.

A new ballet, old tale

“Snow White” is the 1812 retelling of an old German fairytale by the Brothers Grimm where a young princess is so beautiful that her evil and jealous stepmother, the Queen, decides to kill her. However, Snow White’s purity and beauty (inside and out) protect her, and good overcomes evil. This all-new reimagined production by Courtney Lyon for Ballet Quad Cities features a musical montage of Austrian composers Gustav Mahler and Anton Webern and German composer Richard Strauss.

Lyon came up with the concept two years ago. Doing a new narrative ballet is not that common in the ballet world, she said.

“That trend disappeared in the 20^th century and I think it’s really important to do story ballets, new ones, but the tricky thing is there’s not necessarily a score,” Lyon said, noting she did something similar for “Alice in Wonderland.”

When she was a kid, she read the iconic Brothers Grimm fairy tales over and over, and the imagery stuck in her head.

“The opening lines and images of ‘Snow White’ I found so beautiful, about nature,” Lyon said. “This is like a literary feast for me to turn into a ballet. There are so many images.”

The role of the poison ivy are like the evil queen’s henchmen (here henchwomen), played by Eleanor Ambler, Sierra DeYoung, Stephanie Eggers and Kira Roberts. Madeleine Rhode is the evil queen, Sahsha Amaut is Snow White and seven spirits of the forest represent the creator of magic, shadow, water, breeze, moss, time, and light, serving as Snow White’s protectors.

Amaut is completing her first season with BQC, after starting her professional career as a trainee with the American Repertory Ballet of Princeton, N.J., and dancing with Springfield Ballet Company in Illinois.

“There are vines of jealousy that grow, like weeds,” Lyon said of poison ivy in the story, an extension of the queen’s jealousy. “It affects people around you. So I wanted these vines that wind around the queen, wind around the mirror. They dance really large when her emotions are large.”

“They tell her everything she wants to hear; they’re her ego,” she added.

There are no dwarfs in this ballet, as in the famous 1937 Walt Disney film.

“I thought the imagery and symbolism of nature in the 1812 story was so strong, I wanted to keep that component of nature as a thread throughout the entire ballet,” Lyon said.

Snow White goes deep into the forest to find safety, and she’s kept alive.

All seven of the spirits have distinct ways of moving, all quirky and unique, Lyon said. “They are so endearing, they have sweet personalities,” she said.

In the ballet, the queen orders a huntsman to take Snow White into the woods to kill her and bring back her heart as proof. The huntsman has compassion for Snow White and lets her go, bringing back instead the heart of a boar, which the queen eats. Snow White finds safety deep in the forest surrounded by nature and benevolent spirits. When the queen finds out through the mirror that Snow White is still living, she tries to kill Snow White herself with a poisoned apple. After Snow White eats the apple, her spirit friends are not able to revive her.

They think she is dead but cannot bear to bury her, so they put her in a glass coffin. The huntsman is traveling through the forest, searching for Snow White. When he sees Snow White in the coffin, he gently takes her in his arms. The movement causes the poisoned apple to dislodge from Snow White’s throat. She wakes, and the huntsman declares his love for her. The Evil Queen is stripped of her beauty as justice for trying to kill Snow White.

Lyon wanted composers from similar time periods, later than when the story was. Mahler and Webern were Austrian, and Strauss were German, all depicting nature. The Strauss is from his Alpine Symphony (1915), the Mahler is from his Fifth Symphony (1901-02), and Webern from his Six Pieces for Orchestra and Four Pieces for Violin and Piano.

This “Snow White” would work outside, but the lighting and the use of a mirror and scrim will be very dramatic at the Adler, DeYoung said. “The lighting will be very impactful and the staging I think is going to be very good on a traditional stage.”

She’s going to be one of the poison vines (also another kind of wicked green).

“We are something tangible and visible, something that can be seen by everybody, but we are connected to the evil queen and are very much doing her bidding,” DeYoung said. “And are her emotions.”

“When we do things together, I feel like was done very purposefully, to depict intense feelings,” she said.

DeYoung loves Lyon’s version, with the spirits of the forest. “It’s so much more clear to depict their individuality, when you give them an element to go off of.”

“They each have a distinct way of moving,” DeYoung added. “They have a unique way of doing it themselves, in their own personality.”

“It’s going to be a very fun show. One half is definitely more light-hearted and ‘Snow White’ very much has a serious tone, and a more nature tone. It’s very fun to hit both sides of that in a production.”

Next season

Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” (1910) will be done next April at the Adler. Lyon originally did Stravinsky’s three main ballets with BQC (“Rite of Spring,” “Firebird” and “Petrushka” in 2014-16), bringing back “Rite” in April 2023.

As icing on the cake to next season, BQC is partnering with the Quad City Symphony Orchestra in a special presentation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Felix Mendelssohn in November 2024 at the Adler.

That will be the first Masterworks the ballet has been part of in about 20 years, Lyon said. They will dance in front of the orchestra, with the full company.

“We’ve never done it here. I am really excited,” she said of the classic Shakespeare story. “It’s a great opportunity to see different Quad-City organizations come together and support us.”

“I love ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ I got to do it the season before I came here,” DeYoung said of an early 2021 production in Arkansas. “It was a pre-recording and we did not have a symphony we worked with.”

The complete BQC 2024-25 season will be:

• Ballet on the Lawn — Aug. 25, 2024 at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., The Outing Club, Davenport.

• The Twisted Tales of Poe – Oct. 19, 2024 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., The Spotlight Theatre, Moline.

• The Nutcracker – Dec. 14 at 2 and 7 p.m., Dec. 15 at 2 p.m., Adler Theatre, Davenport.

• Love Stories (including “Carmen”) – Feb. 22, 2025 at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 23 at 2 p.m., Galvin Fine Arts Center, Davenport.

• The Firebird – April 12, 2025 at 2 and 7 p.m., Adler Theatre, Davenport.

For tickets and more information, visit the BQC website HERE.

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