Creating a feeling: Sarasota Ballet world premiere seeks to evoke a sense of place

When she first came to create a new dance piece for The Sarasota Ballet last year, choreographer Gemma Bond arrived with some music and a wait-and-see attitude.

She didn’t personally know the company or the dancers, other than from seeing them perform at the Joyce Theatre in New York and talking with Director Iain Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri about the dancers' abilities.

She set up a workshop to have the dancers create movement with her so she could learn their body language and “I could get to know them in a fast way and start creating,” Bond said. The result was “Excursions,” one of three premiere pieces that opened the 2022-23 season. She describes it as “a real collaboration with dancers and myself to find where I was going to start and took it from there.”

When Bond returned to Sarasota this year to start work on her latest premiere, “Panoramic Score,” she had more ideas in mind because she was familiar with the company and what the dancers could do.

“This year, it’s different, I’ve created every single step,” she said about the piece, set to music by 20th century Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera. “I was in the studio before I came to Sarasota, listening to the music, improvising, filming myself and seeing what comes out of me, and what movements I want to do.”

She brought all that to the dancers and gave them room to add their own flourishes. But even the ideas she had in her head kept changing as she watched the dancers work on the steps.

“It’s now completely different from what I had in mind,” she said. “I need something to bring into the room. That’s where you start, but every day evolves. The new principal dancer Jennifer (Hackbarth) is just so stunning. Originally it was going to be more of a piece where everybody was just as important as the others, but she’s just so beautiful I find myself wanting to create something more for Jennifer. And Anna (Pelligrino) is just as beautiful. All that very much changed the structure.”

“Panoramic Score” is part of a season-opening program at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts that also features Frederick Ashton’s “Varri Capricci,” which the company performed last summer at the Joyce Theatre in New York, and Johan Kobborg’s “Salute,” last performed in Sarasota in 2012

Collaboration between choreographer and dancers

In a different way, “Panoramic Score” is as much a collaboration as “Excursions,” which delights the dancers.

Hackbarth, who most recently danced with the Dresden Semperoper Ballet in Germany, came to Sarasota a little more than a month ago and found herself in rehearsals with veteran company member Ricardo Rhodes, who missed the early part of last season because of an injury.

Born in Milwaukee, Hackbarth said “it feels great to be back home in America after dancing in Europe. The atmosphere here has been great and welcoming.”

Rhodes describes Bond as “fun and creative. She lets you paint the image in your head. That’s a lot of fun as a dancer. Creating with her makes you feel you’re really part of the process.”

Bond describes the piece as an abstract work that follows the feel and sound of Ginastera’s score. “He was inspired by folk music from Argentina and the landscapes. His inspiration was Stravinsky and you can hear it in there.”

With no specific story, Bond is working on feelings and images. “I think I’m mostly trying to create the idea that when you’re in a beautiful place, there are all the other elements there, so nothing is really like you see it on a postcard. It’s never a still experience. You have wind, the bugs. You can’t experience a place without really being there.”

In one sequence, Hackbarth said Rhodes “comes on and is supposed to represent the wind with me trying to manipulate the wind, and one movement gets in the wind’s way. Gemma let us work on it in our way so we’re not fitting a mold for anybody else.”

Rhodes said this kind of creative process “rounds you as a dancer. Sometimes we’re told we’re playing a character which makes it easier to find your way. With this, you have to find your own way.”

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Each dancer comes to the piece with their own process, Hackbarth said. “I think we found our own story in the abstract, found what we’re trying to say. To have something being created on you is a dancer’s dream, not having to do something a particular way or an iconic step that’s been done for hundreds of years. It’s how your body speaks and that might be different every night.”

Rhodes joked that he’s feeling old when asked about the recent retirements of principal dancers Victoria Hulland and Danielle Brown, who joined the company with him in 2007.

“Actually, I feel in really good shape. It’s sad to feel I’m the last one,” he said. “I’ve lost two really close partners and really close friends of mine and now I’ve gained a new partner. It’s only been three weeks, but it feels great dancing with Jennifer.”

‘Progress in Rep’

Sarasota Ballet program one, featuring Frederick Ashton’s “Varii Capricci,” the world premiere of Emma Bond’s “Panoramic Score” and Johan Kobborg’s “Salute.” Oct. 20-22, FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. $40-$115. 941-359-0099; sarasotaballet.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Ballet opens new season with world premiere and a new dancer