Displaying items by tag: Libby Dennen

BALLET 5:8 is a female - and minority-led ballet company resident at Harris Theatre in Millenium Park. Under the leadership of co-founder, Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer Julianna Rubio Slager the company is ‘dedicated to engaging communities in conversations of life and faith through innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance’.  Last February I saw BALLET 5:8 perform Butterfly, inspired by the diary of Helga Weiss. Each dancer depicted an actual person Helga had known during her years at the Nazi concentration camp Terezin, where Jews of special prominence and talent were sent. Helga made many paintings of the camp, which Rubio Slager projected onto the background as the terrible story evolved in dance.

I’m fascinated by Julianna Rubio Slager. She’s created more than 50 works in the past dozen years, each inspired by real people, real events, real situations that Rubio Slager feels compelled to chronicle and demonstrate, often so as to build public awareness of unknown circumstances and predicaments. Me, I’m a wordsmith –I record people and events that I see in writing; thus, my brain is always sifting words, formulating sentences as I walk through my day. One need not be a writer for this of course; I imagine many people see and experience the world around them with words, or see them as photographs, etc. But I have to wonder: what must it be like inside the brain of this woman who depicts the world around her as dance? Through BALLET 5:8 Rubio Slager gives us a glimpse of just what it’s like in there, and last Saturday night she revealed the most amazing things!

LOST WOMEN OF JUAREZ was accompanied by three additional compositions, Counterpart, Wind, and The Sea is Flat, and I’ll discuss them first.

I saw the premiere performance of Counterpart last February with Butterfly, and it was just as lovely this time. A pas de deux performed by Samuel Opsal and Elizabeth Marlin, Counterpoint explores partnership and equality to the music of genre-bending string trio Time for Three. As one might expect in a dance that celebrates the thrill of equality, Wardrobe Head Lorianne Robertson’s male and female costumes were not identical but definitely like. 

Natalie Chinn and Christian English in 'Counterpart'

WIND is aptly named; dancers in flowing skirts partner with Alfonso Peduto’s music, and we can see – can feel – the leaves dancing in the spring breeze, and whipped by the furious barrage of a stormy gale. Dancers in the first and third movements included Lorianne Robertson, Caedence Sajdowitz, Savannah Stach, Jonathan Bostelman, Ellington Nichols, Rachel Walker, Alessia Braggiato, Katrina Clarke, Ford Tackett, Christian English and Samuel Opsal. In the second movement Bostelman, Tackett, and English performed a pas de trois  [I do so love all-male pas de deux and trois!).

The Sea is Flat was an incredibly evocative piece, capturing the sea’s capricious nature while simultaneously depicting its tumultuous essence to the music of Ezio Bosso. One sees chaos and tranquility juxtaposed was the male dancers portray Poseidon, while the female principals bring peace, transformation, and faith, drawing the audience as well as dancers toward serene silence. The cast included Caedence Sajdowitz, Jonathan Bostelman, Ellington Nichols, Katrina Clarke, Valerie Linsner, Sarah Clarke, Libby Dennen, Elizabeth Marlin, Melanie Rodriguez, Lezlie Gray, Sophia Snider, Natalie Chinn, Kayla Kowach, Christian English, Sam Opsal, Jenni Richards, Maggie DeGroote, and John Szwast.

OK, now to LOST WOMEN OF JUÁREZ. Julianna would definitely want me to tell you the story behind the ballet:

El Paso is a factory town, and the factories maximize profit by hiring poor Mexican women for paltry pay.  As non-citizens – and, of course, as women – they have no leverage to demand fair wages and must take any work available to feed their families. These impoverished women live in Mexico, in Ciudad Juárez, and must take public transportation through rough areas to reach El Paso.  In the borderlands between and El Paso and home women are mysteriously disappearing, their corpses later found in the desert but never fully investigated. I’m reminded of MMIW and the thousands of Indigenous Women and girls who are Missing or Murdered yet never effectively investigated. MMIW Task Force attributes these grim matters to historical trauma, racism, and sexual objectification of women … and the same applies in Juárez. The ballet employs the music of Oscar Lopez, Vico C, Antonio Garcia Isaac, Stefan, and Cortando Troncos to tell the story tenderly and with compelling urgency, as this femicide must not continue! 

Change can’t begin until there is widespread awareness of the need for change. The Transtheoretical Stages of Change model describes the process of change beginning at the precontemplation stage, in which there is not yet an awareness that a problem and a need for change even exists. Obviously, with the public at large still unaware of the femicide in Juárez, there is scant impetus for change.  

Taking the first step towards change is the same for an individual or a society: advancement from precontemplation to contemplation requires education. This is what Julianna Rubio Slager is doing with LOST WOMEN OF JUÁREZ – she is instructing the world of this issue to bring justice for the dead women, to alert other women of their peril and, most crucially, to enlighten the public that there is indeed a problem – a calamity! – that urgently needs to be changed.  And she does all this through the medium of dance. Wow.

Rubio Slager lost a family member, Yolanda Soto Rubio, to this mass murder, and Rubio Slager writes herself into the production, danced by Valerie Lisner; Elizabeth Marlin dances the part of the murdered Yolanda Soto Rubio. The dancers represent real women, the dead and the mourners: Lily Alejandra Garcia (Sarah Clarke), Luz Angelica Mena Flores (Libby Dennen), Jessica Ivone Padilla Cuellar (Melanie Rodriguez), Maria Guadalupe Perez Montes (Lezlie Gray), Gabriella Espinoza Ibarra (Jenni Richards), Esmerelda Castillo Rincon (Natalie Chinn), Ingrid Escamilla (Sophia Snider), Adriana Sarmiento Enríquez (Rachel Walker), Griselda Murua Lopez (Kayla Kowach), and Danna Jaqueline Reyes Lopez (Darissy Matias). The LOST WOMEN OF JUÁREZ trace patterns of grief across the stage, against background projections showing glimpses of Juárez and fields of crosses scattered over the desert sands. The slain women have become one with the sand, and their devastated family and friends bring grains of sand to their mouths to incorporate and embrace their lost loved ones.

Lighting, designed by Julianna Rubio Slager and Mike Goebel, was vital to every performance. Rubio Slager has a long-standing interest in stage design, evident in every piece. Lorianne Robertson designed all costumes to be eloquent while remaining as simple as possible.

BALLET 5:8 habitually follows the production with Talkback, where Rubio Slager and a selection of the dancers are available to discuss their experiences of the dances and answer questions. The dancers are gallantly open and frank about how they embody their roles and how that embodiment affects and changes them, while Julianna Rubio Slager candidly reveals her motivations and processes. In a touching coda Rubio Slager announced the promotion of Jonathan Bostelman and Lezlie Gray from Company Artists to Soloists.

A spectator remarked that the cast of LOST WOMEN OF JUÁREZ is all female, which Rubio Slager acknowledged was a conscious decision: the work is about the victims, and she has no inclination to give attention and salience to the villains. Another attender asked about the music, which Rubio Slager admitted was a complex issue – for every composition she must acquire consent to use the piece. Luckily, she adores music and listens to it constantly; if she finds a piece intriguing, she may seek proprietary rights even before knowing exactly where or how she will employ it.

The entire program is performed with intense passion and fervor, depicting ecstasy and anguish, fury and tranquility, with such intensity and authenticity that the cast undertakes but a single performance of each production. Very sad!! But I strongly recommend you join BALLET 5:8’s emailing list so you won’t miss the next production of a Julianna Rubio Slager’s masterpiece!

The ballet BUTTERFLY: HOPE IN THE TEREZIN GHETTO was inspired by the diary of Holocaust surviver Helga Weiss. The concept, choreography, and Lighting Design of BUTTERFLY are the work of Julianna Rubio Slager, Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer at BALLET 5-8. Two shorter ballets formed the first portion of the program: WIND, choreographed by Steve Rooks, and COUNTERPART, another creation of Julianna Rubio Slager, who was also Lighting Designer for all productions.

WIND is aptly named; dancers in flowing skirts partner with Alfonso Peduto’s music, and we see – even feel – the movement of spring leaves dancing delicately in the gentle breeze, and the furious barrage of a stormy gale. Dancers in the first and third movements included Miranda Rubio Opsal, Lorianne Robertson, Kayla Kowach, Libby Dennen, Natalie Chinn, Jenni Richards, Katrina Clarke, Ford Tackett, Christian English and Samuel Opsal. The second movement was a pas de trois with Jonathan Bostelman, Ford Tackett, and Christian English.

COUNTERPOINT explored partnership and the thrill of equality, a pas de deux performed by Samuel Opsal and Elizabeth Marlin to the music of genre-bending string trio Time for Three. I particularly liked Wardrobe Head Lorianne Robertson’s costumes: stark black lines forming geometrical shapes on pale peach leotards. As one might expect in a dance that celebrates equality, the male and female costumes were like but not identical.

To  return to BUTTERFLY:

The ballet takes place in various locations at Terezin, differentiated using props and, most of all, projections. The projections were created by Juliana Rubio Slager with the assistance of Annika Graham and Jeremy Slager, and each projection depicted the paintings and drawings Weiss created while imprisoned at Terezin. The fourteen cast members represent actual persons whom Helga Weiss knew in Terezin. Of these fourteen, nine perished, chiefly in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

A little historical background may be helpful here. Terezin was originally a holiday resort near Prague, reserved for Czech nobility. In 1940 the Gestapo turned the resort into a Jewish concentration camp and ghetto. Terezin was unique in that many of the detainees were scholars, artists, scientists, philosophers, and musicians. This  made Terezin a cultural camp unlike any others, earning it the sobriquet ‘Paradise Ghetto’.

More than 150,000 Jews were detained at Terezin for months or years before being sent “East”, to Treblinka, Majdanak, and Auschwitz extermination camps. 90,000 Terezin detainees were deported; 33,000 died in Terezin itself and, of 15,000 children, less than 150 survived.

Terezin was heavily propagandized by the Nazis. BUTTERFLY depicts the most notorious disinformation campaign, the “Great Beautification” of 1944, in response to Danish King Christian’s demand for a Red Cross inspection of Terezin.

The Nazis transformed Terezin for the inspection, planting gardens and renovating barracks, building shops, cafes, and playgrounds. Social and cultural events were staged for the visiting dignitaries, and the delegation was led along a painstakingly groomed route through the camp. The Red Cross reported to King Christian that Terezin was indeed quite pleasant, its inmates happy and healthy.

King Christian actively resisted Nazi deportation of Danish Jews; stating “one Dane is like another”, and wearing the yellow star symbol himself. However, Good King Christian also volunteered his own army to assist the Gestapo in rounding up gay Danes; their badge was a pink triangle and they received the same treatment at concentration camps as did Jews.

Just sayin’.

At the risk of sounding repetitious, back to BUTTERFLY.

The props were minimal but eloquent and the projections were magnificent – depicting scenes painted by Helga in Terezin, showing stone walls and concertina wire, horribly crowded bunks, piles of suitcases. Each scene of the ballet corresponded to a date in Helga’s diary, with quotations from the diary in our programs. Helga was twelve (young Helga danced by Ellington Nichols) when she arrived at Terezin in October 1941 and met her mentor Friedl Dicker-Brandeisˢ (Valerie Linsner). Again, each dancer depicted an actual historical person: teacher Irma Lauscherˢ (Lorianna Robertson), musician/conductor Rafael Schachter (Samuel Opsal), Jewish leader Heinrich Veit Simmons (Melanie Rodriguez), Pavel and Malvina Brandeisova (Christian English and Lezlie Gray); Mr. Kˢ, survivor of Nazi medical experimentation (Jonathan Bostelman), Helga’s father Otto Weisˢ (Ford Tackett) and mother Irena Fuschsovaˢ (Caedence Sajdowitz), while Miranda Rubio Opsal danced the part of Helga as an adult. The cast included four children: Zuzana Winterova (Libby Dennen), Eva Bulova (Sarah Clarke), Honza Trechlinger (John Szwast), Petr Ginz (Kayla Kowach), and Hannah Messingerˢ (Sophia Snider), the sole surviving child.

[NOTE: the symbol ˢ depicts those who survived Terezin.]

It must have been difficult dancing the parts of the so-easily duped Red Cross Delegates: Maurice Rossel (Analiese Hunter), Agnes Detlefsen (Rachel Walker) and Cecilie Kaas (Marissa Woo). Even more difficult but brilliantly performed were the four Nazi soldiers: Oberaufseherin Hildegard Neumann (Elizabeth Marlin), Oberaufseherin Elisabeth Schmidt (Katrina Clarke), Frau Gretel (Natalie Chinn) and Frau Marie [inspired by Caecilia Rojko] (Jenni Richards).

Helga was sustained by the heroic work of Friedl-Dicker Brandeis and Irma Lauscher; her story and artwork bear witness to the horror of the Nazi regime.  Even more so, BUTTERFLY celebrates Helga’s work as metaphor, a symbol of how the Jews of Terezin endured unimaginable brutality and atrocious privation through ART.

The music of BUTTERFLY includes sections composed by Terezin residents Gideon Klein and Hans Krasa, (both perished at Auschwitz); also works by Lorne Balfe, Thomas Oboe Lee, Clare Reitz, Alexander Shonert, Bedrich Smetana and Giuseppe Verde. The ballet’s name, BUTTERFLY, memorializes a poem by that name written in 1942 by Pavel Friedmann, who perished at Auschwitz September 29 1944.

One is aghast at the art that was irretrievably lost in the Holocaust. Rafael Schachter composed Defiant Requiem; its haunting performance for the Red Cross representatives was of course unrecorded and now will never be heard; Schachter perished in the 1945 Death March.

And what of all the genius extinguished before it could even be manifest? How many unrealized Rafael Schachters, Rosalind Franklins, Ignaz Semmelweis’, Howard Shores, Alexander Flemings, Emma Lazarus’, Marc Chagals, Marcel Prousts, Fritz Habers, Albert Einsteins, Leonard Bernsteins, Herman Wouks, Camille Pissarros, Gertrude Steins, Gustav Mahlers…

[I could go on for many pages before running out of Jewish geniuses, even if I only list those that are household names.]

BUTTERFLY is testament to the strength and resilience people in dire straits can derive from Art.

Similar strength and resilience were demonstrated after the performance in “The TALKBACK”, a special Ballet 5:8 tradition occurring directly after the performance, wherein Artistic Director Juliana Rubio Slager and Artists of the Company hold an open panel discussion. Each panel member described a particular scene or event that spoke to them personally. Most of the artists were in tears, as were many in the audience. Audiences were invited to ask questions; most revealed themselves as descendants of Holocaust. The panel was fully as moving as the performance.

There was but a single performance and it was poorly attended.

I don’t want to know the sort of people who missed BUTTERFLY in favor of the Superbowl.