There is just something about the ballet; the people watching (it’s a very entertaining crowd), the glass of bubbly before the show starts, the curtain rising, the live orchestra playing, and of course the ballet dancers that make the most difficult of feats seem effortless. Unfortunately, like previous performances I’ve seen at the Joffrey, the most recent performance of “Othello” left me wanting more.

Once again, Joffrey loyalists will roll their eyes when I tell them I was disappointed by the “Othello” performance. This was a completely original ballet based off of a great Shakespearean tragedy and it should have been amazing. The short teaser trailer of the performance on the Joffrey’s website was dramatic and foreboding. On the other hand, as the show began, I knew immediately that I would be left wanting. Let me first say that the dancing was beautiful. The main dancers, Othello played by Fabrice Calmels and Desdemona played by April Daly, were graceful, strong, and fluid, and exactly what you’d expect in the principal dancers. Sadly, great dancers can only do so much with what they are given, and I don’t think they were learnt much in the ways of choreography and music. The music alone was enough to make someone dislike the show. Imagine an entire 2 hour performance with drums and strings building and building and taking forever to reach a crescendo and when it does nothing happens on stage to match the power behind those notes. I equate it to sitting in a scary movie, the music building your expectations to a state of uncontrollable suspense, just waiting for the killer to jump out and attack, only to have the loud crash usually tied to a scary moment to be someone yawning on screen. What a letdown, right?

Also, the choreography was a bit too in-your-face-foreshadowing of the tumultuous and ultimately grim lover’s tale. If you went through high school and college never having read Othello or seeing the movie O, then perhaps the references weren’t so easy to pick up on, but for those of us who know the story it was about as blunt as an axe to the head. At times the duets between Othello and Desdemona just consisted of him lifting her and tossing her around like a gracefully beautiful sack of potatoes, his hands and arms lingering around her neck for an awkwardly long time. Outside of those dancers, the solos of Cassio and Iago, played by Aaron Rogers and Matthew Adamcyzk respectfully, were beautiful, but the jealousy that eventually drives Iago to his dastardly acts was so jagged and rough that it took away from the grace of a great dancer. The character of Iago seethes with jealousy, hatred, and envy but it didn’t translate as powerfully as it could have in the dancing and he ended up looking like a petulant child. All in all, the entire ballet performance was lukewarm for such a heated storyline.

So why go back? Why keep going to the ballet if I’m not going to enjoy it? It’s because I believe in this art and want to be blown away each and every time. Some of the dance companies in Chicago without nearly the endowment the Joffrey has, have left me speechless and simply blown away by their performances. I suppose I just expect the same from a company with such amazing talent as the Joffrey. So I will still go, and still hope for a performance that takes my breath away and leaves me saying ‘O.’