On Your Toes at Reprise! and State Street Ballet's Carmen

I don't normally go for the old, "golden age" classic musicals, but I found Reprise's production of On Your Toes, which opened at UCLA's Freud Playhouse last Wednesday, to be completely and irresistibly delightful. Oh sure, all the corniness and plot inconsistencies that make me roll my eyes at the old shows are still there, but the Rogers & Hart score is so joyfully buoyant and the energetic staging, briskly directed by Dan Mojica and cleverly choreographed by Lee Martino, kept things moving so quickly that I couldn't help but be swept away.

The plot involves a music professor - a former child prodigy vaudeville dancer - who rediscovers his joy for dancing when he inadvertently becomes involved with a Russian ballet troupe (a la the several Ballet Russes companies that toured the country between WWI and WWII); a love quadrangle ensues between the ballerina and her jealous dance partner/lover, and the music professor and his sweet voiced protege.

As the proceedings careen towards predictable conclusions, we get two full on ballets (one of them a take off of Scheherezade complete with pointe work), boppy tunes, and a flood of tap dancing. There is just a ton of dancing in this show - even, one might add, where you wouldn't expect it to be, like in a music theory class ("The 3 B's," where the students keep switching desks in syncopation - but you go for it because you so delight in seeing the ensemble switch seats so happily). "On Your Toes" was particularly memorable: a tap vs. ballet battle that builds towards a delirious climax. As a dance fan, I couldn't help but enjoy myself at all this choreography - which was, by the way, brilliantly executed by a peppy and attractive ensemble.

Jeffry Denman was Professor Dolan, a terrific tap dancer and a tall leading-man type in that old-fashioned musical kind of way, and Beth Malone was Frankie Frayne, his sweet voiced love interest. Malone had a gorgeous, melodious voice, though her performance was hindered by the frumpy costumes and wigs she was given to wear. Yvette Tucker was an absolute hoot as Vera Baranova, the divaish prima ballerina. Amusingly for, she resembled Diana Vishneva, one of my favorite real-life Russian prima ballerinas who may or may not be a diva backstage (haven't heard anything...). Stefanie Powers played the manager of the Russian ballet company, the woman with the purse strings, and she actually had title credit on this production - but it was the ensemble and the songs that took the spotlight for the evening.

The Reprise! series began as a season of semi-staged concerts, not unlike the Encores series in New York, where rarely seen old shows were trundled out for brief runs. Over time, the shows have become more and more elaborately staged: the recent Sunday in the Park with George starring Kelli O'Hara and Manoelo Felciano was about as close to a full production as could be on a shoestring budget, and this On Your Toes didn't have a full complement of scenery but it sure as hell got the full staging/choreography treatment. Their shows can be hit or miss depending on the material - Sunday and On Your Toes have been great, but others, like a recent George Gershwin production have been, well, not great. With new artistic director Jason Alexander at the helm, will things get more elaborate? Time will tell...

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STATE STREET BALLET, a small troupe of eager professionals from Santa Barbara, performed its full-length production of Carmen at the outdoor Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood on Friday night. I was impressed with the company for its size and reach, dancing with technical sturdiness and a fair amount of dramatic conviction, though the men should tone down the over-intense Soviet style glaring. The production, choreographed by William Soleau, didn't honestly give them a whole lot to do - there were intimate moments between two or three dancers that showed very intriguing interpretations of the Carmen story (the ballet's plot hews closely to that of Bizet's original opera, from which orchestral adaptations by Rodion Schedrin and Bizet are used as the ballet score), but was largely overstuffed with long passages of boring ensemble filler. Evidently, the production was originally a one-act 45-minute ballet; I think I would have liked better than this full evening extravaganza.

I might have completely skipped going to this show all together had Andre (a fellow ballet fan) not alerted me to its existence, and to the fact that Corina Gill of Los Angeles Ballet would be dancing the leading role. In LA Ballet's two Balanchine programs she made quite an impression, but those roles were abstract while Carmen - in any version of the Carmen ballet - would require acting. So I was curious, and it worked. Except everytime she started doing something interesting there would be more ensemble filler and my mind would wander again.

The Ford Amphitheatre is a lovely, intimate outdoor venue nestled into the Hollywood hills across the 101 freeway from the Hollywood Bowl - but it really isn't well-suited for dance. The stage is a cramped, mutli-level stage platform that confines most of the dancing to a small trapezoidal area up front. The dancers had to navigate platforms and stone steps to get around, so needless to say, performing conditions were not ideal. Concerts are great here, in the close atmosphere, and itt might be nice to see a musical or something in that outdoor space, though (there will be a concert staging of Chess, benefitting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS on Sept. 15).