HQ Review: Ballet 314’s “Fall Fête: Twisted Tales”

​St. Louis dance companies have packed this month’s calendar with their first shows of the 2023-2024 dance season.  The most recent company to present their opening performance is Ballet 314 with Fall Fête: Twisted Tales, held on Saturday, October 21 in the Strauss Blackbox Theater at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Centre.  Now in its second year, Fall Fête was a mixed bill show that featured three separate works performed in an intimate setting, as well as a fundraising event for the company.  This review will cover the evening performance, which included an elegant pre-show cocktail hour and post-show reception, as well as brief talks from company directors Rachel Bodi and Robert Poe.  Fall Fête celebrated Ballet 314’s growth as a company and took the audiences’ breath away with gorgeous dancing and engaging stories behind the pieces performed.

The performance opened with “Whispers of Autumn,” choreographed by Artistic Director Robert Poe.  Featured in last year’s Fall Fête, this newly expanded ballet piece began with dim lighting and silent movement, starting with a lone couple onstage in a slow and steady lift and gradually built to all 12 dancers silently dancing with supple port de bras and organic pathways as they traveled around the stage.  The silence dissipated as ambient music, the sound of chirping birds, and brighter lighting gradually integrated their way into the piece, which eventually led to Vivaldi’s familiar strings music of “The Four Seasons.”  The dancers represented the seasons autumn and summer, as designated by their costumes.  Autumn dancers wore hues of gold and sienna, with skirts that floated like autumn leaves in the wind, and featured the ladies dancing en pointe.  Summer dancers wore gold and kelly green, which reflected the spritely choreography of a bright summer day.  All of the Summer dancers performed in flat shoes.  The choreography featured well executed pointe work, effortless turns, lively footwork, and some floor work, all performed with a contemporary flare.  Each dancer performed a brief solo moment toward the end of the piece as the music crescendoed in volume.  The piece concluded in a parallel manner to how it began, with soft music that slowly died away as the lights faded to blackness.
 
After a brief welcome from directors Rachel Bodi and Robert Poe, the evening continued with “Until the Last Drop of Ink,” a contemporary ballet duet choreographed by company dancer Marcela Gomez Lugo.  Beginning with a lone wooden desk and chair onstage lit by a single light, the piece featured spoken word that told of the pain the people of the Dominican Republic endured while living under dictator Rafael Trujillo’s rule.  Piano and cello music provided the instrumental accompaniment.  Two dancers performed this piece, portraying a man and a woman desperately in love and missing each other while they were apart, their hopes kept alive through the numerous letters that they wrote each other.  Their reaching arms, high leaps, fluid upper body movement, strong lifts, and spacing around the stage showed the audience both how much they longed for each other while physical distance kept them apart and how complete they were when they could hold each other. 
 
Rounding out the evening was “Poe Squared,” also choreographed by Robert Poe.  This piece was infused with haunting music combined with some of Edgar Allen Poe’s most famous literary works presented through spoken word, recited completely from memory by Anne Williams.  “Poe 2” was divided into three sections:  “Nevermore,” which featured Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” with the latter two featuring the poems of the same name.  Featured dancers wore costumes as The Raven, a poet, Lenore, Prince Prospero, and The Red Death, while ensemble dancers wore black biker shorts, long ruffled high-low skirts, and dark-colored corset tops reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe’s time period.  All of the dancers performed choreography that displayed the mysterious and sinister qualities of Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry, as well as the beautiful and captivating aspects of contemporary ballet.  At times, the dancers performed solely to Ms. Williams’s outstanding live recitation, rather than music, their movements matching the volume and inflection changes in Ms. Williams’s voice as she spoke.  Dark lighting and classical orchestra pieces enhanced the piece in every section and helped bring the stories in Edgar Allen Poe’s work to life for the audience to see as if they were witnessing the stories in person.
 
Fall Fête: Twisted Tales gave Ballet 314 the perfect kickoff to its performance season; it showcased the talent and passion of the dancers, directors, and everyone else involved with the company, and left the audience excited for what is to come.