From the Quad City Times -- October 18, 2005
Dance troupe hooks up with Quad-City bands
By David Burke
Idea: Show the diversity and hipness of your ballet company with an entire performance set to rock music.
Problem: Big-name rockers would charge astronomical rights fees for their music to be danced to — if they would even give permission at all.
Solution: Have the rock show with local bands providing live, all-original music.That was the scenario for Ballet Quad-Cities, which led up to the first Ballet Rocks!, with two performances next weekend at the Capitol Theatre, Davenport.“We just simply took another avenue,” said Ballet Quad-Cities executive director Joedy Cook.Putting in a rock show amid the traditional classical season has become increasingly common among companies, Cook said.“It’s just keeping up with what’s going on with the bigger dance community,” she said.But while larger metropolitan dance troupes can secure the rights to the Rolling Stones or Elvis Presley, “For a small company, it’s almost impossible to get the rights to that type of music,” she said.Two groups — power-pop band Einstein’s Sister, and surf-spy-jazz-noir conglomerate The Metrolites — were chosen for the inaugural ballets.“It’s a huge honor, to be honest,” said Einstein’s Sister lead singer Bill Douglas. “I think it’s amazing we have an organization here that has this exciting outlook on how to bring this artform to a whole new sector of people — people who might not have taken the opportunity to experience it. I like that thinking-out-of-the-box mentality.”Ballet Quad-Cities artistic director Johanne Jakhelln said it wasn’t a big change in choreographing dance to rock music as it is to arranging for classical pieces. Since there are no predestined moves for a ballet company with rock music, Jakhelln said she felt she had more freedom.“Music is always the biggest inspiration for me when I’m choreographing. A lot of what you’re going to see on stages comes from what I hear in the music,” she said. “Sometimes when I’m working with classical music, I may set myself a perimeter.”Jakhelln said she enjoyed working with the traditional pop of Einstein’s Sister, as well as the avant garde sound of The Metrolites.“Their texts are often very humorous, and have a lot of quirkiness to it,” she said. “The music has a lot of surprise moments.”Jakhelln has created two scenarios for each group’s music, one with vocals and one instrumental.In one, she creates a scenario of a married man and another woman who keep running in to each other.“They’re kind of attracted to each other, in a way that they cannot avoid each other. Perhaps not the best relationship for either of them,” she said. “It sounds very dark, but it’s really very funny.”Another is set at a grocery store, where a man tries to get the attention of a woman he’s attracted to. That involved the use of shopping carts, which Jakhelln said she’s wanted to try since seeing a colleague use them in a ballet in college.“I just wanted to explore how I could use shopping carts, and this particular piece of music talks about a man who is in love with a woman, who doesn’t know he’s in love with her,” she said. “It makes me think that people in grocery stores, how you can see them but you don’t ever speak to them.”Douglas said he wasn’t sure if the audience would be more fans of Einstein’s Sister and The Metrolites who are experiencing ballet for the first time, or vice versa.“I’m not sure what to expect. I’d like to think all of the audiences will converge into the same place, and experience something completely different,” he said. “Hopefully it’s the beginning of a new synergy.”Cook said if Ballet Rocks! is a success, it could turn into an annual or semi-annual event.Douglas said it shows that several organizations can work together for groundbreaking results.“It’s a great signal to the community that the local arts are alive and well, and doing courageous things,” he said. “In this day and age, what could be better?”David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.