I am always grateful for every chance I get to go see a ballet company perform because I don’t usually have the money to do so–that’s why I’ve seen so very few ballets. This time, I got the chance to see it with my boyfriend because I won a Twitter contest with TheArtsInPhilly. They do contests all the time to all sorts of arts performances in Philadelphia, so they’re definitely worth the follow.

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Artists of Pennsylvania Ballet
Photos: Alexander Iziliaev

The first performance of the evening was Ballo Della Regina. Jong Sung Park impressed me greatly with his work during this piece, with impressive changemants and series of pirouettes  Roy Kaiser, PA Ballet’s artistic director, notes that this ballet places unique demands on the principal ballerina and that they were fortunate to get to work with Merill Ashley in the piece, whom Balanchine created the ballet for. It’s was clear to me and the boyfriend that in Friday’s performance that Lilian Di Piazza struggled somewhat (stepping in last minute for Brooke Moore–but even so, the dance was really powerful. The piece also featured several other soloists and was all together enjoyable.

Four Temperaments is another Balanchine piece, one that I enjoyed slightly less than the rest of the evening’s works. The dancers were dressed as if they were attending a ballet class–the female dancers wore simple black leotards and pink tights while the male dancers wore white shirts and black tights. This allowed me to focus on their movements instead of their costumes.

The first theme was one of my favorites. Elizabeth Mateer gracefully executed movements–one of my favorites was when she wrapped her leg in attitude around Harrison Monanco and dipped the top part of her body down and spread her arms out and bent them as if she was a low flying bird. As their theme finished, Monanco dragged Mateer, who was in a straddle, off-stage.

I really wish I could have seen Jermel Johnson perform the Phlegmatic temperament opening night since I was very impressed with him in Midsummer’s Night Dream. Gabriella Yudenich was impressive as ever, however, in the Choleric temperament and the finale. Four male dancers carefully turned Yudenich while in arabesque, around and around, all while she remained perfectly positioned.

My favorite part of the evening was definitely Wheeldon’s Carnival of the Animals. It’s the story of a young boy, Oliver, who falls asleep in the Natural History museum and goes unnoticed. He dreams that all of his classmates, friends, and family have turned into animals. It made me laugh, and was definitely a reminder that ballet can be fun.

John Litgow was the perfect narrator for the piece and also wrote the comedic text he performed. Although their were some audio issues, Litgow did the best he could to project his voice so that it could be heard in the theater.

I won’t go into great detail about all the different animal segments–they were all wonderful and extremely comical. My favorite parts included the Turtle twins (Alyson Pray and Yudenich) who moved with ballet grace and the molasses-like speed of turtles, Johnson who swayed and moved on his arms like a real baboon (and to Jonathan Block as Oliver who copied his baboon-like piano’s teachers movements, Litgow as female elephant nurse (who is even lifted by the fellow rat dancers) and the ballerina fossils (in a production Oliver who spewed dust from their tutus with carefully executed brushes of the arms.

The most precious moment of the evening came during the baboon sequence. Oliver’s piano teacher keeps telling him to keep practicing and Oliver sighs each time he has to redo the exercise–the third time his teacher tells him to redo it a little girl in front of us also loudly sighed with a gigantic “awwww” that showed she was just as frustrated as Oliver was.

As always, a trip to the ballet always makes me want to practice it even more–and my boyfriend is also hoping he can find a way to take classes again this summer as well.