Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Dance with the animals

Footlight presents community performance


By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Photos by Aubrey Stephens

Each of the past 20 years the Footlight Dance Company has brought to the Wood River Valley schools an educational tour of dance, also known as the "lecture dems."

It will culminate this year with a presentation of "The Carnival of the Animals" on Saturday, Feb. 3, at 7 p.m. The performance, which is open to the public, will be held at the Community Campus theatre in Hailey. This is the fourth year Footlight has presented a mid-winter community production.

The performance will feature 17 Footlight Dance Company dancers performing in ballet, modern, jazz, tap and hip-hop. Two of the dancers, Sophia Blunt and Ashley Boand, have been dancing with Footlight since they were 4 years old. Other seniors who will perform are also longtime Footlight dancers Esther Garza and Solee Uranga. The youngest dancers are middle schoolers Ali Jefferson and Annie Heiner, both tap dancers, and Dylan Peterson, an eighth grader who is part of the ballet corps.

"We try to match styles of dance with the personalities of the animals," Footlight director Hilarie Neely said. "The lion is a jazz piece. The fish is a modern piece. The cuckoo bird is contemporary ballet-modern piece. The hippopotamus is a hip-hop piece. The birds, swan, turtle and frogs are ballet and the mules are tap. It's very whimsical. All the comments have been how fun it is. I think animals bring out fun."

Neely said part of the collaborative process this year involved art teachers at the schools the lecture dems would be visiting.

"Different people made different animals," she said. "Toni Whittington made the fish. Zoë Crawford of the Community School elementary school made the turtle, and the hippo was made by a parent, Pam Rainey. Catherine Lowden from the Carey School made the lion, and the cuckoo was made by Erica Ruiz a junior at the Wood River High School. It's fun to have the collaboration. I always try to find ways to collaborate with the schools. We've done visual arts, writing and, this year, we have the paper maché pieces."

"The Carnival of the Animals" is based on a dance of the same name by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. His most popular composition, Saint-Saëns, considered the piece frivolous and worried it would harm his reputation as a serious composer and suppressed performances of it. He only allowed one movement, "Le Cygne" (The Swan), to be published in his lifetime. Only small private performances were given for close friends like Franz Liszt.

Among the highlights of Saint-Saëns' career are the 1890 Paris production of his opera "Samson et Dalila," the Third (Organ) Symphony, the Second and Fourth Piano Concertos, "Danse Macabre" and "Le Carnival des Animaux."

Fortunately, Saint-Saëns included a provision in his will allowing the suite to be published after his death in 1921.

Tickets for the community performance of Carnival of Animals" are $10 for adults and $5 for students. Tickets are available in advance at Chapter One in Ketchum and Iconoclast books in Hailey, from individual dancers and at the door. Proceeds will provide scholarships for Footlight Students.




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