Dancers in Frankenstein Ballet are scary-good

While I was at Same Planet Different World Dance at the Ruth Page Center on Saturday night, my colleague in the dance world, Ryan Moore, went to check out the Frankenstein Ballet up in Skokie at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. His report follows:

Alma Dance Company’s Frankenstein Ballet is a new interpretation by Suzanne Lek and Guillermo Leyva of the classic gothic tale by Mary Shelley. While the interpretation is indeed fresh, it is also rather unclear. Act One has a staggered, discontinuous feel to it, and without the synopsis of scenes it would have been impossible to understand what was happening as the plot proceeds through Dr. Frankenstein’s childhood, engagement, creature-creation and wedding reception. Dante Adela's solo as the character Igor is a wonderful highlight here, but it is merely an aside which has nothing to do with the rest of the story, and the use of video does little to shed light on the plot.

Act Two allows the audience to abandon attempts to keep up with the storyline and just go with the flow. The energy picks up tremendously in the first half of the act as “Monsters dance in a frenzied fashion in front of their King and Queen.” At this point, I just sat back and took in the talent. The top-notch performers excelled in a steady stream of solos, duets and trios, offering more delightful dancing than my eyes could enjoy at once. Again, Dante Adela’s energetic, inspired dancing was captivating. The whole up-beat, ghoulish, toe-tapping revelry even breaks into a quote of Michael Jackson’s deathless “Thriller” for a moment, as ADC pokes fun at its own project.
    
The second half of Act Two brought the tale to a finish as Dr. Frankenstein (danced by Abdelazis Roque) and the Frankenstein Creature (Fidel Garcia) both bid their adieus to Elizabeth (Jungmin Lee), their love, and proceed to duel ballet-style. The Frankenstein Creature overpowers Igor and Dr. Frankenstein but, after defeating his creator, the Frankenstein Creature tenderly places Elizabeth’s body into the arms of Dr. Frankenstein, leading us to further wonder at the motivations and desires of these characters.        

Following the performance, a fellow audience member commented that ADC might have been “...better off just writing their own story.” I wholeheartedly agree. As the inaugural performance by a fledgling ballet company, Frankenstein shows that Alma has plenty to offer in terms of pizzazz, creativity, atypical choreography and dancing from the heart. I think in this particular venture Alma simply restricted itself to a plot framework which handicapped them, when they could have played to their strengths and written their own original work. They certainly had a capable composer at their disposal: Hector Silveira would have bee up to the task; this is quite evident from the quality of his all-original composition for the Frankenstein Ballet.  

To sum up: It was well worth seeing if only to compare it at a later date to the almost-certainly superior works Alma will be producing in the future.