Take Me Out to (and Knock Me Out at) the Ballet

You exist in a dismal, colorless world run by evil and greed. Suddenly, a streak of orange blazes across the sky. It's a plane, it's superman.... No, it's a bird.

The Firebird has arrived to save you not only from this storybook realm but also from the grim grind of Harvard midterms. Boston Ballet's season opener, Firebird and The Princess and the Pea, which premiered last Thursday to a well-deserved standing ovation, runs through Sunday.

Anything you see by Boston Ballet, one of America's top five dance companies, will be good. Their dancers are the creme of the crop, reason alone to see this show. But this show has even more going for it. Firebird's award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, a current soloist with New York City Ballet, is one of the most innovative and heralded of new choreographers, having inspired big articles in Time and Dance Magazine. Daring to re-choreograph an already well-loved ballet, in Firebird he creates a new masterpiece from an old one, his choreography departing from the Nutcracker-esque story-book ballet tradition in fresh and captivating ways.

The ballet is based on the dark and brooding Russian fairy-tale. The despicable monster Kastchei has created a colorless, depressing realm where he keeps princesses and others captive. After mistakenly wandering nearby, Prince Ivan falls in love with one of the princesses and resolves to save them, eventually doing so with the help of the magical Firebird.

At Boston Ballet, however, Firebird becomes much more than a story-ballet. It is the combination of an award-winning, inventive choreographer and fantastic dancers, who, having mastered the athleticism of ballet, are accomplished artists capable of expressing the human emotion and sensitivity behind Wheeldon's choreography, able to relate to the audience and imbue the piece with relevance.

The ballet opens with a scrim, a semi-opaque curtain at the front of the stage that blurs the action behind it, cementing the ballet in the human subconscious that lets the viewer experience and personalize art. The characters are endearing, fictitious, yet and somehow logical, carefully developed through choreography. The Firebird herself, given frantic, bird-like steps, seems supernatural, wrought with the frustration of being the sole guardian of good in a realm deprived of it. The princesses dance barefoot, as if to accentuate their delicacy and femininity in a dismal bleak world, and also their child-like helplessness in Kastchei's realm. Yet when the princesses are alone, they joke and socialize; true to the human element, they retain hope, never do the characters give in to benign acceptance of their situation's injustice. In the end, when Ivan and the Firebird triumph the audience experiences the captives' exhilaration as they become liberated from Kastchei's oppression and see color for first time.

Firebird, however, is not without comic relief. Giant storks, with five-foot long necks, as well as other odd castle creatures provide laughs, but never does Wheeldon lose the carefully cultivated menacing atmosphere of Kastchei's land.

The music adds to the intensity of Firebird. The choreography is intricately tied to Stravinsky's haunting score, which complements the dancing perfectly. Combined with Boston Ballet's brilliant sets and costumes, the result creates a delicately-synchronized, maximum impact.

You leave with a sense of having seen art as it is supposed to be--enriching, fulfilling, with a glimpse into another world.

Preceding Firebired comes The Princess and the Pea, Daniel Pelzig's wacky, slapstick parody on traditional storybook-ballets that was wildly successful in its 1995 premier. I felt The Princess and the Pea overly goofy; as a balletomane, I wished there had been more classical dancing. But for others, who often find long, conventional ballet-stories tiresome, this may just what they needed to rekindle an interest in ballet.

The plot is, as it can only be for this story, pretty dull. The prince cannot find a princess he wants to marry. A random girl arrives at his house, claiming to be royalty; an uncomfortable sleep due to a pea under her mattress proves it and the two are happily married. Perhaps that's why Princess makes an ideal parody--a simple plot leaves plenty of room for humor: a crazy Jester, a flatfooted princess, a glasses-wearing prince and even an army of dancing, cartwheeling mattresses. Overall, Pea will elicit a chuckle from anyone.

Whether you find The Princess and the Pea a riotous, refreshing break from tradition or overly spoof-y, remember that Firebird is next. It's worth the wait.

Call (800) 447-7400 for tickets. Tickets are $12.50-$73. Student rush tickets $12.50 go on sale an hour before curtain.