Review: "An American in Paris" celebrates dance in the City of Light

Garen Scribner and Sara Esty

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"'S wonderful! 'S marvelous!" That opening line of a classic Gershwin tune is also a perfect capsule review of the musical An American in Paris, playing the Fox through January 29th.

Adapted from the 1951 movie musical of the same name, An American in Paris is a big, beautiful valentine to both the darkness and the light of post-war Paris-and to the art of the dance.

Playwright Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless) and musical arranger/adapter Rob Fisher (long-time music director for the City Center Encores! Series) have assembled an impressive collection of Gershwin songs for the score, but singing definitely takes second place to dancing in this show. Director/choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, who got both a Tony and an Outer Critics Circle for his work here, has loaded up An American in Paris with a stunning variety of dance styles, from classic ballet moves to a brilliant pastiche of early 20th-century popular dances (in the lavish "Stairway to Paradise") to an ingenious amalgam of mid-century angular "modernist" choreography for the big title number in the second act. It's no small thing to keep up visual interest in a show that runs nearly three hours, but Mr. Wheeldon has managed it neatly.

"Stairway to Paradise"

Like the film that inspired it, An American in Paris is the story of three mismatched friends in the newly-liberated French capital: American war veteran and artist Jerry Mulligan, fellow vet and struggling composer Adam Hochberg, and Henri Baurel, scion of a wealthy French family and a would-be song and dance man. All three become smitten with the mysterious ballerina Lise Dassin, creating a romantic triangle (or maybe a quadrangle) that moves the plot along. There's also a secondary story involving Jerry's brief fling with American philanthropist Milo Davenport.

Unlike the movie, Mr. Lucas's book gives the secondary characters a bit more depth and makes Jerry less of a self-centered jerk. The original film, in my view, works only because star Gene Kelly's high-powered charm makes it possible to overlook his character's terminal immaturity. He still behaves badly here, but redeems himself by admitting as much and apologizing for it.

The cast for this tour is impressive. Leads Garen Scribner (Jerry) and Sara Esty (Lise) both have substantial ballet credits in their biographies, and it shows in their limber and precise dancing. They both have solid voices and are often eerily reminiscent of original film stars Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. Note that at some performances, Ryan Steele and Leigh-Ann Esty alternate in those roles. Etai Benson (Adam), Nick Spangler (Henri), and Emily Ferranti (Milo) are also very strong performers, as are Gayton Scott and Don Noble as Henri's very proper parents. They're supported by a versatile and talented ensemble.

"I Got Rhythm"

An American is Paris stunning visually as well as theatrically, thanks largely to inventive projections by 59 Productions that allow us to see Paris through Jerry's eyes as his illustrations come to life. The show uses very little in the way of physical scenery, which makes the many scene changes quick and seamless. That's especially effective in numbers like "Stairway to Paradise," which marks Henri's cabaret debut. As he begins to imagine himself in Radio City Music Hall, the scene quickly shifts to the glossy production of his dreams, and then moves just as quickly back to the small café set.

A similarly magical transformation happens in the title number, set to just about all of Gershwin's original tone poem. In the context of the show, it's the big ballet that stars Lise, with music by Adam and sets and costumes by Jerry. We start out seeing everything from a backstage perspective, looking out through the curtains at the conductor and the audience. One lightning-fast change later, we're seeing it from the audience's perspective, with Jerry's colorfully cubist visuals.

So, if you love great dancing and the classic sounds of the Gershwin brothers, trip on over to the Fox in Grand Center for An American in Paris. Performances run through the 29th and tickets are available at the Fox web site. Note that, because of the long running time, evening shows start at 7:30.

Dance Review: Nasville Ballet's "Carmina Burana" is even better the second time around

Photo: Marianne Leach

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Although usually presented as a concert piece, Carl Orff's 1936 "Carmina Burana" was always intended to be theatrical, with some mimed action and "magic tableaux." The first performance in Frankfurt in 1937 was fully staged, in fact, with dancers, sets, and costumes.

Photo: Heather Thorne

Nashville Ballet's "Carmina Burana," originally presented at the Touhill back in 2013, made an encore appearance there this past weekend, once again under the aegis of Dance St. Louis. With 40 dancers, 120 singers, and 60 musicians, including The University of Missouri-St. Louis Orchestra and Singers, The Bach Society of Saint Louis, and The St. Louis Children's Choirs, it was, once again, a stunning work of dance theatre that succeeded both as Spectacle and as Art.

The first (and least sexually explicit) of Orff's "Trionfi" trilogy of choral theatre works, "Carmina Burana" derives its title from an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany. As befits their "vulgar" status, the poems celebrate not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: spring, sex, food, sex, drink, gambling, and sex. They also recognize something that we moderns have lost track of, to our detriment: the heavy influence of blind chance on our lives. The setting of "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" ("Fortune, Empress of the World"), which opens and closes the work, reminds us that the wheel of fortune is always turning and that none of us should get too cocky, as the universe has a tendency to dope-slap the excessively smug.

Photo: Heather Thorne

Nashville Ballet Artistic Director and choreographer Paul Vasterling and visual designer Eric Harris emphasize that centrality of Lady Fortuna by making her a key character in the ballet. Fortuna begins and ends the evening surrounded by a massive, stage-filling "wheel of fortune" skirt that neatly establishes her dominance, but she also interacts with individual dancers to emphasize fate's capricious influence. Kayla Rowser was Fortuna in this revival, and she alternated beautifully between the faux-mechanical precision of the impersonal wheel and the seduction of Lady Luck.

This realization of "Carmina Burana" was, in fact, filled with striking images that beautifully complement the lyrics. Let me cite a few that will, I hope, give you a feel for the remarkable quality of what Mr. Vasterling, Mr. Harris, and the dancers accomplished.

Photo: Heather Thorne

For "In Taberna quando sumus" (labeled "The Drinking Song" here) the stage was filled with dancers in wine-red outfits reeling about in drunken but very precise abandon while the lyrics reeled off a list of the many types who come to the tavern to imbibe. The bird being roasted for dinner in "Olim lacus coleuram" (The Roasted Swan") was costumed all in white and danced entirely en pointe, as though trying to escape the flames. She was eventually surrounded in fiery red-on-white banners and carried off the stage by dancers in red. Katie Vasilopoulos danced the role this time with a sense of heart-rending distress.

The "Spring" section underscored the lyrical parallels between the awakening of the earth and the awakening of human desire with a succession of colorful and flirtatious dances. In "Floret silva nobilis" ("The Maypole"), for example, the dancers were costumed in spring-like pastels and, at one point, danced around a human Maypole. "Chramer, gib de varwe mir" ("More Joys of Spring") made the sex/spring parallel even more obvious with poses of adolescent sexual braggadocio and cheerful coupling.

Photo: Heather Thorne

I could go on, but you get the idea. The Nashville Ballet's "Carmina Burana" was a visual treat of the highest order.

Musically, "Carmina Burana" was noticeably more polished this time around than it was in 2013. Perhaps the best work came from the combined voices of the Bach Society and UMSL University Singers. Deployed on risers behind and to the sides of the dancers, they were powerful, to say the least. Elocution was quite impressive, given how widely separated the singers were, although I suspect audience members who were not familiar with the music might have benefited from projected text.

Soprano Stella Markou and tenor Tim Waurick repeated their roles from 2013. Ms. Markou had a bit of difficulty with that absurdly difficult coloratura moment in "Dulcissime" ("Sweetest One" in the program) but sounded great otherwise. And Mr. Waurick's roasting swan was, once again, one of the most dramatic I've heard. Baritone Adam Stefo turned in compelling performances of some very difficult music ("Dies, nox et omnia," with its rapid switch between falsetto and chest voice, is a real killer). His solo in "Ego sum abbas" ("The Bad Abbott") was a wonderful combination of skillful musicianship and theatricality, complete with drunken hiccups.

The St. Louis Children's Choir, deployed in box seats house right and left, were also most impressive, holding their own even through the tricky tempo changes towards the end of "Tempus est iocundum."

Photo: Heather Thorne

The UMSL University Orchestra, conducted by James Richards, sounded more robust and cohesive than they did back in 2013, a few minor brass intonation problems not withstanding. Orff's big brass and percussion sections had the proper impact, and more intimate moments like the "Round Dance" had just the right delicacy. Congratulations to them and Mr. Richards for a job well done.

The evening opened with "La Fontana," a new work choreographed by Dance St. Louis Artistic and Executive Director Michael Utoff to Bach's "Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor," BWV 1060, and performed by Saint Louis Ballet. As a choreographer, Mr. Utoff seems to have a remarkable affinity for Bach and an excellent eye for movement that creates visual analogs to the composer's musical structures. Four women costumed as classical Greek statues (ivory togas and coronets) suggested the fountain of the title, an image enhanced by their fluid movement. They were soon joined by three more colorfully costumed couples: the men in red-orange classical outfits and the women in flowing pastel gowns and long gloves. As the work progressed, the two groups began to interact, until, at the end, the couples became the fountain and the four women struck statuesque poses on the outside.

The movement enhanced and complemented Bach's music, in short, without trying to impose a story thread on it. It was a nice contrasting choice to the more literally narrative choreography of "Carmina Burana," just as Bach's chamber music was a well-chosen contrast to Orff's far more massive work.

Oboist Ann Homan and violinist Julia Sakharova were flawless in the solo roles, intertwining beautifully in Bach's elaborate counterpoint.

Dance St. Louis's Bach/Orff double bill will be over by the time you read this, of course, but I still want to congratulate them on bringing this crowd pleaser back for another appearance. Fully staged productions of "Carmina Burana" are rare, so the chance to see one of this quality was most welcome. The Dance St. Louis season continues with MOMIX in "Alchemia" at the Touhill January 29 and

St. Lou Fringe Report 1: Tops, taps, and toxic men

Hiroshi Tada
stlfringe.com

In this first of a series of dispatches from the St. Lou Fringe Festival, we talk of top spinning, tap dancing, and toxic masculinity—a classic example of just how diverse the Fringe can be.

My Fringe experience started quietly, with a charming if slight demonstration of the Japanese art of top spinning by Hiroshi Tada (or, as he says it, "Taaa-Daaa!").  Mr. Tada's English may not be the best, but there's no doubt of his skill and spinning and juggling tops.  In the course of the show he spins tops created out of everything from a poker chip to a rubber light bulb to a "Cardinal red" plastic baseball bat, and does some fancy balancing besides.

The night I saw his show he spent a bit too much time telling us what he couldn't do because of the space limitations at the Kranzberg Cabaret space, but his cheerful, grandfatherly stage presence more than made up for that.  This is definitely an "all ages" show.

Scot Moore
stlfringe.com

Next was "Men Will Be Boys," a one-act play written and performed by Minneapolis-based actor Scot Moore.  Billed as a "comedic journey through the stages of how men go from being cute little boys to sexist womanizers, and the influences they receive along the way," the show offers a pointed but thoroughly entertaining critique of the way American culture encourages a notion of masculinity that manages to inflict damage on both sexes.

Using sound bites from everyone from Bill O'Reilly to Stephen Colbert as bridge material, Mr. Moore plays six widely varied characters, beginning with a creepy fundamentalist preacher whose simple-mindedly aggressive reading of scripture is as suspect as it is self-assured, and ending with a young father talking his baby daughter to sleep with stories of the great success he hopes she will have.  Along the way we becomes a small boy in a Captain America t-shirt who doesn't understand why he can't call his classmate Sheila a whore ("dad says she is!"), a sullen teenager who feels oppressed by feminism, a clueless gamer, a make-out artist embarrassed by the boorish sexism of his "wing man," and a sportscaster who suddenly decides to tell the simple truth about the over-paid sociopaths he's been covering. 

His points about the way key segments of American culture encourage a state of permanent adolescence in men are well-taken, and delivered in a way that never feels preachy.  Mr. Moore's stories have a moral, but they're skillfully woven and thoroughly engaging.

Tristan Bruns of Tapman
stlfringe.com

My first two days at the Fringe ended with a bang.  Well, several bangs, actually.  As the "Traveling Tap Dance Super Show" by the Chicago-based Tapman dance troupe opens, the house goes dark and we hear a steady rhythm from the company's four tap dancers.  At first it's simple—on the beat and in unison.  But then the lights come up and company choreographer Tristan Bruns begins and increasingly complex series of syncopated steps.  He's soon joined by Javier K. Villamil in the tap version of a traditional ragtime "cutting contest," trading steps back and forth.  Mr. Villamil eventually takes center stage and the piece builds to a flashy conclusion.  It's rather like a tap version of the music of (say) Philip Glass or John Adams, building a complex structure out of small cells.  Great stuff.

There are plenty of wonderful moments in this show.  I especially enjoyed what appeared to be a tribute to the great black tappers of the Vaudeville era (complete with top hats) as well as a nod to Fred Astaire's style using one of his signature tunes, Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields' "The Way You Look Tonight."  The song is played first in a lovely solo guitar arrangement by Mr. Bruns and then sung by Mr. Villamil, accompanied by classy dancing from his fellow company members.

There's also a great blues number played by Mr. Bruns and Mr. Villamil with dancing by the company's fifth member—not a tapper, but an elegant jazz/modern dancer.  And a couple of passionate Indie rock tunes demonstrate that tap can go with almost any style of music.

Bottom line?  The Tapman ensemble is a fiercely energetic and multi-talented bunch.  Their second (and last) appearance at the Fringe is Saturday, June 20, at 4 p.m.  Don't miss it!

The Fringe continues through June 27th in the Grand Center Arts District.  For more information, visit the official web site.

Dance Review: Dance St. Louis brings sensual athleticism of Tango Buenos Aires at the Touhill

Photo: Lucrecia Laurel
dancestlouis.org

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Who: Tango Buenos Aires
What: Song of Eva Perón
When: January 30 and 31, 2015
Where: Dance St. Louis at the Touhill Center, St. Louis

"O the tango is done with a thin black moustache a wide scarlet sash, black boots and a whip."   When Jerry Leiber wrote those lyrics for "The Tango" (recorded in 1975 by Peggy Lee), he was reflecting the darkly sensual reputation this dance, with its historically murky origins, has had for over a century. 

Hector Falcón's choreography for the Tango Buenos Aires production of "Song of Eva Perón," which Dance St. Louis brought to the Touhill this past weekend, certainly pays homage to that sensuality, but expands on it with sequences of fluid virtuosity and breathtaking athleticism.

The latter is mostly on display in the Act I closer, in which the five male company members put on an astonishing display of synchronized percussive dancing using pairs of boleadoras—essentially cords with hard weights at the ends, based on the throwing weapon used by Argentine gauchos.  The increasingly complex visual and sonic patterns they produce must be seen live to be believed.  And even then, the extended solo by one member of the company (who is not, alas, indentified in the program) still seemed nearly supernatural. 

Photo: Lucrecia Laurel
dancestlouis.org

Not surprisingly, that number was interrupted frequently for applause.  But then, so were most of the others by this astonishingly talented ten-dancer ensemble.  The many tango sequences drew their share of "oohs" and "aahs" as the performers glided through elaborate variations on the dance's basic moves—all those stomps, cross steps, and lower body pivots—with that apparent ease that comes only with rigorous discipline and talent. 

The female dancers, in particular, reminded me of the old line about how Ginger Rogers was at least as good as Fred Astaire because she had do to everything he did, but backwards and in heels.  In many of the tango sequences, the women were often in more frequent and complicated motion than the men, sweeping around and entwining themselves with their partners.

There is, as you might gather from the title, a thin thread of a story in "Song of Eva Perón" about the late Argentine first lady's rise from the sticks, but for the most part it's just a framework on which to hang the show's colorful and consistently entertaining collection of dances.

An on-stage five-piece band adds to the appeal, performing music composed for the show by pianist and music director Fernando Mazán along with classics by (among others) Jacob Gade ("Celos," known as "Jealousy" in the English-speaking world) and Astor Piazzolla. There were some Argentine folk tunes in the mix as well.  Violinist Mayumi Urgino and Mr. Mazán both got impressive solo numbers while Marco Antonio Fernandez and Emiliano Guererro provided the rock-solid musical foundation on bandoneons, the wide lap-held concertinas that provide the essence of the tango sound.

Photo: Lucrecia Laruel
dancestlouis.org

Vocalist Lucia Alonso performed a pair of songs written for the show by Mr. Mazán.  She was a stunning embodiment of Evita in an elaborate cream-colored evening gown and cape, but her accent and the sound system conspired to make the lyrics incomprehensible, at least from where we sat.

Speaking of costumes, there's no designer listed for the show, so I don't know whom to congratulate for the colorful and intelligently assembled look of "Song of Eva Perón."  As Eva moves from the provinces to the big city, the looks change from simple peasant designs with earthly colors to vivid evening gowns and tuxedo jackets, culminating in a beautifully elegant finale. 

Tango Buenos Aires has already left town and they don't appear to have a web site, so I can't tell you where they'll be appearing next. As for Dance St. Louis, their season continues with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet February 27 and 28 at the Touhill.  For more information, including details on their upcoming 50th season, see dancestlouis.org.

They fly through the air with the greatest of ease

Transit Space

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"Diavolo," writes the company's Artistic Director Jacques Heim in his program notes, "is a fusion of many different movement vocabularies such as everyday movement, ballet, contemporary, acrobatics, gymnastics, martial arts, and hip-hop." On stage, that translates into genre-bending theatre pieces that are a mashup of dance, Olympic-class athletics, and circus arts that are sometimes thrilling and always mesmerizing.

The Diavolo difference is readily apparent in a skim through the biographies of the company members. Pretty much everyone has the usual training and professional experience in traditional dance, but many do, indeed, have backgrounds in acrobatics, gymnastics, martial arts, and hip-hop—not to competitive cheerleading and circus arts as well. Diavolo company members are clearly skilled multi-disciplinary athletes as well as artists.

Transit Space

The program Diavolo brought to St. Louis this past weekend consisted of two works: "Transit Space" (2012) and "Trajectorie" (1999). Each ran around 40 minutes and while the two were very different in overall tone, they both touched, to varying degrees, on what Mr. Heim describes as Diavolo's primary themes: "human struggle, fear, danger, survival, chaos, order, deconstruction, destiny, destination, faith, and love." That's a tall order but then, this is an ambitious company.

"Transit Space," writes Mr. Heim, "explores themes of feeling lost, finding a sense of purpose, and coming together." As the piece opens, the company members walk onstage in urban street clothes to the sounds of city traffic. Several are carrying what would be skateboards if they had wheels. The sound changes to hip-hop music with voice-overs speaking of urban loneliness. On the words "I want to move," the dancers carrying the skateboards slap them down and use them as platforms for athletic and break dance moves. Then the dancers move upstage, the lights come up all the way, and we see four convex wood and metal constructs that are basically simplified versions of the ramps used by skateboarders and urban stunt bikers.

The metal ramps are detachable, creating eight separate pieces that (as shown in the video accompanying this review) are rapidly recombined into a number of playing spaces. Dancers leap, slide, tumble, and do just about anything you can think of on them in a dazzling display of athleticism. Throughout it all, actors on the soundtrack give voice to the many moods of urban life. The piece hits an emotional peak when all of the dancers join hands in the center of the stage on the words "as long as I have you, I don't have fear" and the stage goes black. Point made, and very effectively.

Trajectorie

The big set piece for "Trajectorie" is a half moon-shaped, rocking wooden stage with a scrim on the front. As the work opens, a lone female dancer does a lyrical "shadow game" routine with another dancer seen only in silhouette. As more dancers enter the action becomes more animated, and before long the hemispherical stage is rocking and rotating while dancers slide on and off, dash back and forth, and even leap into space, propelled by the stage. Those leaps produced some audible gasps from the audience as the dancers flew through the air and were caught expertly by their teammates.

There was a bit more classical ballet in "Trajectorie" (although not very much) and more moves that were reminiscent of martial arts (tai chi in particular) but otherwise it shared with "Transit Space" an emphasis on virtuoso movement of all kinds. Unlike the newer work, though, "Trajectorie" ends not with a crescendo and climax so much as a slow diminuendo. Towards the end of the piece the other dancers disappear, one by one, behind the rocking centerpiece until, at last, we're back to the solo female dancer of the beginning. Then she, too, slowly disappears behind the construct.

Mr. Heim says that the work "shows the transcendence of the human soul against all odds", but to me there was something of an elegiac feel to those final moments that was more surrender than transcendence. But maybe I'm over-analyzing it. Or, perhaps, there's less difference between transcendence and surrender than I think. Either way, "Trajectorie" is a reminder that art lives, for the most part, in ambiguity.

If what we saw this weekend at the Touhill is any indication, Diavolo is an innovative, hard to classify, and possibly even unique dance company. It is, in short, the kind of thing Dance St. Louis has been bringing us for many years now. May they continue for many more.

The Dance St. Louis season continues with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at the Fox April 25 and 26 and concludes Memorial Day weekend with the 7th Annual Emerson Spring to Dance® Festival at the Touhill Center. For more information: dancestlouis.org.

Off to see the wizard

Photo: Andrea Zucker

Who: Ballet Memphis
What: The Wizard of Oz
Where: The Touhill Performing Arts Center, presented by Dance St. Louis
When: January 24 and 25, 2014

When you think of the music for the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz," the first names that probably come to mind are Harold Arlen and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg. Their songs "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "If I Only Had a Brain" have been firmly ensconced in the Great American Songbook for decades. If you're a film music fan, you might also think of composer/arranger (and Broadway veteran) Herbert Stothart, who combined Arlen's tunes with original material into a seamless, Oscar-winning score.

Names that would probably not leap to the forefront of your cranium would be Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, and Zoltán Kodály. And yet the recordings of music by those 20th century masters that serve as the accompaniment for Ballet Memphis's dance version of the classic film are so well chosen that you'd think they were composed exactly for the purpose.

That canny choice of music isn't the only reason this ballet version of "The Wizard of Oz" was so entertaining, of course. Steven McMahon's eclectic and character-driven choreography, Bruce Bui's colorful costumes, Andrew Kovach's simple but effective sets, and Andrew Meyers' minimalist yet dramatic lighting all combined to make this a genuine "all ages" show. We saw it at the Saturday matinee, and the parents were clearly enjoying it as much as their Munchkin offspring.

Photo: Andrea Zucker

The scenario follows the film closely and, rather like Beijing opera, clearly assumes that the audience is familiar enough with the source material to fill in the details. When we saw the oversize, distorted shadow of Rafael Ferreras, Jr., (slyly fraudulent as the Wizard) flamboyantly gesticulating at Dorothy and her three companions, for example, it was easy to recall the oversize, distorted projection of Frank Morgan's face from the movie. Likewise, Travis Bradley's loose-limbed, acrobatic clumsiness as the Scarecrow immediately called to mind Ray Bolger's equally magical dancing in the original.

Ballet Memphis's "Wizard of Oz" is not, in short, for those who have somehow never seen the film. But then, given how popular the film has been over the decades, that's pretty small potatoes as criticism goes.

The company has assembled a wonderful cast of dancers for this tour. Julie Niekrasz (Glinda in the evening performances) was a wistful and charming Dorothy, Dylan G-Bowley an amusingly robotic as the Tin Man, and Kendall G. Britt Jr. the very essence of comic feline bravado as Lion. Crystal Brothers (Aunt Em in the evenings) was a wonderfully sinuous and gravity defying Wicked Witch while Virginia Pilgrim (Dorothy in the evenings) was cheerfully sugary as Glinda. Daniel Russell Cooke was a sympathetic Uncle Henry, and Bryn Gilbert made a strong impression in the small but vital role of the awful Miss Gulch.

Photo: Andrea Zucker

The corps de ballet (which included dancers from some of the smaller roles) filled in as poppies, snowflakes, flying monkeys (with some very evocative Fosse-esque choreography), and citizens of the Emerald City. Students from COCA's dance program portrayed the Munchkins and children of Oz. It's a nifty local tie-in and, again, a sign of the intelligence behind this production in that it saves the company the hassles of travelling with child performers.

It is, I suppose, possible that hard-core dance lovers might dismiss overtly commercial efforts like "Wizard of Oz" (although Ballet-Dance Magazine certainly seemed to like the 2007 premiere), but the fact is that very few performing arts organizations can survive these days without the occasional crowd pleaser. You can't champion newer and more innovative work (as Ballet Memphis clearly does; their motto is "reach further") without something guaranteed to pay the bills. If the size of the house this past Saturday afternoon was any indication, "The Wizard of Oz" is does that, and delivers a satisfying piece of dance theatre in the process. I'd call that a win-win.

The Ballet Memphis production of "The Wizard of Oz" played the Touhill Performing Arts Center January 24 and 25, produced by Dance St. Louis. The Dance St. Louis season continues February 28 and March 1 at the Touhill with Diavolo, a company of modern dancers athletes, gymnasts, ballet dancers, martial artists, actors, and stunt performers, the blurs the boundary between dance and circus arts. For more information: dancestlouis.org.