The Mill and the Gloss

Who: The Royal Winnipeg Ballet
What: Moulin Rouge® the Ballet
Where: Dance St. Louis at the Touhill Center
When: January 25 and 26, 2013



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Every performing arts organization has its share of potboilers—light entertainments designed to reach a popular audience and boost box office revenues. Most have a short shelf life but some, like Verdi’s Aida, exceed expectations and wind up as part of the standard repertoire.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Moulin Rouge® the Ballet is a potboiler, and a darned good one. I have no idea what its shelf life might be—it has only been around since 2009—but there’s no question that it’s a flashy crowd-pleaser with strong dancing throughout. This tale of young lovers thwarted by fate in Belle Époque Paris isn’t Great Art, but it was certainly engaging enough and the final tragic scene, set to the concluding pages of Ravel’s Mother Goose ballet, actually did choke me up a bit. But then, I get all misty at the opening bars of “La Vie En Rose”—which, as it happens, is the music that begins the show.

It’s Paris at the turn of the 20th century and the young artist Matthew has just arrived from the sticks. He’s quickly relieved of everything he owns by Gypsies but forgets all when he meets Nathalie, a launderette and aspiring dancer at the Moulin Rouge. The club’s owner Zidler (very loosely based on the real Charles Zidler, co-founder of the real Moulin Rouge in 1889) likes her style and hires her. Meanwhile Matthew gets into a painting duel with Toulouse-Lautrec, who befriends him and helps him pursue his budding romance with Nathalie.

Alas, Zidler soon becomes obsessed with Nathalie himself, with tragic results. His confrontation with Nathalie and Matthew in a tango bar—set to a pair of impassioned tangos by Astor Piazzolla—eventually leads to a violent confrontation at the Moulin Rouge that leaves Nathalie dead and both men bereft. It’s curtains for her and the curtain for the ballet.

Choreographer Jorden Morris uses a relatively small set of (mostly) classical ballet steps to tell the story, liberally spiced with some impressive tango moves in the second act. In fact, the dancing in Moulin Rouge would have been largely familiar to a ballet audience during the period in which the action takes place. It’s a nifty conceit, even if it does lend a degree of sameness to the first act.

It helps that the company has such strong dancers. When we saw Moulin Rouge at the Saturday matinee, Tristan Dobrowney and Amanda Green were a terrific Matthew and Nathalie—athletic, graceful, and invested in their characters. Amar Dhaliwal was a vigorous and menacing Zidler and Dmitri Dovgoselets a charming Toulouse-Lautrec.

Sarah Davey and Alanna McAdie had great star turns as La Goulue and Môme Fromage—both characters based on real Moulin Rouge dancers. With Serena Sandford, they made a sympathetic trio of “green fairies” who appear to Matthew after he over-imbibes in absinthe. The hallucinatory sequence is set to the melancholy “Adagio assai” from Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G and was a highlight of the second act.

The big ensemble scenes were the most popular, of course. The “Can-Can From Moulin Rouge” (set to the familiar Offenbach) drew a big round of applause and the extended tango scene that takes of much of the second act was very theatrically compelling.

The colorful costumes by Anne Armit and Shannon Lovelace contributed a lot to the polished look of the show, as did Pierre Lavoie’s lights and Andrew Beck’s Art Noveau sets. The program doesn’t say who was responsible for the music choices (although I’d have to assume Mr. Morris was heavily involved) but whoever it was gets a round of applause from me. I could have done without the saccharine arrangement of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” that accompanied the lovers’ pas de deux at the end of the first act, but otherwise the variety and quality of the pieces were impressive. I was very much taken with the use of most of Ibert’s witty “Divertissment” for the Act I rehearsal scene and can-can battle between Nathalie and La Goulue.

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Moulin Rouge® the Ballet has moved on to other venues; for more information: rwb.org. The Dance St. Louis season continues with The Nashville Ballet’s production of Orff’s Carmina Burana, with UMSL's University Orchestra and University Singers, Bach Society of Saint Louis, and St. Louis Children's Choirs. Performances are February 21-24 at the Touhill Center. For more information: dancestlouis.org.

Chuck's Choices for the weekend of January 25, 2013

As always, the choices are purely my personal opinion. Take with a grain (or a shaker) of salt.

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New this week:

Circus Harmony presents Capriccio, A Vaudevillian Adventure, Saturday at 2 and 7 PM and Sunday at 2 PM,. “Capriccio features children from all corners of St. Louis. For this first time ever, this Circus Harmony production will include singing along with unicycling, juggling, wire walking and other feats of skill and daring.” "Performances are professional, precision, and some of the performers leave audience members gasping in disbelief," writes Connie Bollinger in her review for 88.1 KDHX. .Performances take place at City Museum, 701 N. 15th Street. For more information: circusharmony.brownpapertickets.com or call 314-436-7676.

St. Louis Actors Studio presents Albee's The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? January 18 through February 3 at the Gaslight Theatre, 358 North Boyle. “The tale of a married, middle-aged architect whose life crumbles when he falls in love with a goat, the play focuses on the limits of an ostensibly liberal society. Through showing this family in crisis, Albee challenges audience members to question their own morality in the face of other social taboos including infidelity, homosexuality, pedophilia, incest and, of course, bestiality.The play also features many language games and grammatical arguments in the middle of catastrophes and existential disputes between the characters.” In his review for 88.1 KDHX, Steve Callahan describes this as "a stunningly beautiful piece of theatre." For more information, call 314-458-2978 or visit stlas.org



Dance St. Louis presents the Royal Winnipeg Ballet production of Moulin Rouge-The Ballet Friday at 8 PM and Saturday at 2 and 8 PM, January 25 and 26. “Fin de siècle Paris throbs with love, ambition, and desire when an original new story told entirely through dance brings the oldest continuously running ballet company in North America to St. Louis for the first time. Set to classical music by Debussy, Offenbach and more, Moulin Rouge® - The Ballet was created in 2009 for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's 70th anniversary by their own Jorden Morris and has been a sold-out sensation on tour in Canada and the U.S. In a city where pomp runs hand in hand with poverty, where the heady elixir of freedom breeds reckless passion, struggling artist Matthew and cancan dancer Nathalie tempt fate as they seek love and destiny at the infamous cabaret - The Moulin Rouge®.” The performances take place at the Touhill Performing Arts center on the campus of The University of Missouri at St. Louis. For more information, you may visit dancestlouis.org or call 314-534-6622.

Held over:

The Alton Little Theater presents the comedy Almost, Maine through Sunday at 2450 North Henry in Alton, IL. This is a charming set of romantically comic one acts with a strong dose of a kind of magical realism. We did the local premier of this a few years back at West End Players Guild and the show has been cropping up here and there ever since. I haven't seen the ALT production, but I can attest to the fact that the play itself is first-class stuff. For more information, call 618.462.6562 or visit altonlittletheater.org.

Upstream Theater presents Café Chanson, a “ballet in song” created and directed by Broadway star and native St. Louisan Ken Page, Thursday through Sunday,. The official description says the show “includes World War II period songs from some of France's most renowned singers and songwriters” although the actual song list includes material from the late 1920s to the early 1970s. Performances take place at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 North Grand in Grand Center. I'm a great fan of the classic French pop songs so, as I note in my review for 88.1 KDHX, I mostly enjoyed this production despite some significant flaws. For more information, including show times: upstreamtheater.org.

Metro Theatre Company and the The Edison Theatre at Washington University present the St. Louis premiere of Jackie and Me by Steven Dietz, adapted from the book by Dan Gutman, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM and Sunday at 2 PM. “An exciting play that illuminates Jackie Robinson's courage and dignity in the face of cruel racial prejudice, Jackie and Me will have you on the edge of your seat as we all root for the man who changed the face of the game.” Each performance will be immediately followed by a discussion exploring questions raised by the story. The play is recommended for adults and young people 10 and over. I'm not going to get to see this one, but I'm recommending it because Metro has such a good track record and becuase Robinson's story a reminder of both how far we have come in race relations and how far we still have to go. In her review for 88.1 KDHX, Andrea Braun describes this as "a fine show for kids, and that’s exactly what it aims to be." For more information, call the Edison Theatre Box Office at (314) 935-6543.

Photo: Stewart Goldstein

The Black Rep presents August Wilson's The Piano Lesson through February 3. “Depression-era Pittsburgh. A family strives to hold on to its history. The masterful Pulitzer Prize winner from one of American's greatest playwrights.” In his review for 88.1 KDHX, Robert Ashton describes this production as "lively, funny and challenging." Performances take place at the Grandel Theatre, 3610 Grandel Square. For more information, visit theblackrep.org or call 314-534-3810.