A & A Ballet, a three-year-old dance school currently housed in the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave., is one of those places with the gift of turning raw talent into prodigious proficiency. Actually a combination of experience and skill, that gift comes in the form of the school’s co-founders, Anna Reznik and Alexei Kremnev. Both are recognized for their own distinguished dance careers and both have worked in leadership roles at the Joffrey before combining forces to open their dance center.
Last weekend’s performances of Sleeping Beauty marks the ninth production the school has mounted for public review and the staging carried all of the hallmarks that make this school so exceptional. As a premier school of ballet, they take their mission seriously enough to insist on excellence and possess the expertise to mine it and mold it. At peak moments in the performance, it was difficult to detect the line between the professionals recruited for the production’s lead roles and A & A Ballet’s more accomplished students. Many of the school’s aspiring artists displayed remarkable theatrical stage presence as well as noteworthy dancing ability. Abigail Dudich’s turn as the White Cat Saturday night was but one sterling example. The four dancers who performed the Garland Waltz were just as memorable. They all displayed a level of poise and confidence in their dancing that would parallel some of the best technique found in any great ballet company.
Tradition seems to hold a particularly strong influence on the way A & A Ballet shapes its performances. Their Art Deco Nutcracker over the Christmas holidays was so effectively evocative of a bygone past that you almost had a sense of how that earlier period felt as well as looked. Sleeping Beauty followed that same aesthetic awareness; this time rendering a rich baroque romanticism to the project.
Using original drawings of renowned 19th century book illustrator Gustave Dore to set the show’s tone proved a brilliant move. Projecting huge black and white images to create an expansive and engrossing backdrop instantly transported the audience to another time. The illustrations of imposing majestically ancient castles and scenes of a Europe 200 years in the past were captivating in their own right and helped to instantly transport the audience to a different world. Add Tchaikovsky’s beautifully timeless score and the ideal foundation was established to showcase quality dance.
Allowing that each of Sleeping Beauty’s leads performed beautifully, Michael Sayre’s as Prince Desire was ruthlessly impeccable. Charged with something beyond skill, he moved with uncanny exactness and precision. He also showed why one should never take anything for granted in dance. Audience’s come to assume part of dancer’s repertoire must include the ability to leap and perform jumps that are completely without sound. To hear a thud following either is jarring. There were thuds Saturday night, but very few. And all of them were dwarfed by the cascade of developed and developing talent covering the Studebaker stage on a Saturday night in May.
Sleeping Beauty
A & A Ballet
May 4, 2019 2pm/7pm
Studebaker Theater
410 S. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605
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