Review: Beer & Ballet

The Sacramento Ballet’s Beer & Ballet features 15 dances in a variety of styles that emphasize the classical training behind this emphatically contemporary company. It’s a program of surprisingly strong showings by dancers with little to no choreographic experience.

Highlights include (but are not limited to): Laura Whitby’s duet to music by the Mamas and the Papas—on opening night, Kaori Higashiyama and Stefan Calka were charmingly flirtatious (Julia Feldman and Christopher Nachtrab sometimes perform); as well as “Above,” a moving tale of drug abuse and its aftermath, created by first-timer Anthony Cannarella to music by Mad Season. Through his dancers (Feldman and Rick Porter, alternating with Isabella Velasquez and Jaime Orrego), Cannarella conveys a range of emotions, the strongest of which is loss.

Shania Rasmussen’s choreography in “Cell Block Tango” (from the musical Chicago) is smart and sexy—without even a suggestion of the traditional Bob Fosse aesthetic. Jonathan Harris’ ambitious “Dances at an Exhibition” excerpt, inspired by Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” replicates a trip through a museum with a stop at each of the 10 pictures in the composer’s piece. Harris has two scenes so far: “The Gnome,” danced by the delightful Dylan Keane (alternating with Cannarella), and “The Castle,” featuring Frances Chae and Porter, alternating with Higashiyama and Nachtrab. This popular series holds great potential that grows with each iteration.