Tulsa Ballet: Made in America review – Oklahoman’s incredibly versatile troupe is A-OK! | | Section

This small Oklahoman dance company, touring the UK for the first time, has been traveling for 70 years. For the past thirty years, the artistic director has been the Italian Marcello Angelini, who sets the highest standards for his dancers (which include. Edward Truelove from England and Scotland, James Lachlan Murray).

This is particularly evident in the opening piece of this triple bill, a Classical Symphony by Yuri Possokhov, a Ukrainian composer who now lives in San Francisco. Ballet. Living in Prokofiev, Possokhov’s Neoclassical dance is a little flexible, poor hip rock or other external elements, but always puts grace in the foreground. For the lead pair Nao Ota and Jun Masuda, it’s a difficult, artistic skill, which they pull off with ease. The steps come continuously, but all are well defined by the beauty of the wind.

Divenere, written by Nicolo Fonte is inspired by the music of the great pianist Ludovico Einaudi and his style of harmonizing through arpeggios. Choreography is very sensitive to music. So when the music is beautiful but amorphous or insipid, the dance feels the same. But when the music is focused, songs, big or questions, the dance follows – Masuda’s solo is very important.

This is a program designed to show the company’s flexibility in three short steps. Remember Our Song is Andy Blankenbuehler, the famous Hamilton singer, who translates the whole story of the song into a quarter of an hour: the boys go to war, the loved ones they left behind, life at sea, the underwater problem, their memories.

Blankenbuehler is good at gathering bodies around the stage, though it’s hard to invest in the action in such a short time frame. The 1940s take on jazz, swing, a bit of Charleston, and Teague Applegate’s middle part has a lovely verve, though you’d like to see him loosen up and go for Gene Kelly. In short, it’s a pleasure to be sent to passionate dancers.