Boston Ballet was in purposeful disarray as it prepared for the opening of Onegin, the John Cranko ballet based on Aleksandr Pushkin’s immortal verse novel, tonight (October 24) at the Wang Theatre. Dressed in ragamuffin-chic of multiple T-shirts tied and layered over their leotards and tights, the dancers from one of the four casts took their places in the center of the Grand Studio at the company’s Clarendon Street home. Members of the other casts worked at the edges, shadowing their colleagues as company rehearsal pianist Freda Locker struck up the first notes. Music director Jonathan McPhee and associate conductor Mark Churchill sat at the side of the piano, conducting from scores spread open before them.
Company director Mikko Nissinen watched along with ballet masters Eva Evdokimova, (who had a considerable success in the leading role during her dancing days), Raymond Lukens, and Jane Bourne, who’s in town to set the ballet. Bourne is a dance notator trained in the Benesh system of recording the physical details of ballets. She now works freelance, mostly staging the Cranko ballets on companies around the world. Reid Anderson — the current director of the Stuttgart Ballet, which Cranko had directed, and chief keeper of the Cranko flame — was flying in that night to tweak the final details. Cranko, who died in an airplane crash in 1973, when he was just 45, choreographed Onegin for Stuttgart in 1965, then revised it in 1967. Boston Ballet, the first American company to take the work into its repertoire, has done it in 1994 and 1997.
Onegin’s outsized passions make it a dream ballet for dancers with a yen for the dramatic. Innocent 17-year-old country girl Tatyana falls in love with bored Petersburg sophisticate Yevgeny Onegin. He spurns her love, then amuses himself with the affections of her younger sister, Olga, whereupon his friend Lensky (who’s Olga’s fiancé) challenges him to a duel. Onegin shoots Lensky dead, then departs. Years later, he returns, encounters the mature Tatyana, and is moved to accept and return her love — but she’s married, and though she still loves him, she won’t compromise herself or leave her husband.
" Cranko is very successful in telling the story through dance — that was his genius, " Bourne explains. And when the directors of the Stuttgart Opera House refused to allow him to use an arrangement of music from Tachikovsky’s opera Yevgeny Onegin, he asked Kurt-Heinz Stolze to piece together a score from Tchaikovsky’s " minor " compositions, mostly little-known piano works and a suite called The Caprices of Oksana. German scene designer Jurgen Rose created the sets and costumes.
But that’s just the start of your dance weekend. Across the street from the Wang Theatre, the Paul Taylor Dance Company will be performing at the Shubert. Now in its 48th year, the company is one of the glories of American dance, and its 72-year-old choreographer remains one of the most acclaimed choreographers of the past half-century. Thanks to the FleetBoston Celebrity Series and the Wang Center, this year’s engagement is the first of a series that’s been booked for Boston over the next three years.
The program that will open this Friday comprises three works: Images, to music by Claude Debussy, Black Tuesday, to songs from the Great Depression including " Brother Can You Spare a Dime? " , and Promethean Fire, to music by J.S. Bach (the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the Prelude in E-flat, and the Chorale Prelude). New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff called Promethean Fire, " quite simply one of the best dance works choreographed by Paul Taylor " after seeing the work’s premiere last summer at American Dance Festival in North Carolina.
Wondering what to do on Sunday? Well, José Mateo’s Ballet Theatre is in its 17th season, and it will be appearing at the Sanctuary Theatre, in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, through November 3. Mateo’s 16-member company will perform four of his works, including two world premieres.
Boston Ballet presents Onegin at the Wang Theatre October 24 through November 3. Tickets are $26 to $82; call (800) 447-7400 or online at www.telecharge.com, or visit the Wang Theatre box office. FleetBoston Celebrity Series presents Paul Taylor Dance Company at the Shubert Theatre October 25 through 27. Tickets are $42 to $60; call (800) 447-7400 or charge online at www.celebrityseries.org. José Mateo’s Ballet Theatre appears at the Sanctuary Theatre, in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church, 400 Harvard Street in Harvard Square, through November 3. Tickets are $28. Call (617) 354-7467.
