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Europe’s hot choreographer makes his US debut
BY IRIS FANGER
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David Dawson, the 31-year-old, British-born choreographer of The Grey Area, which premieres in Boston next Thursday night on the Boston Ballet’s fall repertory program at the Wang Theatre, has become a hot item in Europe on the must-have list of choreographers. He created The Grey Area a year ago for five members of Dutch National Ballet, his home base, shortly after he had retired from a performing career to concentrate on making dances; the work went on to win a number of European ballet-of-the-year awards for 2002. Although Dawson is making his American premiere with this ballet, his dance card is already filled with assignments for six years out with work for Dutch National Ballet and companies in Sweden, Finland, and Monte Carlo. "I danced everything I wanted to dance," he explains. "I didn’t really enjoy performing. I enjoyed the process of working with people in the studio." The transition from the spotlight to backstage came a mere 15 months ago. "It was a period in my life when I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I had just stopped dancing. I wanted to rediscover beauty and romanticism, in a soft step toward the unknown. I wanted to convey a moment between endings and beginnings." Dawson asked a friend from Frankfurt, Niels Lanz, to create a sound score for The Grey Area based on a section from a Bach violin sonata — three and one half minutes of music to be stretched out and manipulated into enough cover for 25 minutes of dancing. "For me, it was important to have the musicality of Bach. You still have melody, even if you can’t hang on to it. There’s no counts, more a feeling of long, pulled-out chords. It gave me an amazing freedom." Sitting in on rehearsal with Dawson and dancers Lorna Feijoo (who comes to Boston this season from Ballet Nacional de Cuba as one of the new principals) and Sarah Lamb (recently promoted to principal), I was struck by his skills as a dancer. As he homes in on details, he demonstrates how he wants the steps executed, down to the fingertips. "Really liven the hands," he instructs. Although he has not performed for more than a year, he has not lost the elasticity or the classical line of the trained ballet dancer. Dawson’s background includes three years studying at the Royal Ballet School in England and winning the 1991 Prix de Lausanne competition before joining the Birmingham Royal Ballet. He moved on to the English National Ballet as soloist for a year before signing a contract with Dutch National Ballet; he also danced with Ballett Frankfurt. These hops through several ballet troupes exposed him to choreographers as varied as Kenneth MacMillan, Frederick Ashton, Rudi van Dantzig, William Forsythe, and Twyla Tharp. And though Dawson considers himself "in love with classical ballet," he admits to creating a movement language for The Grey Area where he "tilts, turns inside out, and stretches a bit" ballet technique. The Grey Area shares the Boston Ballet bill with two works by George Balanchine, Mozartiana and Stars and Stripes, which will kick off the 100th anniversary year of Balanchine’s birth. American Ballet Theatre principal Ethan Stiefel, who is as close to a ballet-world hunk as one gets, will be appearing as a guest star, alternating roles in the two Balanchine works throughout the weekend. The Boston Ballet’s fall repertory program, comprising Stars and Stripes, Mozartiana, and The Grey Area, runs October 23 through 26 at the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street in the Theater District. Tickets are $48 to $95; call (800) 447-7400.
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