What happens when three arts organizations with histories of one-to-one collaboration join forces for a triple threat of performing arts?
Things might get a little Twisted.
Twisted, slated for Sept. 25-28 at the Ohio Theatre, is the product of an alliance among BalletMet, Opera Columbus and the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, accompanied by the Columbus Symphony Chorus.
The concept originates from a meeting last year among Opera Columbus General Manager Peggy Kriha Dye and BalletMet Artistic Director Edwaard Liang, both of whom were fairly new in their positions, as well as CAPA President Bill Conner. CAPA oversees operations for the opera and the symphony, as well as several other local arts organizations.
“(Liang and I) both have a performing background, and so the conversation started rollng about how we could collaborate,” says Dye. “It was just fun, because our imaginations went crazy.”
The two got into an involved discussion of the terminology and mechanics behind opera and ballet to better understand each other’s work and see the levels on which they might interact.
“We wanted to do a collaboration that was really outside the box,” says Liang.
Dye and Liang didn’t want to collaborate merely for the sake of collaboration, Dye says; they wanted to create something that had never been done before. To that end, they got the symphony involved as well, and made a point to craft a show that didn’t just feature the three organizations performing separately.
“We really wanted to twist them together,” says Dye, explaining the origin of the show’s name.
Singers, dancers and musicians will all be onstage. Orchestra musicians are spread out across the stage, and the singers and dancers will move seamlessly through their ranks. Costumes are largely contemporary to ensure the performers reflect the audience in appearance, and singers and dancers will be dressed similarly, so the audience may not know on sight what role a given performer will play.
“It’ll be a huge aggregation of people there onstage,” says Peter Stafford Wilson, associate conductor for the symphony, who will be conducting the performance.
The symphony has backed up both the opera and the ballet before, but this is a new experience – the musicians will be onstage rather than in the pit, and the group playing will be the full ensemble rather than a smaller pit orchestra.
“The orchestra is an integral part rather than simply the musical soundtrack,” Wilson says.
Having the orchestra visible will make the sound seem more present to patrons as well, he says.
Choreographing the action with so many people onstage is a challenge, Liang says, but he and the other choreographers are up to it.
There will be a few points during which only one organization is performing, but those are the exception and not the rule, Dye says.
“Everyone gets to lead a particular aria,” says Liang.
Operas represented include La Boheme, The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, Mephistopheles and Carmen, and among the songs are pieces by Wagner, Puccini, Mozart, Verdi, Copland, Bizet, Strauss and Rossini. The idea was to pick out the greatest hits of opera, Dye says; there are no surtitles, but most audience members will recognize the pieces. Some pieces were also chosen because their tempos were ideal for dance.
Liang is one of the choreographers who will be putting together the dance pieces, the others being Val Caniparoli, Ma Cong and Jimmy Orrante. The show is written and directed by Crystal Manich.
Guest narrator Christopher Purdy of WOSU will tie everything together, explaining not only what patrons are seeing but also where all three arts organizations are going.
“It’s a way for the city to be reintroduced to our art,” Dye says.
Because of the substantial scope of the collaboration, Dye, Liang and Wilson have all been part of the same creative process, rather than working independently and putting everything together toward the end. Each choreographer gets two weeks to rehearse the dance, then substitute singers come in Thursdays and Fridays – many of the singers are up-and-coming performers being brought in from outside Columbus – and, once everything is ready, it’s filmed and the footage is sent to the planned singers.
“For all three organizations, this type of new creative venture is quite risky because it’s not been done,” Liang says. “Nobody has a real prototype for how it should go.”
It requires an enormous amount of trust and pulls each organization out of its comfort zone, but art is all about getting out of one’s comfort zone, whether as a performer or an audience member, Wilson says.
“It’s going to be a spectacle,” says Dye.
Garth Bishop is editor of CityScene Magazine. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
