“Zig Zag was my fourth work with Tony’s music,” said Jessica Lang, choreographer of this amazing work featuring the music of Tony Bennett. It received a rousing reception at the Long Center last weekend, venue for the latest display of the artistry of Ballet Austin.
“I was very fortunate to get to know Tony and his family starting around 2015. I had a company called Jessica Lang Dance that was based in Queens, New York City and I was looking for work that would maybe leave us – leave the audience – with a high feeling; the kind that makes you want to snap your fingers as you leave the theater.
“I think I had a lot of serious work on my rep and I wanted to bring something that accesses the jazz vocabulary. I wanted to collaborate with someone; my sister was a Rockette and one of her best friends was this woman Sherry Walsh who transitioned from being a Rockette into arts management as she became Tony Bennett’s executive director of his nonprofit called Exploring the Arts. She was my touchstone for all things about nonprofit questions I had about running a company. And I went to her and just said, you know, I’m thinking about collaborating with someone based in Queens, would Tony ever be open to this? And she said, it’s actually his dying wish.
“Everyone used Frank Sinatra’s music, and Frank went on to the Johnny Carson show, and said Bennett was his favorite singer. So he had this amazing career as a singer, but he was also an artist. And I wanted to value that in the way he looked at his work, that of course he was an entertainer, and a performer, but I wanted to incorporate his visual art, which was as much of who he believed he was. So, I made a piece for my company called This Thing Called Love.”
Kevin McKenzie, who was the director at the time of American Ballet Theatre, became interested in her series of ballets featuring Bennett tunes. He commissioned Zig Zag in 2020, which has 9 songs, some of which are set against a backdrop of his art (lead photo). In I Left My Heart in San Francisco, the dancers recreate a streetcar, the Golden Gate bridge, and the Sun, with noting more than their bodies. Quite delightful. I believe I saw some Fred Astaire dance moves in the Fascinating Rhythm piece. D’Lovely is packed full of verve; and Just One of Those Things is coyly performed by 5 male dancers. For anyone looking for a subtext, it is there! Overall, I found Zig Zag to rate a 10 on the sheer fun and enjoyability scale. A truly rare and precious ballet. In the interests of full disclosure, I attended several Tony Bennett concerts over the decades.
Michele Gifford, the stager for the opening number, Polyphonia, also offered insights to the audience after the performance. “The polyphony was the first work that Christopher Wheeldon (b. 1973) created after he retired from dance. He became a soloist at New York City Ballet. The story goes that he went to Tower Records in New York City. And up to that point, he was using very melodic music, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich Dvorak: things that had a swell to it, and a rhythm.
“He decided to pick the hardest music that he could find by listening on the headphones in Tower Records. And he came up with this, Polyphonia, and it challenged him and kind of took him out of his comfort zone. And basically, from then and forward it put him on the map as a neoclassical choreographer, which he had not ever explored before.” In Wheeldon’s own words, “As soon as I heard Ligeti’s music, I thought, this is going to take me somewhere I’ve never been before; it made me a far braver dancemaker.” He was referring to the avante-garde Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006). He achieved pop fame when a portion of his Requiem was included in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Polyphonia and Desire, a short ballet by Austin Opera artistic director Stephen Mills, both lived up to the show’s title Heart’s Desire (it was performed on Valentine’s Day). They both blossomed into traditional ballet, which is what an audience typically expects. It speaks to the true nature of the art, and it met my heart’s desire. Bravo.
For future performances, visit BalletAustin.org