UGA Ballet Ensemble presents rarely seen classic work

Monday, April 10, 2000

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Set and costume design by Canadian designer Evan K. Ayotte and featured guest performer Bobby G. Ball will highlight the UGA Ballet Ensemble’s full-length production of La Bayadère. Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. on April 13-15 with a matinee on April 16 at 2 p.m. in the dance theater in the dance building.
The plot of La Bayadère, involving a conflict between duty and an oath of love, has been capturing imaginations for more than a century. Originally choreographed by Marius Petipa in 1877, La Bayadère will be presented with newly designed classical regalia and sets prepared specifically for the dance department’s New Dance Theatre. Ayotte has provided costume and set direction to major international ballet companies as well as theater, opera and film companies. His new designs bring together the rich and exotic flavors of India with the European styling of this great classical ballet.
Guest performer Bobby G. Ball--who took his first ballet classes at the University of Georgia--returns to Athens after an illustrious professional career with prestigious companies such as the Atlanta Ballet, the Milwaukee Ballet, and prize-winning performances at international ballet competitions.
Tickets for La Bayadère are $10 ($5 students) and are available at the Tate Student Center cashier’s window (542-8074) and at the door one hour prior to the performance.

Pushing the boundaries

UGA’s Interactive Performance Laboratory is pushing the boundaries of live theater with a unique production of The Tempest, combining actors with digitally created characters using motion-capture technology. Shakespeare’s play will be performed in the Fine Arts Theater at 8 p.m. April 12-15 and 19-22 and at 2:30 p.m. April 16.
“Up to now technology has been used in the theater to create flashy special effects that ultimately serve to distract the audience from the drama and from the vitality of the live performances,” says David Z. Saltz, the play’s director and the professor spearheading the Interactive Performance Laboratory. “We propose a new way to use technology that enhances the text, broadens the expressive range of actors and redefines what it means for a performance to be live.”
The character of the spirit Ariel will appear on stage as a large-scale computer animation whose movements and voice are controlled by a live actor. Ariel will be trapped in a small cage in full view of the audience, with sensors strapped to her head, wrist, elbows, hands, waist, knees and ankles, and special gloves that allow for more nuanced control over facial expressions. The actor’s movements will control the movements of the animation--a virtual puppet. The digital technology will enable Ariel to appear and disappear in a sparkle of light, and to fly, grow, shrink, stretch and twirl. In one scene of Shakespeare’s play, Ariel transforms herself into a monstrous harpy; in another she becomes the waves and thunder of a sea storm; and in yet another she creates a spectacular wedding celebration that vanishes with the snap of a finger--“the stuff that dreams are made on.”
“Prospero’s magic is a perfect metaphor for contemporary digital media,” says Saltz. “Prospero creates illusions that everyone else in the play accepts as reality, in much the way that digital media is increasingly shaping and manipulating our perception of reality.”
The Tempest will be the first large-scale production of the Interactive Performance Laboratory, which is designed to explore the creative possibilities that result from the marriage between live theatre and interactive media.

Chester String Quartet plus flute

The Chester String Quartet will be joined April 12 at 8 p.m. in Hodgson Hall by blutist Lisa Hanson Bartholow for a Franklin College Chamber Music concert. The members of the Chester String Quartet are Aaron Berofsky, violin; Kathryn Votapek, violin; David Harding, viola; and Eric Kutz, cello.
Bartholow joined the UGA School of Music in 1995, where she is currently the public relations coordinator and undergraduate coordinator for music studies. A graduate of the St. Louis Conservatory of Music and DePaul University, she has played flute, piccolo and baroque flute with numerous classical and popular ensembles around the country, including back-up for Rod Stewart. She founded and managed the Hanson Collection, a Chicago chamber ensemble, and she managed and performed with the Belden Consort, a Chicago woodwind quintet. The evening’s program includes works by Mozart, Ives and Schumann.

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