New Ballet Ensemble to display myriad styles in 'Springloaded' concert

By Christopher Blank

Thursday, June 4, 2009

The New Ballet Ensemble covers a lot of ground in its dance performances, from hip hop to classical and various styles between.

Founder and director Katie Smythe calls her dance offerings a "synthesis," and when the company performs its annual "Springloaded" concert this weekend, the dozen pieces on the program will certainly represent a potpourri of movement.

"It's a very eclectic evening," Smythe said. "Dance is still fairly segregated in a lot of places. We need to reconcile ourselves in this city so that a real artistic product can emerge."

Based in Midtown, the company maintains a troupe of eight professional dancers who also teach at the New Ballet Ensemble & School. Because many of the students are on scholarship and come from urban backgrounds, the dance instruction merges the types of dance that many students have been learning on their own.

The concert's centerpiece is created by Uri Sands, a former principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Born in Miami, Sands started dancing as a teenager in Memphis at Tennessee Ballet. Now he runs TU Dance company in Minneapolis with Toni-Pierce Sands.

Smythe brought him to New Ballet to stage one of his more popular works with the company. When that didn't go as planned, he choreographed a new piece for the company, which he dubbed a "work in progress."

Later, after setting it on his own dancers back home, he titled the piece "Fire." In November, he returned to Memphis and gave the new work, based on a series of contemporary dance phrases, to New Ballet.

The company premiered the piece recently at the opening of the Lowenstein Building Downtown.

"I was afraid that we were pushing the envelope," Smythe said. "There were a lot of older ladies at the opening and I thought they might be turned away by the techno music. But they ended up bobbing their heads and really enjoying it."

Choreographer Kevin Thomas, a former principal at the Dance Theatre of Harlem and ballet master of New Ballet, has been with the company for a year now.

His work was recently seen in the Opera Memphis production of "Faust."

That piece, along with another set to music by Bach, are included in the program this weekend. Thomas utilized his dancers' unique set of skills.

"I'm trying to create a hybrid of styles," Thomas said. "So I merged my Balanchine style of movement to their hip-hop way of movement. A lot of companies I've worked with in the past don't just do one style. We want to have well-rounded dancers."

New Ballet also lets other local dance companies use its studio space, and the weekend's concert includes works by resident companies Bantaba Dance Company, an African drum and dance troupe, and Hybrid Performance Group, a new troupe of college students that focuses on hip-hop.

New Ballet Ensemble's "Springloaded"

7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Buckman Arts Center, 60 Perkins Ext. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for children. Call 726-9225.