As up to date Angelenos, seeing the immersive “Little Women Ballet” could be as shut as we’ll ever get to stepping right into a time machine.
The collection of dance works about Louisa Might Alcott’s beloved nineteenth century novel are staged contained in the stately Victorian properties of Northeast L.A.’s Heritage Sq. Museum. Dancers and actors are wearing period-inspired costumes, from cap-sleeve pioneer clothes to Steampunk-style fashions. Earlier than every efficiency, the scene is about by a narrator who speaks in a prim, puritanical accent paying homage to a bygone period. And the manufacturing calls for the viewers’s full participation: as visitors, we’re invited to do every little thing from go to the properties of the novel’s March sisters to step in to play roles to advance the plot.
We start by splitting off into small teams and following alongside as a personality — in my group’s case, the ladies’ rich Aunt March — leads us into the assorted homes the place the ballet will probably be staged. The present is intimate — dancers are usually not even two toes away from viewers members, who’re granted restricted seating and area to face within the small rooms. They’re so shut that you may hear the muffled sounds of their ballet sneakers on the carpet and may make eye contact, which feels each intimate and mildly discomfiting.
Directed and choreographed by Emma Andres, the expertise kicked off in Might with a spring iteration earlier than bowing its autumn manufacturing final month. In late November, the collection will conclude with a winter immersive earlier than staging a full-length model of the story on the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in December.
The trilogy emerged organically. “We wanted to take this project in steps to see how it was going to grow and be received by audiences,” Andres mentioned. “When I originally created the spring immersive, I did not know that I would be creating autumn and winter as well.”
Andres created the work with the intention of creating area in ballet for extra tales specializing in girls. “The story of ‘Little Women’ is complicated, but I felt that it would be great for narrative ballet,” she mentioned. “I see myself in all four of the sisters and I felt that they were a group of young ladies who could be inspiring for young audiences to watch and take influence from. Even though they come from a time that’s 100 or so years before our own, they still have very relatable traits to us in 2024.”
Ellen Relac and Alberto Hernandez, as Meg March and John Brooke, carry out in a room of the L.A. Heritage Museum.
Constructed through the Victorian period, the Heritage Sq. Museum is in some ways the proper backdrop for this manufacturing.
“We don’t have the privilege of being in Concord, Mass., where Louisa May Alcott grew up, but I feel like Heritage Square really shows where we developed our performance, which was California,” Andres mentioned.
Dancing within the vintage properties required cautious planning. Fortunately, it turned out that pointe sneakers moved simply throughout the carpet-covered flooring. “[The carpet] kind of acts like rosin so it provides this friction that’s actually really nice and never slippery,” Andres defined.
Nevertheless, there have been different design challenges, notably the low-hanging chandeliers. To forestall a disaster, the staff measured all the rooms and taped down the scale of their house studio of Pasadena Civic Ballet. The dancers additionally walked the area and famous every bit of furnishings and potential pitfall throughout a costume rehearsal.
Denise Moses as Aunt March introduces a scene earlier than a gaggle of visitors.
Andres grew up dancing with the Pasadena Civic Ballet, which she attended from the age of 4 by means of 18. “It’s a very unique studio, because they create all their own ballets,” she mentioned, together with interpretations of Disney titles like “Peter Pan,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Snow White” and “Alice in Wonderland.”
The corporate has been directed by Diane De Franco Browne, Tania Grafos and Zoe Vidalakis since 2000. Browne served as manufacturing advisor on this undertaking. “I watched these three really creative women come together and create a very inspiring and creative environment growing up,” Andres mentioned. “I think that a lot of my passion for the arts came from watching them as I grew up.”
Friends congregate exterior of one of many Victorian buildings that comprise L.A.’s Heritage Sq. Museum.
The Pasadena native graduated from UC Irvine in 2020 with a BFA bachelor of effective arts diploma in choreography and a minor in literary journalism. After the pandemic hit, Andres moved again to Pasadena and have become supervisor of Pasadena Civic Ballet, serving to it construct a number of out of doors dance studios to maintain dance going reside. “Even though I was really happy to be coming back, it was very difficult having all of our students on Zoom. But luckily we transitioned back to live pretty quickly,” mentioned Andres.
It was throughout that point that she first conceived of the concept for a “Little Women”-themed ballet. Cooped up inside, she watched Greta Gerwig’s 2019 tackle the traditional work and shortly after screened all three earlier feature-length movie diversifications (from 1933, 1949 and 1994) and skim the ebook.
“I’m glad I [first] read it when I was older because I feel like I related to it way more than I would have as a child,” Andres mentioned. “I feel like translating it into a ballet is a way that younger audiences can really relate to it and the emotions of the characters and their personalities.”
She started by crafting a six-minute summation of the ebook for Pasadena Civic Ballet in 2021, that includes college students on the faculty. “I tried to target key points in their lives,” she mentioned. “I went directly into Jo meeting Laurie and then directly from there, the relationship between John and Meg. Because when Meg starts to fall in love, that’s the first time that Jo really sees that their family could come apart when people start growing up.”
From left, Chris Flores, Evan Hernandez, Ross Clark, Jacob Robleto and Alberto Hernandez carry out within the immersive “Little Women Ballet.”
She established every character’s character visually by creating recognizable dance motifs for every of the sisters, which reside on within the present manufacturing. “Each of the sisters has a pose that they do that symbolizes their interests and personality,” Andres mentioned. “Jo holds her hands up like she’s reading a book, Amy like she’s painting a canvas with a paintbrush, Beth’s on a piano and then Meg’s are up by her face to symbolize an acting mask.”
Dance sequences had been created for instance scenes within the ladies’ lives together with Amy and Laurie’s courtship in Paris, Beth’s last days with Jo and Jo’s romance with professor Fredrick Bhaer.
‘Little Girls Ballet’ returns for 2 performances this winter
The winter immersive runs Nov. 22-24 at Heritage Sq. Museum. Tickets are $60. The complete-length ballet will probably be held Dec. 7 at Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Tickets begin at $28. For extra info, go to littlewomenballet.com
Andres made a deliberate selection for all of the sisters to bop on pointe — aside from Jo, a personality who is unconventional in her tomboyishness. Jo dances with flexed toes.
“Some of our dancers are not pointe dancers, but they are excellent ballet dancers,” she mentioned. “If I feel that someone will play the character really well, that is more important to me than them doing pointe. But my hope for the full-length is that it will just be Jo not wearing them, to emphasize the idea that she’s not only breaking societal norms as a woman of the time, but she’s also breaking ballet norms.”
The present itself is doing the identical.
Madison Marsh performs as Amy March. Dance sequences had been created for instance scenes within the sisters’ lives.