Malungo

Apolinario Malungo

Kathleen Redwine

Understanding Dance

November 17th, 2016

Review Paper

The review presented in this paper consists of brief descriptions of two of the

four ballet dances, Pas de Quatre and The Firebird, performed by Oklahoma Festival

Ballet at The University of Oklahoma. This review focuses mainly on describing

movements, choreography and the dance itself although aspects such as lighting, and

costumes may be discussed.

The first performance piece was Pas de Quatre, which highlighted the

essence of the romantic style and performed by four ballerinas. This piece was very

classical and technical resembling aspects of romantic style. The dancers wore white

romantic tutu, which were above their knees, and the stage was very simple with the

lights focusing on dancers while they danced in-group as well as in pairs or alone. The

choreography began very soft with a lot of lightless, sophistication and poise, but it

intensified as the different variation were presented. When the ballerinas were

dancing as group, the movements were more elegant and fluid displaying synchrony

with music, and dancing on pointe. It followed by dancing as pairs in which the

dancers danced with more intensity and energy, which involved lots of jumps, spins

and pirouettes. During individual dancing, the movements were the combination of

fast footwork, jumps and spins, which made the audience to cheer fervently. At the

ending, two gentlemen dressing traditional romantic cloths came to the stage and gave

flowers to the dance. In essence, this piece was very entertaining to see because of
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how well the dancers executed the movements, and positive energy that they

transmitted to the audience.

The last performance piece was The Firebird, which told a story about love

and magic in which the prince had to overpass the evil magician in order to marry the

princess. In contrast with the first piece, this piece involved more dancers, and two

different scenarios. In the first scenario, which was a mystic place with trees and dark

cage, began the choreography in which a ballerina wearing a red short tutu danced

alone while the prince was observing her. While she was dancing alone, she was

jumping and moving around, and then the prince got closer, and both showed very

synchronized movements. The prince was lifting her up, and she was doing lot of

fluid arm movement while in the air to seem like a bird flying. Their spinning and

jumping movements did not include much on pointe work as in the first piece. After

the firebird ballerina gave a feather to the prince and left, a group of about dozen of

ballerinas came to stage and start doing some pirouettes, and one of those ballerinas

was the princess. After that, the prince and princess exchanged sensual moments,

showing that they were in love, and all of the sudden dancers in monster costumes

came to the stage and disrupted the loving moment between the couple. The monsters

were imitating moments and sounds of diverse creatures, and the evil magician came

after a while to impede the couple to be together.

Furthermore, the prince began fighting with creatures in order to be with his

lover, but he was losing. During this fighting, all dancers were doing multiples

choreographed movements all over the stage, and then the prince used the feather that

the firebird gave to him to kill all the evil creatures. The ending, the scenario changed

to something (a castle) much brighter, shinier and gold to symbolize and confirm the

engagement between the prince and the princess. In summary, it was an amazing
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piece because of the story and the way it was interpreted. It was very easy to follow

and see the four stage elements working together perfectly.

Overall, it was a very interesting night performance due to the hardworking

that all dancers, choreographers and etc. put in every each of four pieces of the night.

Despite the two pieces discussed above, Le Spectre de La Rose was another piece that

I felt was fascinating because of the sensuality of the movements and the story itself.