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Bueno
ballet
Caracas New World Ballet
University Musical Society
Power Center
8 p.m., Wednesday, October 26
By Ellen Rieser
C ARACAS New World Ballet
(Ballet Nuevo Mundo De
Caracas for you Spanish scholars), the
official company of the Venezuelan
city, makes its Ann Arbor debut Wed-
nesday evening, October 26th, at Power
Center. Although the troupe is only a
few years old, it has already managed
to acquire worksby internationally
noted choreographers such as George
Balanchine, Alvin Ailey, Brian Mac-
Donald, and Choo San Goh.
Formerly known as the International
Ballet Caracas, Caracas New World
Ballet was created in 1981 when the In-
ternational Ballet came under the joint
artistic direction of Zhandra Rodriguez
and Dale Taley, the then-principal dan-
cers with the International Ballet.
Rodriguez and Talley radically
reorganized the company, changing its
A Publication of the Michigan Daily Friday, (
. .
Ohman:
The boy
wonder
By Jonathan Stewart
JACK OHMAN is the first to admit he's
always been a bit ahead of himself. But not
even the 23-year-old Ohman could have
predicted he would go from a University of
Minnesota freshman to one of the nation's
top editoral cartoonists in less than four years.
Ohman, whose work appears regularly in
more than 300 newspapers around the country,
is considered the boy-wonder of his profession
- a profession where there are far more ap-
plicants than there are jobs available. His
success story - one in which he went from a 17
year-old college freshman who had "done
some work for (his) high school newspaper"
to a nationally syndicated
unusual one.
Today is Ohman's
Detroit Free Press wher
the last 17 months. Next'N
six-figure salary move o:
Portland, Ore. Not bad for
got his college degree.
In the world of editoria
tists rise to the top as qu
He has withstood the pres.
material day after day,
age, and comparisons to ]
the most influential 4
The Caracas New World Ballet: Changes bring success
,\,
..
_ °, ,
company in Caracas, of all places? Un-
til recently, Venezuela has hardly been
a center of the ballet world. The an-
swer lies in the personalities at the
helm of New World Ballet.
In particular, the success of New
World Ballet in acquiring a small but
distinguished repertoire of works by
prominent choreographers can be
directly traced to the efforts, and,
perhaps more importantly, the
professional connections of the com-
pany's new artistic directors,
Rodriguez and Talley.
During the early 1970s, Ahandra
Rodriguez was a principal dancer with
American Ballet Theatre. Her career
was a promising one. Indeed, I can
remember seeing her perform at Cor-
nell University with Marianna
Tcherkassy in a. tour billed as "Young
Stars of American Ballet Theatre."
Despite her successful North American
career, Rodriguez chose to return to
her native Venezuela to co-found the
then-International Ballet of Caracas.
Through her years with American
Ballet Theatre and her extensive ex-
perience as a great artist with such
companies as the National Ballet of
Cuba and the Berlin, Vienna, and Ham-
burg Ballets, Rodriguez has been able
to draw upon the ballets of the many
choreographers with whom she has
worked.
Dale Talley, the other co-director of
New World Ballet, has similar blue-
chip credentials. An alumnus of North
Carolina School of the Arts, Talley dan-
ced with the Harkness Ballet and Les
Grands Ballets Canadiens. Like
Rodriguez, Taley has also had the op-
portunity to work with well-known
choreographers ranging from the New
York City Ballet's Jerome Robbins to
Margo Sappington.
As New World Ballet is fairly small
as far as ballet companies go (40 dan-
cers, of which only 21 are on tour) and is
still rather young, Rodriguez and
Talley have concentrated on presenting
smaller programs of excerpts from the
classics (pas de deux from Don
Quixote, Swan Lake, and Nutcracker)
and short one-act ballets.
This smallness has had its benefits.
"I try to bring out their (the dancers')
abilities, to see things the dancers
themselves do not see," says Talley.
"In a small company, with two direc-
tors, you can give this your personal at-
tention."
The program that Caracas New
World Ballet will present at Power Cen-
ter will consist of four works, each in a
markedly different choreographic
style. Quicksilver by Dennis Nahat will
lead off the program. Following
Quicksilver will be Apollo and-Daphne,
a pas de deux set to Debussy's "After-
noon of a Faun" with choreography by
Renato Megalhaes.
The third work on the program will be
Lost Cry, a work by Choo San Goh, the
popular young choreographer with the
Washington Ballet. Caracas New
World Ballet's program will close with
New Dawn, a large work by Carlos Or-
ta, resident choreographer of the com-
pany.
Ballet afficianados should find this
second dance concert in the Musical
Society's "Choice Series" to be in-
teresting both in terms of adventures in
new choreography and the chance to
see a company new to Ann Arbor and
the world.
ITY and
LSTEo
Rr
A fl I 1
! .'j'Y,,A
-.
Rodriguez: Dance little sister
staff and revamping the company's
repertoire.
Since its reconstruction in 1981, the
young company has achieved con-
siderable success. Caracas New World
Ballet has toured extensively in the
Americas and the company has
received favorable New York City
reviews. But why a world-class ballet
ti/
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12 Weekend/October 21, 1983
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