Honolulu Dance Theatre
By Betty Shimabukuro
turns a classic horror story into
a classical ballet
Star-BulletinAT an idyllic site above Kaneohe Bay, inside a bright and breezy dance studio, three men are giving birth to a monster.
They circle a metal table, connect invisible cables, yank on invisible thread with invisible needles. The monster lies still in white tank top and shorts. The music of Vivaldi booms. A final lever is pulled.
"Juice him!" their leader calls.
A monster is born, and so is a ballet.
On Saturday the Honolulu Dance Theatre begins a two-weekend run of a ballet based on Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" at the Leeward Community College Theatre. Rehearsals, though, have been held on the other side of the island, at the YMCA's Kokokahi Camp, where on this day, Dr. Frankenstein, Igor and their director, using invisible props, are working on the best way to balletically induce life.
It seems the ultimate square peg, a ballet about a lumbering monster. Why do it?
Because Dracula was already taken.
Matthew Wright, executive and artistic director of the dance company, is a lifelong fan of spooky films. "As a child I used to watch horror movies -- they used to have a Friday night double bill on the BBC."
He had long wanted to turn one into a ballet -- "It just seemed like something we needed
to explore" -- and settled on Frankenstein, given that other ballet companies had already put Dracula in tights.
To appreciate this ballet is to let go of the common image of a stiff-legged, grunting, howling creature with bolts in his neck.
, Gennadi Saveliev and Georgia Tucker dance the parts
of Dr. Frankenstein and his fiance, Elizabeth.
The monster of Shelly's Gothic novel is agile and swift. He says things like, "I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory."Yeah, and grunt to you, too.
Sonny Sorrels will play the monster in the Shelley mode. "It's really a shame to have lost Mary Shelley's concept, which is that this creature thought about the nature of life and the nature of God," Sorrels says.
Sorrels is an actor more than a dancer, famous in these parts for his portrayals of Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol." He will take the monster from his jerky first movements to a pantherlike sleekness.
"Interspersed between more character movements there is dance," he says, "and enough of it to be challenging."
Especially since Sorrels is coming off a double injury -- he fell off an elephant during a visit to Nepal last year, and then more recently, a bus wheelchair lift fell on his foot. He only gave up his cane two weeks ago. "Actually those injuries lend themselves to the characterization, especially the right knee. The right knee is a bitch."
Handling the serious ballet are Gennadi Saveliev of the American Ballet Theatre, as Dr. Franken-stein, and Georgia Tucker of the Oregon Ballet Theatre as Elizabeth, the doctor's fiancee.
The principals have varied experience with the "Franken-stein" story. Tucker loved Gothic horror novels as a child and knows all the big-screen versions of the tale. Saveliev, who moved to the United States just five years ago, knows none of them -- "In Russia there is no story like that," he says.
Sorrels is a fan of Boris Karloff's classic 1931 portrayal and the Robert DeNiro version of a few years back. Beaches Banuilos, who plays Igor, leans more toward Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein."
The concept of a "Frank-enstein" ballet originated three years ago, but Wright put the project on hold because of funding delays and the birth of his daughter, Emily. "I didn't want to do Frankenstein along with the birth of my first child. They just didn't go together somehow."
But now it all gels, and in that studio in Kaneohe, Wright sometimes holds 11-month-old Emily as he demonstrates dance moves.
As though to add a final challenge to Wright's creative process, Saveliev arrived just nine days before opening night. Until he got here, Wright wasn't quite sure how he would end his ballet. "Creating a ballet around a lead dancer who isn't here is absurd to be quite honest," he says.
But for Saveliev, this is nothing new: "Last year I had one-and-a-half weeks to learn the full 'Swan Lake.' " He isn't worried.
As Shelley's monster speaks: "Fear not but that when you are ready I shall appear."
And a ballet is born.
Frankenstein
Honolulu Dance Theatre presents an original ballet:
Dates: Saturday and Sunday and July 25, 26
