Ballet Tennessee is built to inspire
Just when the rest of the world is ready to take a holiday, performing artists across town are gearing up for a busy season. Ballet Tennessee certainly deserves a rest, should they want one—this season, they’ve performed at the Youth and Family Development Center’s End of Summer Celebration, Splash Summer Arts Festival, Parking Day, Chattanooga Dances, Tennessee Association of Dance, and Arts for CARES.
Keeping up this busy schedule, and delivering engaging, impeccable performances every time, takes a lot of focus and dedication. “We do it with talent and teamwork,” says Anna Baker-VanCura, executive artistic director and co-founder of Ballet Tennessee, also noting that engagements like these are built on a history of strong community relationships.
“We’re well-known for bringing high standards and high-quality works,” adds Lauren Day, who serves as office administrator as well as instructor, choreographer, company member, and professional dancer with BTN.
“Audiences see something different and special in us,” Baker-VanCura says, “The dancers work very well together. Their arm and body movements are well orchestrated. They’re strong technicians. That forms the base of everything we do, every performance, whether we’re telling a story or presenting a more abstract work.”
Now, Ballet Tennessee is capping off a busy fall with an exciting handful of winter offerings. On December 7, they’re taking their historical role performing with the Chattanooga Boys’ Choir’s Singing Christmas Tree.
Then on Saturday, December 21, they’re offering a Holiday Special at Chattanooga High School Center for Creative Arts. Rather than a single story ballet, this festive afternoon of dance will feature three movements, building thematically from a little chaotic curmudgeonry toward a message of peace, love, and joy.
The first section starts with a jazz ballet of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas”, featuring Andrew Bewley as The Grinch. Next, Jenison Owens, program administrator and instructor, choreographer, company member, and professional dancer with BTN, restages “Triple Dog Dare”.
“It’s based on a scene from A Christmas Story about a dare,” she says. “I’m taking the movie voiceover and putting music into it, then turning it into a hip hop dance. It’s exciting—it’s definitely new for Ballet Tennessee and the community.”
The first part rounds out with a portion of Barry VanCura’s Scrooge section of A Christmas Carol. Subsequent sections move toward more traditional holiday pageantry, featuring both ballet and musical theater dancing.
While the show isn’t specifically billed as Christmas-themed, there is definitely a movement from chaos to order, griping to rejoicing, that would make this afternoon a perfect alternative to the usual Christmas-cantata outing.
If you follow Chattanooga dance closely, you’ll be interested to see Ballet Tennessee slowly shifting its weight onto new choreographic legs. With the departure of a cadre of strong professional dancers over the past year—some to other Chattanooga companies, others to opportunities out of state—much of Ballet Tennessee’s choreography has been taken over by Owens and Day, both BTN alumna.
This isn’t a change so much as an intelligent development of a tradition. Baker-VanCura is still creating new choreography, but she’s also providing for the future by empowering dancers who are both steeped in BTN’s technique-centric history but also curious and eager to explore.
Sitting in the room with Baker-VanCura, Owens, and Day, it’s hard not to feel excited—about Ballet Tennessee, about the future of the program, and about arts leadership in Chattanooga. I won’t venture to guess any of their ages, but the image that flashes through my mind is of the triple goddess…Owens is in the early summer of her career, Day is a mother (and, interestingly, a returning adult dancer who had the chops this past summer to master Baker-VanCura’s recreation of Perrot’s Pas de Quatre this past spring), and Baker-VanCura has the perspective of decades of dance leadership as she guides the company into the future.
Come out and see for yourself. Saturday, December 21, at 2 p.m. at CCA. Tickets are available on Eventbrite starting November 25.