DANCE REVIEW: 'La Fille mal Gardee'

Sarasota Ballet gave us the best present of the holiday season with its performance of Sir Frederick Ashton’s masterpiece, “La Fille mal Gardée.” With its intricate costumes, elaborate sets, live animals and the fabulous cast of Sarasota Ballet dancers performing to live music directed by Ormsby Wilkins, the reprisal of this three-act ballet was beyond perfect in every way.

This romantic comedy that heartens every person of any age masks the tremendous difficulty in choreography, technique and stamina required of all the dancers on stage. The Sarasota Ballet dancers tackled each move with ease and grace, disguising the demanding technique and strength required for the ballet composed of multiple turns, leaps, jumps and steps, partnered with props and lifts.

What’s more is the fact that “La Fille mal Gardée” is very much a theatrical production that also requires incredible acting skills, which each dancer demonstrated with ease. No one masters comedic acting more than Ricki Bertoni playing the role of Widow Simone, which only emphasizes his role as character principal within the company. Logan Learned also was a hoot as the bumbling Alain, son of Father Thomas, who is betrothed to Lise. Learned made the audience laugh out loud with his red umbrella during a thunderstorm dance.

Principals Kate Honea and Ricardo Rhodes carried the ballet as leads Lise and Colas. These two also demonstrated fine acting skills in their roles, with Lise being conniving with her mother and rude to Alain. Rhodes really was the dashing loverboy and wowed with his technique and strength with barrel turns, pirouettes, fouettés, leaps, multiple double tours en l’air and one-armed overhead lifts (see below). Honea was right on par with Rhodes, also flawlessly performing a difficult en dehors and en dedans fouetté turns. The pair also partnered perfectly in their ribbon pas de deux.

Other highlights of this extremely enjoyable ballet were the Cockerel (Alex Harrison) and his chickens (Jessica Cohen, Rachel Goldberg, Lily Howes and Ryoko Sadoshima) that strutted on stage in full head-to-toe chicken costumes. And Bertoni donned clogs with Sara Scherer, Ellen Overstreet, Christine Peixoto (who was nice to see back on stage after being out for a year with an injury) and Kristianne Kleine in a humorous clog dance.

Bum lift
One of the hardest lifts in “La Fille mal Gardée” is the “bum lift,” which is an overhead one-armed lift of Lise sitting on her bottom. Ricardo Rhodes and Kate Honea teach the Observer’s own Alex Mahadevan how to execute the “bum lift” in Come At Me Sarasota on ThisWeekinSarasota.com.