dancing-Andrew

"

At first glance, Andrew Bartee looks like any lanky kid.












And then you see him move...

 
















At barely twenty Andrew is the youngest of the Whimmers.
I was interested in what qualities led Olivier to choose him.

"He is smart, thoughtful and very mature for his age. 

Wisdom is priceless for a dancer, it takes years to get it. 

But he is light years ahead. Also, he is honest, sincere, dedicated and has a great sense of humor." 

A bit mischievously, I asked Andrew why he imagined Olivier found him mature.

"It probably is impossible to say," he laughed.
He thought for a moment, then added,

“I guess I feel it. It’s very real to me. The air I breathe. 

A gift—and that’s probably as much as you’ll get from me!” 

The tone of his answer was itself revealing: 

modest but not embarrassed, 

self-assured but not self-important.
As he said in an interview with the Everett Herald:

"It's the music that takes me there. You are the physical representation of what is happening musically." 

Andrew is a native of Everett, Washington. 

He started dancing at 10, when a girl he knew suggested he try out for a Christmas Pageant.

The first ballet he ever saw was American Ballet Theatre's Giselle, that came to Seattle in 2003. His parents took him as a birthday present. His parents always have been supportive of his dancing "in every sense. They took my brothers to sports and me to ballet classes. It was never an issue. They made it work."

 

At first it was fun but not something he imagined he'd ever do for a living. Then at around 16, he started thinking, “I could do this forever—and would love to.”

Not long after, he began to get serious notice for his work. 

In the summer of 2007 he traveled to Denmark, as the first recipient of the Flemming Halby Exchange with the Royal Danish Ballet School.  

Copenhagen, says Andrew, "is a beautiful city that you can get around in easily by bike or bus." He lived in an apartment with a girl from school and saw the company perform in the beautiful new opera house, as well as the historic old one.

He took class with the very friendly company apprentices and got to know them well—"Their English was incredible."

In the course of his three weeks, he says,  
"I got very sore legs, and I got very strong." 

The teaching was really different. He took classes from Laura Alonzo, sister of Alicia Alonzo, long-time head of Ballet nacional de Cuba; 
Eva Draw, from National Ballet of Canada; and of course the Bournonville classes at the core of the Royal Danish Ballet.

Andrew notes some similarity of Bournonville and Balanchine styles—both put emphasis on intricate legwork, but the Bournonville is slower; you need a lot of strength, while "the arms just stay—there's a simple, stylized upper body." He was quite taken with the long tradition of the Danish Royal Ballet. “You’re learning something ancient.”

 

For a dancer at the beginning of his career, Andrew has traveled a good deal in the line of work—in the Pacific Northwest, at Jacob's Pillow, and in the south of France.

The same year as Denmark, 
he won a Princess Grace Award for dance and was flown to a gala in New York.

"It was the 20th anniversary, so it was quite a big production. 

I met HRH Prince Ranier and Princess Caroline, and many other noteworthy people. I was the youngest recipient that year, but was not shied away from by the older, more accomplished artists. The greatest part of winning that award was that it made me feel like what I was working towards was worth my time and effort. The recognition from such a respected organization made me feel like someone believed in me. Someone knew that I could be great. Someone wanted me to keep working hard and make something of myself. All this happened around that time I was trying to decide whether dance would be a serious part of my future, so the timing couldn't have been more appreciated." 

Back at home, he was accepted in 2008 as a Pacific Northwest Ballet apprentice and now is a member of the corps de ballet. 

Whim W'Him adds a new dimension for Andrew. He has a lively curiosity about new forms of movement, different ways of dancing. 

When asked if he has favorite roles or styles, 

he says he is very open to trying a lot of things and being versatile. He doesn't really have favorites, though there are certainly exhilarating moments, like in Rubies.  

“I like it all,” he says with his engaging grin.

 And when asked what else he likes to do besides dance, he replies first, without hesitation: "Eat!" 

Photos courtesy of: 

La Vie Photography LaViePhoto.com

Royal Danish Ballet 

Seattle Times

Everett Herald

Angela Sterling of Pacific Northwest Ballet

Annabelle redux

In the week ending October 10, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa was in Seattle again, for the second set of rehearsals on the piece that Whim W’Him will premiere in January. 
Recently I caught up with her via email from her home in Amsterdam, where she had just returned after "an intense week in Seattle and 3 crazy days in London with a jet lag from here to Tokyo." 
I asked her how it was to pick up with Whim W'Him where she left off.

“It was great to be back in the studio with the ever so generous Whimmers.
We could get deeper into the material and also be more specific about it. We set the steps on the music, added and deleted steps. Unfortunately because of an injury of Chalnessa [Eames], we did spend a lot of time teaching Mara Vincent the part of Chal. Luckily Chal is already feeling better, but then the rehearsals were already finished. Melody [Herrera] had to leave on Wednesday, and Vincent [Lopez]  had to rehearse with Spectrum every day, so our rehearsals started at 9am, so that Vincent could leave at 11;15. Lots of uninteresting details. but this pictures a little bit the past week with Whim W'him. Nevertheless we did get a lot of work done and the focus and input of the dancers was once again on level 100.”

"Have you decided on a title yet?" I wondered.

“I still feel the piece isn't completed yet.
And the title hasn't come to my mind either.
I never had such a hard time finding a title. I guess words sometimes diminish and/or box in the intensity and emotion that I would like the piece to convey.”

But later in the week she wrote to say that a title finally is chosen:  

Cylindrical Shadows

When I inquired about the present state of the new music, Annabelle answered that the music was also not entirely completed, though the form and length of the piece were set. A few days later, she traveled to Belgium to finalize the music with the composer, David van Bouwel. She and he had been working a lot through the internet.

But once again, sometimes I don't seem to find the right words to explain the dance. That's why the dance exists. Because words fail to express everything." 

I’ve been thinking about that a lot, as I usually do when attempting to write about dance. Of course there is a very deep and basic sense in which words cannot do what dance does. That is why we have dance, and why it moves us so. Yet speech, including speech by those who are making the dance, can sometimes add to it or give a different notion, allowing us to experience and/or understand it on more levels. That, at least, is my hope.

After Annabelle’s working visit with David, she was quite ecstatic about the results.

"I’m in love with the music. It's awesome, super, fabulous, fantastic. But most of all: it's exactly what I wanted!" she told Olivier and wrote me:

"The day and night with my composer in Belgium went really well. We worked from 6 pm until 5:30 am. And then again from 11 am to 4 pm. I basically slept on a couch in the sound studio. The music has a beautiful build up, culminating into strong arpeggios with Johann Sebastian Bach's Suite No. 2 as a red thread throughout the composition.It was too beautiful to cut it, so when I come back to Seattle I will have to create an extra 30 seconds in the boys' section.

I'm totally in love with the music and I constantly listen to it on my I-pod. I believe it's gonna inspire the dancers a lot! Voilà, this for the story of the music."

My last question to Annabelle was about how her conception of the piece has changed since she last rehearsed it.

“The concept of the piece is still the same: the piece is about life's continuous current with death that shall cease it for each one of us at a certain point. There' s nothing dramatic about it, just that the more we are attached to the deceased, the more intense the pain is. Ultimately we have to let go and move on forward into the continuous life current. And that's the beauty of life!” 

Annabelle will return for the third round of rehearsals in the weeks before the January Whim W'Him show.
We can hardly wait!

Pictures are by La Vie Photography laviephoto.com
except the candle photo, "Flame," by Madelaine Cappuccio http://shadowsandhighlights.wordpress.com/tag/candle/  

Next up: Olivier on Monsters, and the dancers' take on his new works...