Dance Review
'Puss In Boots' kid-friendly, nicely done
By Sheryl Dare
Special to The Advertiser
Honolulu Dance Theatre's "Puss In Boots," which had its premiere in 1995 and has since been tested and refined before countless O'ahu schoolchildren as part of the Arts in Education program, has evolved into one of the kid-friendliest ballets around.
Cleverly staged and wittily choreographed, this local production, the latest version of which was performed last weekend at the Hawai'i Theatre, has been especially honed for families and younger viewers.
As such, it's an ideal introduction to learning the basic tropes that make up a traditional ballet, from the mime that's used to convey plot to the climactic pas de deux between the beautiful ballerina and her courtly cavalier.
Aided by a voiceover narration that makes the stage action even clearer for newcomers to ballet, the work is all the more successful because it takes its craft seriously and doesn't talk down to its young audience.
The story is based on the fairy tale about a miller's son who inherits a cunning feline with a penchant for fine footwear. The heroine Puss not only manages to secure for her master the treasure of a fearsome ogre but the hand of a princess as well.
Matthew Wright's choreography keeps the storyline percolating. Trained at the Royal Ballet School in London, Wright generally employs a classical ballet vocabulary, but he's not above using the vernacular — music hall vaudeville steps, conga lines, chicken head movements, angular Egyptian wrists — for broad comic effect and added visual spice when needed.
His style is clean and unfussy. Even when he's deploying huge crowds of dancers around the stage (in one scene, for instance, there were two types of bunnies, butterflies and turkeys, two varieties of deer and a bumblebee, all performed by students of the HDT dance school, not to mention Puss herself), the action is clear, well-balanced and orderly.
Though necessarily slowed down by the student numbers, the pacing is, for the most part, commendably brisk.
At Sunday's matinee, Celia Chun as Puss certainly carried the show with her athleticism and charm. Although she made good use of her flexibility and springy leaps, one couldn't help wishing she had even more challenging movements to do at times, possessed as she is of one of the most lissome, supple bodies to grace Island stages.
Eddie Stegge, a guest artist with the San Francisco Opera Ballet, made a fine Miller's Youngest Son, believably youthful and romantically aristocratic by turns; his dancing was particularly admirable for its cleanly finished phrasing and attentive partnering. He was well matched by fellow guest artist Brittney Wirth as the comely Princess, whose allegro grace lent polish to the proceedings.
Steven Janji as the cartwheeling Jester, Squire Coldwell as a rangy Alley Cat with sex appeal and Samuel Reece as the mock-solemn Lawyer also added to the ballet's allure, as did its generally high production values, the wonderful costuming and its bevies of well-trained student performers.
Sheryl Dare is The Advertiser's former dance critic; she is pitching in while dance critic Ana-Paula Hofling is out of the country.
