Swank in The Arts; 106; Fort Worth Ballet

Good evening, I'm Patsy Swank. This has been an extremely busy week in Fort Worth, especially for its ballet company, which is preparing the world premiere of a new James Clouser Ballet, in which Eric Brune will dance the title role of Russ Sputon. Sputon will play Friday in Saturday at the Tarrant County Convention Center Theater, with the original score written and played by the Austin Rock Group, St. Elmo's Fire. With us right here, our Mr. Brune and Mr. Clouser and two members of the Fort Worth Ballet, who are doing some of what they've been doing for weeks. Gregory Russ Sputon was an illiterate peasant, a lecturist and generally unwashed religious figure who had a great deal of influence with the Sarina of Russia because he was able to help her son, the heir, who was a bleeder. Clouser looks at the downfall of the Russian Empire through the relationship to Ras Sputon,

of four of the characters and symbols of the time, of Zarniculus, who felt that his absolute power came straight from God, of his troubled wife Alexandra, of Prince Felix Yusupov, a disillute nobleman, determined to rid the court of the monk, and of a symbol figure for the Eastern Orthodox Church. Finally, we get an overview from Ras Sputon himself. All week, the North Star, Mr. Brune, has been working to this practice tape of the music with the young members of this company as Clouser shapes and polishes his ballet. In this scene, Ras Sputon is taunting Prince Yusupov, danced by Francisco Martinez, by using the symbol of the church, danced by General Hamrick, first as a hiding place, then as a weapon against the man that he sent his will take his life. Ras Sputon dances his claim that his kind of evil is equaled only by Yusupov's own, that they are both doomed figures in a decadent society.

If you can keep a really strong focus, so that you're getting the feeling that he's already starting to mesmerize you here. The second time you come under, that you already know you're making an effect on him, so the second one can already start the mocking quality. Let's do it without musical first. You can feel a little pulled back. That's it. Now that you see that's it. Let's go back just a sec. On the arm here, too, just realize it happens twice. If you can, the second time you come to the arm here, slip it right at your eye, so we get that kind of... So just the eyes are peaking over, which should

give you more to play from. That's right, that's good. Then the same thing happens in that step later that we were cleaning up the last time. Let's do that. We do the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. When you hit this, that it should refer back choreographically, that in the beginning he's the sneaky one, and suddenly you two have joined him, and all three of you are then, so that that becomes a very healthy set. Let's try right from there. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. All right, good. Let's try it again. When you start, see if you can think of that first step as being indirect. Instead of saying, here I am, you're turning your back side in

the same way. Am I doing the same as they do? I can just say, and they don't. They're doing... He's doing the hitch cut first, like... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The other guy had to check your heart all the time. So let's try that and then we'll go back and fix that space. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, good. This is going to be good now. Now let's go back and work on what happens right here. If you can think this first step is going... It's indirect. It's sneaky again. Are we keeping the focus in there? Focus is still there, is that right? Keep the focus there so it looks like you're being indirect in your step. Then you get a little more strength in working together. So when you hit the 5, 6,

show me your hands here. So you can give them more... This way, feel a pressure press, push on that kind of pressure. So you get your 5, 6, from the pressure, you release to that. Then the back. You're trying it off a lot. Let's try it. Just from done. We're going to take the hand and 1, 2, 3, 4, push 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, yeah. Okay, why are you back going the same time? You tell me you're going 7, 8. What the where are you going? So you go 3, 4, here it goes. 5, 6, yeah. I just took the hand and I brought it. So you should take 2. 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and you're 7, 8, and you should be 1, 2.

Let's just go for 2. Okay. So it comes 1, 1, 1, and you turn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. No, you were early that time. You do the same. You felt right. He's finished. Okay, you can follow me. You're wrong. Try it again. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, that's it. One at a time. Now this next fall back, you need to be lower. No, getting up, that's fine. So when you go back, the two of you take him, how low, that's it. You can come up with your body like you're sitting in a chair. Oh, that's easy. You see, like you're just sitting in a secretary's rollage. Yeah, good. See how I can find the music.

I'm in the head. It's going well. General, don't get up first. I have to get up when you do this earlier, because you let go of me. It should have, I know we were marking at him, but the same sense of abandon there that Eric knows when he does it the first time. He does all this stuff at the beginning and he just says, when?

So after you've done this step and the three of you are together and they pulled you into their conspiracy, you should then have the trust that General is going to be there, because he's further away. And if he isn't there, you should be in such a position that you could just sit anywhere. Let's just try that from the after you've gone over. Yes, everything that he has as Rasputin that you hate is really because it's inside you and you've repressed it and you wear those tight suits and you saw that picture of him. He was just too tight. And he's bringing it out on you. So suddenly at this point you say, what the heck? And you just let it go. Let's try that. If you could look at it just before, because we've got time. When you get up, otherwise it's related and you've just done that step with him, realize, you know, take a little breath before you go. That's it. Right. Almost enjoy it.

So what you come on to this next year should be really, the caress has been getting a little short in rehearsal. They should be really like, I don't know which part to caress. The head. I think the face here. So it's like, and then suddenly that's it. So what you're saying is, what you're saying to him is, come on down the road to licensiousness and you kind of fall for him, you say, yeah, yeah, that's what I've been waiting for. And then he says, you pervert. No, he's just getting you to commit yourself. I mean, you should have stopped in the minute he got within three inches of your face. Five minutes ago, you would have said, horrible man is breath smells bad. And now suddenly he's got you worked up to the point where you'll go anywhere with him.

And then he let you know that that it's you who wants to go not him. Let's show the angle for the crucifixion thing. Oh, okay, when you come up and fall back, you could fall this way rather than flat. The rest the same, but rather than rolling flat down. What I think I'd like to do is just run it right through now with the music. Okay, so I'll just run the tape back. Okay.

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