Review: Jorma Elo Illuminates Boston's Opera House

A packed Opera House rose to their feet Thursday night in honor of the opening performance of Boston Ballet’s Elo Experience– and deservedly so. What was a two hour production felt more like a fleeting abstract dream - a hypnotic display of dance, so technically rebellious that dancers often took the form of something unrecognizable and inhuman. Jorma Elo sat in the audience, hand pensively on head, as his visions, past and present, unfolded.

The Finnish-born Elo has been Boston Ballet’s Resident Choreographer since 2005 – and it shows. Thursday night’s performance was classical ballet drenched in a high-energy modernism – a style that has become his own. One so demanding that we can only assume the company’s confident, fluid execution, is, in part, due to the six-year relationship between the artist and his dancers.

“It seems a bit simple, but I just started to work with the dancers in the studio and that’s what evolved,” says Elo, recalling his transition from classical ballet to the hybrid he presents today. "The style comes natural to me, from my body and the dancers’ bodies, and their response to mine.”

More than dance, Elo Experience is a theatrical journey. In the opening scene, and throughout the night, principal dancer Larissa Ponomarenko and second soloist Jeffrey Cirio engage in English and Russian banter that breathily echoes the theatre. Blocks of light serve as props and the massive row of stage lighting descends, hovering like a spacecraft.

Jorma Elo’s dance career spanned 15 years and his award-winning choreography has graced the stages of American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and others. He has created six world-premieres for Boston audiences including Brake the Eyes, Plan to B, and In on Blue. Elo Experience is a collage of these pieces – representing his time in Boston and throughout the world and the music and dancers who inspired him.

This risky, luminous production will convert any dance cynic. Not surprisingly for a choreographer who, at 15, along with Boston Ballet’s Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen, attended ballet classes with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev.

Click here to buy tickets to Elo Experience.