Trey McIntyre, one of this country’s most imaginative choreographers, creates works for companies around the world. Some of his most successful ballets, though, have had their premieres here with the Washington Ballet.
When the Trey McIntyre Project returns to Wolf Trap Tuesday, the company will dance one of those works. “A Day in the Life,” by turns haunting and dazzling, is set to a wide range of songs by the Beatles.
Also on the program is “High Lonesome,” an autobiographical dance again using pop music, by the rocker Beck. Mr. McIntyre notes that it’s in the form of a highly personal narrative about his family. “I came along when my other siblings were half grown,” he says, “and I think that turned me into an observer of the family scene.”
He notes that the work has prompted intense reactions: “People come up to me and tell me how the story relates to their experience, and everyone tells me a different story.”
The two ballets are a vivid illustration of Mr. McIntyre’s unique approach. He is a serious artist fluently using the classical vocabulary, but he often sets his provocative themes to rock music, not as an easy means of hooking a new audience but because he understands that music to its core and finds depth in its driving rhythms.
Another example is his “Queen of Goths,” a brief but brilliant work he choreographed in the spring for the Washington Ballet’s “7 x 7: Shakespeare.” Using just three dancers, he seizes on a dark moment in the playwright’s “Titus Andronicus”; expresses it through daringly taut, athletic movement; and thrusts it into the present by setting it to the sounds of Nancy Sinatra belting out “Bang Bang.” It was a highlight of the evening.
Mr. McIntyre is creative not only as a choreographer but also as a director. Although he could fill his dance card with commissions here and abroad, he is putting his energy into a group of hand-picked dancers he assembles from all over the country for a couple of months each summer. They rehearse together at the legendary White Oak Plantation in Florida, birthplace in the ’90s of the Mikhail Baryshnikov-Mark Morris dance group. There, they live a sybaritic life with luxurious accommodations and gourmet meals, matched by intense, highly focused rehearsals. Then they venture forth to appear in summer festivals, this year in Jacksonville, Fla., and Boise, Idaho, as well as Wolf Trap, where they have been invited back for a rare second season in a row.
For what might be called a pickup group, his three-year-old company is remarkably cohesive. Mr. McIntyre has chosen dancers who appeal to him from the companies with which he regularly works, among them the Joffrey Ballet, Ballet Memphis and the Oregon Ballet. Virtually all have been with him in the past; just are new members this year.
A sizable number come from the Washington Ballet: Jason Hartley and Jonathan Jordan, virtuoso dancers individually who are dynamite as a duo, and the quietly intense Sona Kharatian, one of the two new ones.
The dancer who has traveled farthest to join Mr. McIntyre’s summer group this year is Michele Jimenez, a major star at the Washington Ballet until she left a year ago to join the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam.
I saw Miss Jimenez in action in Amsterdam in March, taking class and running through the mesmerizing central role in Hans van Manen’s “Hammerklavier,” channeling her naturally ebullient temperament into its spare, fierce demands.
The ballerina already was anticipating the summer with TMP and appearing at Wolf Trap again. “It was an incredible experience to perform for so many people in that great stage and have such a wonderful reception,”she says.
She will appear again later in Washington, returning as a guest with the Washington Ballet in January.
Mr. McIntyre, who worked with Miss Jimenez when she was still in her teens, says, “I’m glad to have started with her so early in her career, to be able to plant some seeds. She is such a rich and giving performer and brings so much of herself not only to the performance but in the studio, where the piece is born.”
Miss Jimenez will dance in the Washington premiere of “The Blue Boy,” the most classical work on the program, inspired by Thomas Gainsborough’s painting and set to a Beethoven concerto.
The director has long-standing bonds with many of his dancers. He has just added to the program a pas de deux, “Crying,” for two dancers with whom he has worked for the past 12 years, Dawn Fay and Garrett Ammon. Of Miss Fay, Mr. McIntyre says, “She has a remarkable depth of both fragility and strength.”
The two dancers, man and wife, are about to retire and will give their farewell performance at Wolf Trap.
For those who would like to see the company more up-close and personal, a fundraiser is being held Monday, the day before the Wolf Trap performance, at Comet Ping Pong (5037 Connecticut Ave. NW). For more information, call 877/867-2320, ext. 91.
WHAT: Trey McIntyre Project
WHEN: Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.
WHERE: Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, Vienna
TICKETS: $34 seat, $8 lawn
PHONE: 877/965-387
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