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Review

The Herald-Times
By Anya Peterson Royce

Performance brought out the passion of 'Bovary' 
The performance was dedicated to the memory of Fran Snygg She would have loved it--Don Freund's Inspired music and Jacques Cesbron's inspired choreography coming together in a brand-new dramatic ballet perfectly framed by David HigginsÕ sets. And a Balanchine classic staged deftly by Patricia McBride, one of Mr. B's great ballerinas. Creating new traditions and pissing on this centuryÕs greatest works, talented artists collaboration with each other Fran dedicated herself to fostering this kind of artistic activity. Most of all, Fran would have loved the sheer power and beauty of the performers, dancers and musicians both. 
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Madame Bovary is a big ballet--20 scenes in four parts, one, hour long, but its dramatic intensity did not flag for an instant. Courtney Beshear as Emma held the audience spellbound as she moved from youthful innocence, a mix of piety and romantic fantasy to passionate womanhood to the kind of despair that only death could end. She was Emma, emotion and movement finding their source in the core of her body and moving outward. Her concentration and passion compelled us to experience her own kaleidoscope of emotions. The smallest gestures - the angle of her arched neck, the forward thrust of her head, hands held nervously up in front of her body, were poignant. Her stillness, sitting woodenly in the chair as Charles reads the letter from her lover reached straight to the heart. The scene of grief bordering on madness, limp arms carried by the force of the shoulders wrenched down in front of the body, made you want to weep for her. The dramatic power of Beshear's performance reminds you of Lynn SeymourÕs Juliet or Nora Kaye's Hagar Like those ballerinas, Beshear never tried to show us that she was a ballerina playing a role. She has a rare and magical gift - the ability to fuse dance, music, soul so that you cannot tell where one begins and the other ends. 
 BR>
Andrew Carr as Leon was a good match, capturing the sense of a young man hopelessly yet delicately in love. Their first pas de deux was masterfully choreographed -- a series of hesitant advances on his part and a kind of intrigued backing away on hers. Their second meeting explodes with passion, perfectly expressed by dancers, choreography and music. 
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Lance Hardin, as the rake Boulanger,' was powerful dramatically as well as in his dancing. 
He seems to hang suspended in jumps and lands with remarkable grace. Joseph Palla carried off the role of the steady and faithful husband with dignity, projecting a sense of bewilderment about his captivating mercurial wife. The draper, LÕHeureux, who indulges Emma's desires for finery, was elegantly danced by Barry Trammell who has the flow and the bearing perfect for this role. 
 
Cesbron choreographed miniature duets for three couples, part of Emma's romantic visions. Heidi Rood and Andrew Carr swirled across the stage in a whirlwind of lifts; Jayne Dabu and John Landeroz were a more langorous pair, dancing almost as one person; Alison Smith and James Cresent matched steps in close embraces. 
 
Cesbron's genius for conveying emotion and ambience with the most sparing of gestures was apparent throughout the ballet: the nuns' hands disappearing slowly into the sleeves of their habits; the priest blessing Emma, heel of hand barely grazing her forehead and repeated later as a gesture of dismissal; the villagers stamping heavily in wide turned-out positions; Emma's last agonized lift, her extended leg collapsing over Charles' shoulder. It was evocative without reliance on obvious balletic convention. 
 
David Higgins' sets were evocative in the same way - a bank of votive candies and two pillars for the convent school, stained glass projected onto a scrim for the church wedding a sliced interior that, becomes bedroom or sitting room, sepia-toned backdrops for

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