Welcome new year with ‘Ballet and Bubbly’

Eat, drink and be merry with Theatre Ballet of Spokane’s annual New Year’s Eve celebration. “Ballet and Bubbly” will feature a chocolate and champagne reception, followed by two new ballets developed collaboratively with guest artists and a new adaptation of an old favorite.

Opening the program will be “Dancing with Sidhe” by Sara Donally, resident choreographer at Theatre Ballet, in collaboration with local musical group Sidhe.

Sidhe is comprised of Michael and Keleren Milham, who merge European-American style finger guitar with lush vocals. Their musical appeal is sophisticated and universal, qualities that are reflected in Donally’s ballet.

Although the work is based in Sidhe’s music, it is not a literal translation of it; instead, it reflects the music’s moods and themes in its four movements. Eleven dancers, dressed more for an evening out than for a dance performance, blend relaxed, natural movements with stylized classical ballet movements.

“Shadows and Light,” a contemporary piece by Theatre Ballet artistic director Dodie Askegard, features guest artist Phaedra Jarrett, a former principal dancer with Oakland Ballet who’s now under contract to Ballet Spokane.

This work in three movements blends modern with classical in both music and choreography. The first movement, set to AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” will be performed by six dancers who explore movements beyond classical ballet.

The second movement is a solo by Jarrett. Originally from San Francisco, she has been affiliated with a variety of dance companies, both ballet and modern, in the Bay area. Drawing on Jarrett’s diverse background, Askegard choreographed the dance to explore space while blending a wide variety of dance vocabularies.

The final movement is slower and more contained as its choreography resolves the tension between the various dance vocabularies.

The show will close with Askegard’s adaptation of “Les Patineurs.” This one-act ballet inspired by ice skaters was originally choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton in 1937 to the music of Giacomo Meyerbeer.

In this light-hearted, buoyant ballet, dancers try to best one another through competitive “skating.” Their merry-making gives way to a quiet pas de deux by Amanda Cochrane and Nathan Driftmeyer, then erupts into a rollicking snowball fight.