Walsh, Aldea ignite Don Q / Elielle impresses audience

Houston Ballet’s Connor Walsh might be viewed as a future Rudolf Nureyev whom this reviewer has seen perform both on film and in person. Candice Aldea is the latest to join our brilliant ballerinas.

Walsh’s soaring grand jetés, multiple pirouettes and tours en l’air were breath-taking. The polished, sparkling technique of the pert, piquant, pretty Aldea arrested attention. With Walsh superbly partnering Aldea, the duo ignited the stage as Kitri and Basilio in Ballet Philippines’ Don Quixote.

Performing with elegance, smoothness and flair, the two dancers enriched their roles with persuasive, eloquent miming, and the combination of technical skill and emotive artistry made magic, drawing fervid applause at each pas de deux.

Russian ballet mistress and coach Kabirovna Gaisna, did marvels to the ensemble as a whole, infusing the general presentation with greater vitality, spirit and precision in all the three acts. Additional credit went to Victor Ursabia, ballet master who earlier coached Aldea and Jean Marc Cordero (the original Basilio) for the International Ballet Competition in the US.

Aldea’s alternates as Kitri were Katherine Trofeo and Carissa Aldea; Walsh’s alternates as Basilio were Cordero and Emmanuelle Guillermo. Paul Alexander Morales was Don Q’s artistic director.

The soloists stood out with marked distinction: Carissa Aldea as Mercedes; Olga Bankova as Graziosa; Earl John Arisola as Espada, the lead matador who flaunted and waved his cape with remarkable agility; Pedro, in love with Mercedes, was Cyril Fallar. Demi-caractere roles were cleverly and amusingly portrayed by Joseph Keith Anicoche as Gamache, the rejected suitor of Kitri, and Jeffrey Espejo as tavern owner and Kitri’s father. The two created utterly comic scenes.

Gaisina added further flourishes to the Dryads, a ballet blanc which charmed the audience with the ballerinas’ lightness and fluid grace; and to the Seguidillas with its brisk, fleetfootwork and port de bras.

The Gorsky-Petipa choreography re-staged by William Morgan was further re-staged imaginatively by Noordin Jumalon for wider appeal. As Don Quixote, he awed the audience by entering the stage astride a live horse. Jumalon who could have appeared a bit more eccentric and senile, had Ramon Victoria as his docile Sancho Panza.

What vastly heightened the over-all attraction, enchantment and fascination of Don Quixote was the live and lively music provided by conductor Olivier Ochanine and the PPO. Conducting symphonies, concertos and overtures is one discipline; conducting ballet music is altogether another. It is totally different and distinct because the conductor subordinates himself to the tempo set by each and every dance ensemble, by each and every soloist and dancer.

The open-minded Ochanine was sensitively aware of the exigencies and particular demands of ballet, and the music under his direction immeasurably enriched it. (As a personal note, I would have gladly welcomed a baton-wielder like Ochanine in my younger days as a ballerina dancing on toes.)

Ricardo Cruz’s fanciful sets, Dennis Maristany’s colorful costumes (after those of Salvador Bernal), and Monino Duque’s lighting design were in harmonious visual consonance with the plot.

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A piano recital was given by 19-year old Elielle Grace Viaje at the Philamlife auditorium under the auspices of the international Christian organization The Navigators.

Elielle was 16 when I first reviewed her recitals; since then, she has shown immense progress. When she recently auditioned for admission to the Vienna U. of Music and the Performing Arts, she was one of only 15 admitted among 500 aspirants, and only one of three non-Austrians. Further, she was the second Filipino, the first having been, years ago, Aries Caces.

At the recital, Mozart’s Sonata in B Flat Minor conveyed the composer’s light, spritely, playful air. In Schubert’s Sonata in A Major, the rich melodies were beautifully limned. Massive sounds emanated from Schu-mann’s “Carnival Jest in Vienna”; Chopin’s Ballade in F Minor, a nocturne, had its initial calm breaking out into a threatening storm. In Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2, impassioned vigor and high speed nearly suggested a bravura technique.

In due time, Elielle will join the big leaguers.