Spoeaking of poetry (see previous post), on Friday I finally made it to the Charleston Ballet Theatre Brown Bag & Ballet program I’d missed earlier in the week — the one featuring Jill Bahr’s very cool work “Poetry with a Spash of Red Blood,” set to the music of Philip Glass from his score to the 1985 James Schrader film Mishima. (See my earlier post on this ballet here.)
There were two other works on the program, in addition to “Poetry”: Bahr’s “Captured Angel” and Toussaint’s “Sovenance,” both of which I enjoyed, with Jennifer Balcerzak giving a standout performance in each. But I was there to see “Poetry”; I’d first seen it something like eight or nine years ago, when CBT performed it at the Sottile Theatre. It was my first experience with the music of Philip Glass, and without getting too heavy or anything, it was a transformative experience for me. The short 12 or 13-minute noirish work is set to several of Glass’ songs from his Mishima score, but the one that anchors it is “Runaway Horses (Poetry Written With a Splash of Blood),” a beautiful work for string quartet and harp that ends with a startling scresendo of Glass’ trademark minimalism and overlapping harmonics, while a row of nooses have decended from the ceiling at the rear of the stage behind the dancers. It’s really, really, really cool, and it’s only in Program I of Brown Bag and Ballet at CBT.