It was a nice evening out with the family as we saw Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, performed by the New Ballet in San Jose. This is a community production, and I suspect the majority of the audience were family members of the performers. But still, it was well danced, and we enjoyed ourselves.

The group didn’t perform the entire opera. Instead, 4 acts were condensed into 2 acts, and some numbers were cut (the only one I really noticed is the waltz in the first act). I felt the cuts were well done, and even though the overall performance was shorter than usual, it still felt right.

The highlight of the show, beyond Tchaikovky’s music, were the dancers. For a community group, the dancers were dancing at a very high level. The only thing I noticed is that some of the dance moves were a bit more conservative compared to the dancers of, say, the San Francisco Ballet. But the movements were fluid, and the acting was good. The headliner for our evening show was Naomi Thien-Kim Le, who played Odette / Odile. She was fantastic.

A bit of a lowlight were the orchestra performers. This was, in my opinion, the area where it was most clear that this was a community-level production. There were plenty of missed notes, missed entrances, and glaring intonation issues. I’m sure that these are just gig musicians, and there probably wasn’t a lot of rehearsal, if any at all. But this is Swan Lake, one of the most popular and well-understand pieces of music in the entire repertoire. So some of the mistakes (such as some players missing an accidental completely) were surprising.

Overall all though, it was fun, and a good value, considering it was essentially in our backyard in San Jose.

Topics: MusicMusic:Concerts

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