Created on San Francisco Ballet dancers in 2018 for Unbound: A Festival of New Works, Bespoke explores the unique relationship between dance and dancers over time, and features movement fueled by the melodies, rhythms and accents of two Bach violin concertos. Bespoke choreographer and Houston Ballet Artistic Director, Stanton Welch, talks about its inspiration and creation.
In Bespoke, you explore the love dancers have for their art form, a relationship that is intense and all too fleeting. How is this theme translated into the movement for the ballet?
Stanton Welch AM: I’ve often described dance like a lover or a relationship because you have to tend to it. You didn’t earn the title dancer, and then it sticks with you for life; it’s something you have to maintain and work at, and as you get older – like relationships – they have different ebbs and flows. Several times within Bespoke, there’ll be two characters together. One represents the dancer and the other represents dance, and each one has a different relationship with dance. For the audience, you can pick which one is the dancer and which one is dance because it’s not clear, deliberately. The final movement is each person giving up dance and how dance leaves them.
Bespoke begins with a solo man moving in silence, which you hadn’t initially planned, but the idea came to you when working with San Francisco Ballet Principal Dancer Angelo Greco. What about working with Angelo inspired this?
Welch: I had never met Angelo or seen him dance before we worked on Bespoke. His every movement is so naturally beautiful and interesting. Every time I’d come into the studio, he’d be there working away and making his shapes; it just became part of Bespoke because it was an inspiring part of my experience while creating the ballet. At the beginning of Bespoke, the opening solo is like him saying a prayer to bring dance alive; it’s akin to all that work a young dancer does by themselves, chasing that perfection. You spend just as much time by yourself as you do surrounded by people in class and rehearsal.
Bespoke is set to two Bach violin concertos. What about these two pieces inspired you to put them together to create this piece?
Welch: I hadn’t done something to Bach since Clear (2001), and I hadn’t yet made a ballet in San Francisco in the style of Clear. Bespoke and Clear are kind of in the same family, meaning that it’s pure dance, and it’s based entirely on the excellence of the dancers you see. Helgi [Tómasson, San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer 1985-2022] always pushed me to try to be classical, so in a way, this was also a gift to him.
By Jasmine Fuller Cane
En Pointe with Houston Ballet 