By Patrick Neas, KC Arts Beat

The word fusion means the joining of two or more things together to create a single entity. For example, nuclear fusion combines two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one releasing massive amounts of energy.

That is exactly what the Kansas City Ballet has planned for its spring program, Fusion, May 9 to 18 at the Muriel Kauffman Theatre. The company will combine four contemporary dance works which promise to unleash explosive dance energy.

Works by some of the most in-demand contemporary choreographers will be featured: Tulips and Lobster by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated by William Forsythe, Hold on Tight by Caroline Dahm and Celts by Lila York.

It has become something of a trademark for Devon Carney, artistic director of the Kansas City Ballet, to conclude the season with a spring program that is as juicy and bursting forth with new growth as springtime itself. Carney is noted for his stagings of full-length ballets, but in the spring, he almost  always mounts a program that features several captivating and cutting-edge works.

Fusion is no exception.

“It's a great opportunity for a variety of different movement qualities that bring sort of a new bloom, as we close out our season,” Carney said. “Obviously, spring is in full regalia at the moment and becoming more and more so as we get closer and closer to the opening of the shows.”

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

William Forsythe

Caroline Dahm

Lila York

The program will begin with Ochoa’s Tulips and Lobster. Tulips certainly conjure spring, but what about lobster?

“Annabelle loves to have props in her works,” Carney said. “It might be a lemon, it might be an apple. In this case, it's a tulip. But I said, ‘What's the title?’ And she said, ‘Tulips and Lobster.’ And I went, lobster? I did not know where this lobster, this character was going to show up. You have to look for the lobster. That's all I'll say. It is a very beautiful work with some incredibly tongue-in-cheek humor in it, which I really like. It’s the first piece on the program and it really gets you in the mood.”

Ochoa is a Belgian-Columbian choreographer whose works have garnered an impressive number of awards, including 'Best Classical Choreography' award by The Critics’ Circle of the National Dance Awards for A Streetcar Named Desire. She created Tulips and Lobster for the Kansas City Ballet as part of the New Dance Partners Project at the Midwest Trust Center at Johnson County Community College.

The work is inspired by 17th century art by Old Dutch masters and is set to music by Purcell, Albinoni, Lambert, Locatelli and Vivaldi.

“It just has a fun aspect to it, where there's a little bit of humor between the dancers on stage,” Carney said. “It's not a huge production in terms of number of people, but those that are in the work, which is around 10 dancers, develop a community during the course of this work that culminates with an extremely unexpected, very humorous moment at the end, which I love. And of course, I can't give it away because we don't want any spoilers.”

William Forsythe began dancing in his late teens, which is unusual for ballet dancers. But he eventually attended the Joffrey Ballet School and danced with Joffrey Ballet between 1971 and 1973. He then joined the Stuttgart Ballet, and began choreographing for the company. He went on to create works for Munich State Opera Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater and the Paris Opera Ballet, among other illustrious companies. He is considered one of the most important choreographers of his generation.

Carney calls Forsythe’s In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated “an incredible, iconic work.” The ballet was commissioned by Rudolf Nureyev for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1987. When it was performed by the Royal Ballet Flanders, it received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. 

“It is a work that changed ballet forever,” Carney said. “When this came out with a score by Thom Willems, who is a long-time collaborator of Forsythe’s, it was groundbreaking. And to this day, all these years later, it is still the future of dance. And that's why it's so important to do this work. I really feel strongly that our community needs to have the opportunity to see a work by one of the greatest living choreographers and for our dancers to have a chance to perform it.”

Carney has a keen eye for talent, having nurtured many choreographers over the decades. One of the latest to catch his attention is Caroline Dahm. Carney has known Dahm for ten years, since she came to Kansas City to study at the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music and Dance. He observed her work at the conservatory and with the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, a small, local ensemble.

“I've witnessed her incredible artistic pathway since she came here as an adult,” Carney said. “From watching her performances, I realized this person may have some really interesting choreographic ideas hiding in there. So I asked her if she was interested in choreographing, to which she said, well, yeah, that would be kind of nice.”

She first created a work for the Kansas City Ballet’s New Moves series at the Todd Bolender Center. Carney was very taken with what he saw.

“I was very excited to offer her the opportunity to create  a world premiere on our main stage,” Carney said. “So this is a big moment for her within our community. What's exciting is that she is on the precipice of a new chapter in her career, which we're right on the very front end of.

Although this is early in Dahm’s career, Carney says she already has a distinctive style, as can be seen in Hold on Tight.

“She's very good with expressing interpersonal relationships through movement,” Carney said. “I know these are not black and white concepts, but to be able to get a sense of how someone relates to somebody else is a challenge. You have to do it through movement, and she can really create the nuance of a relationship between two people or the relationship of a person to an inanimate object. And in this performance, there are inanimate objects that individuals have to relate to. Her style is unique and that's what I like.”

For a program called Fusion, Carney is appropriately ending things with a bang. 

“It's a big bang,” Carney said. “A really big bang”

Celts is a show-stopper that has been done by the Kansas City Ballet before, and always brings the audience to its feet. 

It was created by Lila York, another acclaimed contemporary choreographer. She started dancing with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1973, and was even considered Taylor’s muse. After leaving the company, she established herself as an important choreographer creating works for Atlanta Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet and many more of the world’s greatest companies. 

It was for Boston Ballet that she created Celts to celebrate her half-Irish, half-Scottish roots. The work is danced to authentic Irish music performed by groups like The Chieftains.

“It’s big, bold and celebratory,” Carney said “It's kind of like what Forsythe did for ballet, this work kind of does the same for Irish dance. Celts takes Irish dance and deconstructs it a little bit and uses it as an an influence, but not as a literal reproduction of Irish dance. It has some beautiful sections that are extremely technically difficult and require an intense amount of stamina and others that are just very calm and very soft. It leaves you wanting to dance up the aisles out to your car in the parking lot. It's just an all-out celebration of life.”

Nuclear fusion may some day provide the world with limitless, clean energy. In the meantime, Kansas City can be thankful that it has a ballet company that lights up the community with creativity, energy and passion. Fusion is the perfect program to experience the power of the Kansas City Ballet.

7:30 p.m. May 9, 10, 16 and 17 and 1:30 p.m. May 11 and 18. Muriel Kauffman Theatre, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. $34-$134. 816-931-8993 or kcballet.org.