Dennis Polkow

Imagine that you’re doing exactly what you love to do and what you’ve always wanted to do from the time you were seven years old but that at the height of a career in that field, something happens in a split second to take it all away from you—forever.

"It was totally devastating," recalls choreographer and ballet master Kenneth von Heidecke of the incident that robbed him of a career as a dancer in 1983. "For months, I couldn’t even talk. I was not only depressed, I was in denial about it." Dancing the lead in Stravinsky’s "Etudes," von Heidecke was doing a turn in the air when, due to a blocking error, two of his colleagues collided full impact into his calves from each side. Almost immediately, both of von Heidecke’s knees swelled up "to the size of balloons," as key ligaments had been completely torn from their sockets, complete with a loss of cartilage. "Of course, it was the end for me," says von Heidecke, "but I was in denial for a long time. I couldn’t walk for months, yet I refused to use a wheelchair. I would literally drag myself into the bathroom at night."

Luckily, this is a story with a happy ending, as today von Heidecke is internationally known and respected as a choreographer, a field where the odds of success are even rarer than that of becoming a lead dancer. And it isn’t many choreographers who can boast of having a successful ballet company and school the way that von Heidecke can, who is founder and artistic director of the Chicago Festival Ballet. Ironically, the idea did not originate with von Heidecke, but with his mentor, legendary ballerina Maria Tallchief, who remains artistic advisor to the company.

"As a dancer," von Heidecke recalls, "I had always imagined how a dance number would go if I were in charge of the steps, but I just figured that everyone had that same ability." Such was not the case, however, and von Heidecke ended up working in Europe and with various companies, including the Chicago City Ballet and Lyric Opera here as a choreographer, before becoming Tallchief’s successor as choreographer at Lyric Opera on her own recommendation. When he was offered various artistic directorships, including one in Milwaukee, Tallchief encouraged him to start his own company and school right here, using the model of her onetime husband George Balanchine, whom von Heidecke had worked with as a dancer.

"He always spoke very quietly when you worked with him and never raised his voice," says von Heidecke of the legendary choreographer, "and he was so musical. Everything that he did was a natural outgrowth of the music that he was setting, a far cry from the norm today where choreographers so often begin with the dance steps and then find music to fit what they want, which is really a backwards way of working. Dance is a visual interpretation of music, so you start with the music, not the other way around."

There are two schools for the Chicago Festival Ballet, one in Naperville and another in Joliet, but a third is opening in the city itself in early 2008, largely as a result of the company presenting its unique version of "The Nutcracker" at the Harris Theater for the past two years. The company will even have its own "Nutcracker" float in the City of Chicago’s Thanksgiving Day parade and for the first time in Chicago will have a live professional eighty-piece orchestra, the New Philharmonic under its gifted music director Kirk Muspratt, which the company has collaborated with in recent years out at the College of DuPage. The diverse cast of company members include dancers whose credentials include the Joffrey Ballet, the Lyric Opera Ballet, the National Ballet of Cuba, Ballet Internacional de Caracas and Luna Negra Dance Theatre and even acrobats and gymnasts "who have been trained to count out very precisely to coordinate their movements," but even the smallest bit parts in the crowd scenes are portrayed by actual dancers, albeit student dancers from the von Heidecke schools. "I think one of the reasons people respond to [our ‘Nutcracker’] is that our people are really dancing with solid technique, rather than it just being a bunch of children skipping around," says von Heidecke. "If you present ‘The Nutcracker’ on a high enough level, you will convert people. Now, even our repertoire programs are selling out because of ‘The Nutcracker.’ "

What is the difference between von Heidecke’s ‘Nutcracker’ and other versions that exist in an already crowded Chicago market? "First and foremost," says von Heidecke, "it is a single and consistent vision of the work, not a clashing collage of various visions. We approach it as the simple, innocent and magical fairy tale that it is and Tchaikovsky sets every step that we take. He tells you in the music exactly what happens and when, but most of the time, those cues are mystifyingly ignored. The score tells you, for instance, exactly when the nutcracker breaks, but that’s not the moment it happens in most other productions. We also don’t superimpose deeper, darker psychological overtones of Drosselmeyer having a thing for Clara. And our boys are boys, and not girls dressed up as boys."

The Chicago Festival Ballet’s "The Nutcracker" will be performed at 2pm & 7 p.m. on December 1 at Millennium Park’s Harris Theater, 205 East Randolph, (312 334-7777.

(2007-11-19)

Also by Dennis Polkow

Shadow of Herself
As she makes a grand entrance into an eighth floor conference room up in the Lyric Opera office complex, soprano Deborah Voigt is a mere shadow of her former self, literally. Her sparkling and intense crystal blue eyes and her smooth facial features, which have always been radiant, are more pronounced, her blonde hair down and straddling a more defined head
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Dutch Treat
It isn’t very often that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra unveils a piece for the very first time with the composer actually present during the preparations, but on the morning of last week’s world premiere of CSO co-composer-in-residence Mark Anthony Turnage’s "Chicago Remains," Elvis Costello doppelganger Turnage is there in the hall virtually by himself with score in hand as CSO principal conductor Bernard Haitink is about to rehearse the orchestra in a final run-through of the piece before that night’s premiere performance
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Tomb, Sweet Tomb
Autumn twilight at Peabody Estate in west suburban Oak Brook casts a bright orange hue across its vast Tudor exterior which contrasts with the blackness of the hill-covered forestry that enshrouds the property
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If you have any interest in compelling music drama, miss this production at your own peril
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