Arts Listings

The crowd was streaming through the flaming metal portals of The Crucible’s big industrial complex on Oakland’s 7th Street well before curtain time for the “fire ballet” production of Stravinsky’s Firebird.  

Like a sideshow, there were “fire arts” demos going on inside, Crucible artists and volunteers pulling molten glass from a blindingly hot oven and shaping it, or showing someone how to pound out a burning ingot on an anvil, or just displaying artworks from one of the center’s many workshops. 

Once the big audience was seated in rows of chairs on the floor in front of the stage and on the bleachers just behind them, the taped Midd;e Eastern-flavored dance music went off and an emcee welcomed everyone, touching on the workaday, educational and community features of the foundry-like place that was presenting a 1910 Ballet Russe classic, reforged in real flame, “an incendiary update,” with proceeds to benefit their education fund. 

“A funky and fiery reinterpretation of the classic Russian folktale,” The Crucible’s Firebird was conceived and designed by Michael Sturtz, founder and executive director of the nonprofit, with choreography by Viktor Kabaniaev of Diablo Ballet, where Tina Bohnstedt, excellent as the Firebird and onetime principal with the Bavarian State Ballet, also performs.  

The stage direction is by Mark Streshinsky, whose staging of Chrysalis for Berkeley Opera was a highlight of recent East Bay theater. The musical direction (all prerecorded) is by Scott Sterling and Ben Davis handles the lighting. The show features appearances by performers from Smuin (dashing Easton Smith as Prince Ivan) and San Jose (lithe Haley Henderson as Tsarevna) ballets, exotic dance company Nekiya, street dancers from Flavor Group and fLo-Ology, as well as aerialist (the other Firebird) Janine Fondiller and “Moto Prince Ivan” (stuntman Darius Khashabi doubling the Prince, riding Sturtz’s dream machine) and an airborne ’70s flaming red (and flaming) Pontiac Firebird. 

In many ways the Crucible’s hour-long production follows the fairytale (and the original Fokine ballet) pretty closely, albeit with the anachronistic air of an illustrated storybook for young techies, with the huntsman Prince, out for a ride (in this case, on his cycle), encountering and snaring the Firebird, who begs her freedom, rewarding the prince with a (flaming metal) feather.  

Anachronistic in more ways than one, as The Crucible’s FIREBIRD is at once like seeing a revival of the Ballet Russe original, but as performed by the early Siegfried and Roy in Vegas at the Circus Circus. Given the close connection between early 20th-century ballet and the carnivalesque (recall Picasso’s Ballet Russe designs), it’s a doubly wry tribute. 

A well-known local dancer, once a ballet student, who’s seen other Crucible shows with enthusiasm, commented afterwards how high-quality the soloists and the aerialist were, but suggested that the choreography “never completely gelled” and that The Crucible’s signature pyrotechnics weren’t “integrated as fully” as in last year’s ROMEO & JULIET, in which the dancers at the ball waved flaming fans. 

But THE FIREBIRD, in any case, is unusual entertainment, with high production values and in an unusual and intriguing setting. The audience, on the youngish side but diverse enough in every way, ate it up, afterwards pouring out of the vast studio to West Oakland BART, a couple blocks away. 

Firebird  

The Crucible, 1260 7th St, Oakland 

Wed.-Sat., April 16-19, 8:30 p.m. 

Tickets $55 

444-0919 

www.thecrucible.org 

Firebird Gala 

Friday, April 18 

Reception 6:30 p.m. featuring wines, fiery hors d’oeuvres, exclusive performances and an opportunity to meet the cast 

Tickets: $150