Mixed-repertoire programs typically give viewers a chance to focus more on dance for dance’s sake and to take a break from pervasive evening-length story ballets, and that was mostly true in the Joffrey Ballet’s “Golden Hour,” which opened Thursday and runs through March 2 at the Lyric Opera House.
Narrative still suffused this program albeit in subtle, implicit ways in three of the selections. It was only front-and-center in the evening’s culminating main attraction, the world premiere of Dani Rowe’s “Princess and the Pea,” a co-production between the Joffrey and Oregon Ballet Theatre. The 40-minute work for 20 dancers manages to be at once quirky, whacky and loads of fun.
While this highly original work draws some inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen’s famed fairy tale, “The Princess and the Pea,” the libretto by Rowe and Garen Scribner very much goes off in its own direction.
The Joffrey Ballet — ‘Golden Hour’
Underneath the make-believe zaniness of this work is a slightly disguised yet pointed, socio-political allegory about freedom, particularly freedom of choice, and the dangers of a society giving in to autocracy.
The ballet opens with a narrator in a suit (Dylan Gutierrez) presenting an old-fashioned slide show, complete with the clunking sound effects of the changing slides, as he offers a deliberately dry and humorous overview of the story that is to come.
The relatively simple story then unfolds. Essentially, an evil princess with green Raggedy Ann-like hair and a curvy, “Jetsons”-like tutu (a wonderfully preening, sneering Basia Rhoden), has ordained that the only food anyone is allowed to eat in the all-green world she has imposed are peas. Indeed, the citizens have forgotten there are other colors and other kinds of vegetables.
One day, Peneopea, an adolescent with glasses and a pony tail (convincingly portrayed by Anabelle de la Nuez), refuses to eat her peas, and her parents (Valentino Moneglia Zamora and Evan Boersma), offer her a smuggled carrot. The princess and her two jester-like henchmen quickly show up and the parents are “canned and banned” — literally placed in giant tin cans and hauled away.
A carrot figure (Jonathan Dole), a kind of fairy godfather, appears and comforts Penelopea, and at one point they break into Broadway-style show dancing. The ballet climaxes with a “mattress match,” a play on the original fairy tale in which two contestants, in this case the Princess and Penelope, duel to see who will fall asleep first and lose.
To ensure that the Princess always wins the contest, she has a pea placed in her bed, but the carrot figure surreptitiously removes it. The Princess then falls into a deep slumber, meaning that Penelopea wins, becoming the society’s savior, as she throws off the Princess’ suffocating strictures.
Rowe, making her debut with Joffrey, nails the look and feel of this ballet, injecting just the right does of absurdity, playfulness and seriousness, and ably shaping the characters and moving the story along through telling movement. Expect to see future works by her.
Likewise, Emma Kingsbury’s deliberately low-tech, low-budget sets ideally complement Rowe’s vision and convey the ballet’s offbeat, storybook character, as do her imaginative costumes with their plaid patterns and fantastical vibe.
The program’s other world premiere is “Andante,” a curious, unresolved trio about love and loneliness by Yuri Possokhov, who has created several works for the Joffrey, including an adaptation of “Anna Karenina.” Set to music by Dmitri Shostakovich, this seven-minute work with its sleek partnering and acrobatic exchanges features potent, athletic dancing by the central couple, Victoria Jaiani and Alberto Velazquez, and Xavier Núñez as the outsider.
The program, which runs nearly 2½ hours and is arguably a bit too long, opened with two strong works that Joffrey premiered in recent seasons and revived here. The first is Nicolas Blanc’s beautiful, meditative “Under the Trees’ Voices” (2021), in which 15 dancers move around and under exquisitely crafted, giant leaves overseen by scenic designer Jack Mehler. This 30-minute work takes place at the “golden hour,” the magical, hushed time right before sunset that gives this program its name, and is set to an atmospheric, sometimes plaintive score by Ezio Bosso.
Cathy Marston has become a Joffrey regular, having choreographed three works for the company, including “Atonement,” which opened its 2024-25 season. The more modest work here, titled “Heimat” (2022), is set to Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” which the composer wrote after the birth of his son, Heimat. This simple, upbeat work depicts a loving five-member family enjoying a day in the Swiss countryside, with the children humorously vying for their mother’s attention and the parents engaging in some affectionate duets.