Almost 47 years after his death, Elvis is still King.
He holds the Guinness World Record for a solo musical artist, having sold approximately 1½ billion albums, most of the sales coming after his passing.
As for his life and loves, there are countless sources of information and speculation — including, as of now, Smuin Contemporary Ballet, which will premiere Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s new ballet about the idol titled “Tupelo Tornado” as part of its latest program set to tour San Francisco, Mountain View, Walnut Creek and Carmel May 3-31.
Also on the program are Amy Seiwert’s “Broken Open,” with cellist and composer Julia Kent performing the score live during opening weekend; Brennan Wall’s “Untwine”; and company founder Michael Smuin’s “Starshadows.”
Coincidence plays a bigger role in creating art than most people realize, and Amsterdam-based choreographer Lopez Ochoa knows it first hand. In 2017, when he was re-mounting her work “Requiem for a Rose” for Smuin Ballet, she went with artistic director Celia Fushille to watch the company perform it. She noticed that another work on the program made use of popular songs for the score, and she commented that if she were to do that, she would choose Elvis tunes.
Five years later, Fushille remembered the conversation and decided to take Lopez Ochoa’s idea to heart and commissioned her to create a ballet based on Elvis.
“Funnily enough, once we had decided to do Elvis, the movie came out about him (Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Elvis’) followed by the film ‘Priscilla,’” notes the choreographer. “So in terms of research, this was the best year for it, and there were all these documentaries posted on YouTube. I only knew the songs because he died when I was only 4 years old.”
There is so much more that I’ve gotten to know about Elvis,” Lopez Ochoa adds. “My take will definitely be different than somebody who grew up with him. It’s amazing discovering all these little bits. It feels like a broken glass or a broken mirror that I’m trying to piece together. There are some parts that are fantastic and some parts I feel are creepy. So the mirror isn’t pretty in the end when it’s put together. My dance is like this Jean-Michel Basquiat graffiti painting. All pieces don’t make sense (on their own) but together they create a beautiful portrait.”
The Colombian Belgian choreographer grew up in Europe so she doesn’t share the typical American flashbacks — teenage girls shrieking at the young Elvis, or middle-aged women making the pilgrimage to Las Vegas to see the older crooner — that people associate with the icon.
“I think it’s very difficult to catch really who he was because like most iconic people there’s a very hidden face that we don’t know about,” Lopez Ochoa said. “One of the main things that I discovered is that he wanted to be a dramatic actor. He took the chance to go to Hollywood thinking his dream was going to come true.” But fame got in the way and Elvis was offered mostly scripts of him playing himself.
In collaborating with score composer Jake Rodriguez, Lopez Ochoa notes that “I’ve given him some music that Elvis sang that I liked, and some interviews that I found. We’re going to make a collage of interview blurbs and the music woven into a soundtrack. We’ll be showing his many different facets. For example, he was very religious, so there is some gospel (music) in the piece; he’s very lonely (and feels like he’s trapped in a cage), so I’ve put one of the dancers into a cage and he was a sex symbol but was not really sexual.”
In other words, “Tupelo Tornado” isn’t a nostalgic journey through the King’s greatest hits. Instead it delivers a nuanced look at an extremely famous person, speculating on who he actually might have been.
SMUIN CONTEMPORARY BALLET
Presents Dance Series 2, including world premiere of “Tupelo Tornado,” Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
When & where: May 3-12 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; May 16-19 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts; May 24-25 at Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek; May 30-31 at Sunset
Tickets: $25-$89; www.smuinballet.org