Made In Portland: Oregon Ballet Theatre's Finale Of The Season

Made in Portland: Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Finale of the Season

Made in Portland, which closes out the Oregon Ballet Theatre season, features four newly-commissioned pieces premiering at the Newmark Theatre.

Works by Princess Grace Award winner Rena Butler, Guggenheim Fellow Hélène Simoneau, Portland push/FOLD Founder and Director Samuel Hobbs, and OBT’s own rising dance maker, Makino Hayashi will explore how Portland makes each of these choreographers feel.

“Dance is an ever-evolving art form. We are proud to be that company which in a single season presents one of the world’s oldest ballets La Sylphide and then pivots to share four entirely new works with our audience. We are shining a light on the future of dance right here in Portland, a city with a reputation for fearlessly breaking barriers.”

Danielle Rowe

Artistic Director of Oregon Ballet Theatre

Fresh from creating her first commission for The National Ballet of Canada, Rena Butler’s work for OBT, The Present Tense, is a multimedia moving portrait of characters in momentous, fervent dialogue amidst a film by Daniela Repas, a Bosnian visual artist based in Portland.

This ballet captures a moment in the city of Portland and examines how cultural climate encounters its natural environment.

Since choreographing for the company in 2013’s Create program, OBT’s Makino Hayashi has regularly received commissions and awards for her work. For Made in Portland she has created The Rose, with original music by composer and longtime collaborator Bob Bush.

The ballet broadly reflects the community of Portland and more specifically the community and life of a dancer — intense and ephemeral. In that spirit, The Rose gives each dancer a chance to shine and to show off who they are.

“I have choreographed ON them, on their bodies” she says. “Then they are willing to express themselves and feel and enjoy each moment.”

Hélène Simoneau returns to OBT with Clair-Obscure, a reference to the use of strong contrasts between light and dark in visual art to highlight certain people or objects within a scene.

For this ballet Simoneau explores the choices people make in how they present ideas — what they prioritize, what they conceal. The same tableau with different lighting, or seen from another angle, may reveal something entirely different.

push/Fold founder Samuel Hobbs is a Portland born artist. who sees promise and an opportunity for growth following the recent upheaval in their hometown.

“I believe that the identity of Portland was revealed and the resilience and urge to protect came out…that reconciliation of identity is a major component of maturity as we recognize ways forward in community.”

For Hobbs personally, this reconciliation is the opportunity to return audiences to something beautiful – the power of the human body, life, transition, growth… within community. Their work Part II is an homage to transforming oneself for survival in community.