Tots, teens in Swan Lake create pure enchantment

Swan Lake was pure enchantment as recently staged by Ballet Manila with the incomparable Lisa Macuja Elizalde leading the dancers. Pure enchantment was likewise created by dancers of Toni Lopez-Gonzales’s Ballet School at the CCP Little Theater for entirely different reasons. The participants were tots and teens, ages three to nine, and in the second age bracket, 12 to 16. Yet no one missed a step or a beat!

Toni must have wielded an iron hand over the performers. Like little dolls, the tots twirled and jumped, displaying with the older ones the precision and discipline of professionals as they formed circles or lines as straight as an arrow’s path. How fantastic, indeed, incredible, was this huge cast of young ballerinas in white tutus!

Toni’s simplified choreographer was based on the original by Marius Petipa, with everyone dancing only within her/his competence. Thus, over-all execution was consistently smooth and flowing.

The four cygnettes (little swans) — Arianna Bernas, Nikki Bitong, Kyla Kingsu and Danielle Kleiner — admirably passed the test of total togetherness. One of the four cygnettes, Arianna Bernas, was considerably smaller than the rest yet she later portrayed Odile, the evil swan, and what tremendous promise she revealed! Although she did not complete the standard 32 fouettés, her vigor and vitality, her élan and éclat were an augury of remarkable virtuosity in the future. Arianna, 14, is unusually tiny, and hopefully, she will grow taller to fulfill the amazing promise she showed.

Monica Lorenzo was a grateful Odette; Eugene Obille as Prince Siegfried went through his paces with measured and controlled technique. There were no spectacular lifts but the two were an engaging pair of lovers.

The performance of the big swans — Arianna Coronel, Monica Lorenzo, Maui Lutero, Iabela Feliciano, Con-con Bustos, Katrice Reyes and Sadie Hwang — was imbued with the company’s typical grace and discipline. The main corps de ballet did not for a single moment deviate from its role of emulating floating, gliding feathered creatures.

Jed Amihan aroused fear and dread as the menacing devil incarnate Von Rothbart.

The various dances in the Palace — Spanish, Hungarian, Italian, Mazurka — evoked the distinctive national spirit of each number. The tiny, adorable Spanish señoritas fanned themselves with aplomb and daintily twirled to the delight of the full house. Indeed, every seat was taken by parent, grandparent, sister, brother, friend, admirer, and the rousing applause throughout was a token of both affection and admiration.

Viewers could not but notice how the costumes of Terry Aguilar — elegant, lavish when appropriately so, always in harmonious colors — enhanced the dances to the highest degree and measure.

Swan Lake, in sum, offered immense pleasure to the audience. Toni’s ballet school, which is not affiliated with any dance company, is fulfilling a most worthy cultural mission in harnessing and honing the talent of very young dancers who will soon augment the country’s array of outstanding ballerinas and danseurs.

There are scores of written testimonies attesting to Toni not only as a demanding teacher to her students but also as a loving second mother to them. Little wonder, she draws such marvelous results from her wards. Her own daughter Marianna, age nine, is therefore a doubly fortunate member of the company.

Coda

Toni must have inherited her genes from her mother, Sony Lopez Gonzales, who became a member of Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, and who would have taken part in his dance concerts had not her father intervened and pulled her out of the company as he also did when Sony was about to dance a principal role in the local production of Maestro Federico Elizalde’s “Lady Be Good”.

Sony attributes Toni’s success as a teacher to her vast dancing experience. Toni was a member of the Washington Ballet for five years, and Sony has watched Toni’s 38 performances — there were actually more — in Nutcracker Suite as the Sugar Plum Fairy or the Snow Queen at Kennedy Center or elsewhere.

Incredibly, Toni does not have an assistant in her ballet school, fearful that an assistant could impart the wrong method or technique to the students. Toni watches her young dancers, ages three to sixteen, with an eagle eye. This brings me back to why Swan Lake was pure enchantment.