Atlanta Ballet’s ‘Coco Chanel’ is glossy, entertaining but lacks dimension

Credit: Shoccara Marcus

Credit: Shoccara Marcus

Choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa successfully limns the story of Chanel’s path through an episodic form, its narrative thread lucid if literal. The story’s depth and dimension come largely through Jérôme Kaplan’s inspired minimalist set and costume designs. Peter Salem’s imaginative score added atmosphere and impetus as the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra brought it to life last weekend under Jonathan McPhee’s baton.

Overall, the production’s effect is intoxicatingly beautiful, but the choreography often lacks emotional depth, so it’s less like literature and more like the glossy, perfumed pages of Vogue magazine.

Still, there’s much to enjoy and appreciate about “Coco Chanel.” To translate Chanel’s life into dance, Ochoa took cues from Chanel’s simple and classic designs. She split the ballet into a “White Act” and a “Black Act.” With the sides and back of the stage box lined with off-white fringe in the first act and black fringe in the second, Ochoa threaded together three narrative lines: Chanel’s ascent from poor seamstress to rich and famous designer, her transformation of the female fashion silhouette and the love and loss of Arthur “Boy” Capel.

Shadow-Chanel, a character who represents Chanel’s sophisticated future self, remains Coco Chanel’s frequent partner. To help Chanel realize her ambition, Shadow-Chanel guides her through a series of love affairs and business deals — with Etienne Balsan, who gives her entrée into Parisian society; Capel, who believes in her creative vision and helps launch her company; and business partner Pierre Wertheimer, whose dealings she comes to regret.

Ochoa draws these relationships with similar moves but subtle distinctions. With Balsan, lifts are sharp, calculated and transactional, while Capel cradles her with tender intimacy. The love triangle comes to a head in a pas de trois, where Chanel is stretched out above them and between them. She gradually pulls away from Balsan and into Capel’s enfolding embrace, capping long phrases with a flick of her cigarette.

Credit: Kim Kenney

Credit: Kim Kenney

Chanel’s affair with composer Igor Stravinsky speaks to her growing seductive power. In a dynamic high point Friday, Spencer Wetherington embodied the rawness of the composer’s revolutionary work “The Rite of Spring.” A relationship with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, a Gestapo spy who connected her to powerful people in the Nazi party, led to her exile. Wertheimer’s subsequent support — a redemption of sorts — gives rise to Chanel’s eventual return to the fashion world.

Kaplan’s designs offer compelling visual storytelling. In the opening, a horizontal stratum of chairs, distributed across the stage, elevate a host of upper-class people — the men in tuxedos with tails, the women in corseted gowns with voluminous skirts, the fashion of the day.

Chanel, a seamstress humbly dressed in gray and white, is seated at a lower level on the floor as she works at a lady’s dress hem while yearning to escape the tedium of her labor. Later, the chairs are raised high in the air, as if that social class line were suddenly lifted away when Chanel enters Balsan’s wealthy world (a foreshadowing of the influence of her fashions).

Atlanta Ballet dancers, their youthful bodies sculpted to perfection, showed impressive technical skill in both performances. Mikaela Santos, who debuted Friday as Chanel, moved from lover to lover with gracious breadth and a freshness, although at times she held back emotionally. Santos paired well with Fuki Takahashi as Shadow-Chanel. Both commanded the stage with sleek long lines, fearless arabesques and a sense of Chanel’s ruthless drive to succeed. Emily Carrico and Brooke Gilliam, who danced the respective lead roles Saturday afternoon, brought an intriguingly darker edge to their characters.

Salem’s score is a powerful driver throughout the production, and his weirdly surreal music in the perfume scene is a highlight. Here, giant glowing white camellias hover overhead as dancers dressed in a spectrum of flower-inspired pastel shades perform five pas de quatres that represent different scents. They waft through soft romantic lines and then settle. Five black-clad gents give samples of each scent to Chanel, who turns down all but one.

Credit: Shoccara Marcus

Credit: Shoccara Marcus

Kaplan’s sweeping spiral staircases — inspired by Chanel’s classic perfume bottle and its ivory-with-black-lines packaging — allow for graceful ascents and descents that are especially effective near the end of the first act, when Chanel and Capel conclude a warmly passionate duet. At the top of two conjoined staircases, they stand face to face, their curved arms linking to create a form many believe inspired the interlocking Cs of Chanel’s logo.

On the stage below, Madison Penney and Erik Kim, clad in white and black, mirrored this gesture, intertwining their bodies to form the logo. Suddenly, the staircases slide apart to show Chanel’s and Capel’s tragic separation, one of Kaplan’s most dramatic effects.

In the end, the Friday evening and Saturday matinee performances felt as though the ballet was more about beautiful clothes than the hearts and souls of its characters. It is visually stunning and musically enchanting, but it could benefit from more dynamic peaks and valleys. Nonetheless, “Coco Chanel” is solidly appealing entertainment. Thanks to Atlanta Ballet, it was likely that by the end of Valentine’s Day, most of the city’s vendors of Chanel No. 5 were sold out.

DANCE REVIEW

“Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon”

Presented by Atlanta Ballet at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. 8 p.m. Feb. 16 and 17. $26-$112. 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. www.atlantaballet.com

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Cynthia Bond Perry has covered dance for ArtsATL since the website was founded in 2009. One of the most respected dance writers in the Southeast, she also contributes to Dance Magazine, Dance International and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She has an M.F.A. in narrative media writing from the University of Georgia.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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