This past Tuesday marked the last day Butler’s Department of Dance hosted guest repetiteur and teacher Kevin Irving, who set Nacho Duato’s Por Vos Muero for the Butler Ballet’s Midwinter Dance Festival.

After two solid weeks of rehearsals, we bid farewell to Mr. Irving and now continue to rehearse under dance professor Derek Reid. There’s a lot to work on — naturally, since we can always improve always in perpetuum — but I look back and see that everyone involved in the piece has come a long way.

Musicality, musicality, musicality.

The intricacy of the choreography requires a most exact sense of the music and makes working on the piece a rather delightful challenge. As our department chair said in another article, “The Butler Ballet is excited and humbled to have been selected as the only American College Dance program to perform a Nacho Duato work.”

We are all honored, and I for one am very excited… if my relentless posts on the subject haven’t convinced you, check out this article from the Butler Collegian, where I rave yet more (and more incoherently, probably) about the Midwinter Dance Festival this year.

As absorbed as I’ve been in the rehearsal process for Por Vos Muero, I haven’t seen too much of the other works in the show. I caught my first glimpse of Bournonville’s Flower Festival yesterday, which was exciting. I love the airiness of Bournonville choreography, and it offers a different view of classical ballet than the usual Petipa story ballet.

I highly recommend the Midwinter Dance Festival to anyone who has not been exposed to a lot of dance. Because the pieces come from a wide variety of genres and aren’t as lengthy, it makes for a good introduction. Make sure you buy your tickets for the shows on February 17 and 18 at 8pm!

If you’re in Indianapolis for the Superbowl… you should probably stick around for another two weeks so you can see Midwinter.   : )

Can you tell which dancer is me?