Photograph by Aaron M. Conway, courtesy Cincinnati Ballet
Cincinnati Ballet brings folk-rock band Over the Rhine’s soulful music to the stage this weekend at Music Hall, joining the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for LIVE!, a collaboration among three of the city’s prolific artistic institutions.
The ballet company’s dancers translate the band’s music into sweeping choreography, evoking what Cincinnati Ballet Music Director and conductor Alyssa Wang describes as, “listening to a folk band tell you a tale in your living room, and the stories are being told through the human body.”
While the CSO is typically positioned in the orchestra pit, LIVE! changes course November 6 and 7 by bringing the orchestra onstage with Over the Rhine husband-and-wife-duo Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler and their “Band of Sweethearts,” contributing to a “hive mind” of around 80 artists. The dancers bring the duo’s Americana and folk-rock repertoire to life in a “visual feast for your eyes,” says Wang.
“Almost like notating the music off the page and onto the stage,” choreographer Kenneth Tindall adds.
Since releasing their first recorded song in 1989, Over the Rhine’s Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler have released more than 15 studio albums, toured nationally and internationally, opened for artists such as Bob Dylan, and earned a place on Paste Magazine’s list of 100 Best Living Songwriters.
Even then, their music alongside the Cincinnati Ballet is something that cannot be replicated. Their most recent album, Love & Revelation, emerged amid grief, loss, and a weariness with who they were as Americans, artists, and people. The duo’s haunting, yet poetic melody offers a resilient, almost offensive hope in the face of uncertainty.
“We keep going,” Bergquist says in the band’s online biography. “With the darkness falling, we still find reason to dance.”
The performance includes three 25-minute segments, each created by internationally recognized choreographers to its own atmospherically charged arc, with intermissions between them. David Morse’s “In the Wake” invites the audience to immerse themselves in the movement unfolding like “a painting that continues to move and evolve,” says Artistic Director Cervilio Miguel Amador. Young Soon Hue’s “Trouble?” captures the dynamics of human interaction through an uplifting, physically demanding performance that builds toward an ending “almost like fireworks,” Amador says. And in “Meet Me at the Edge of the World,” Tindall explores the coexistence of hope and sadness through the raw, abstract narrative of an outsider navigating belonging.
The inspiration for LIVE! began in 2011—the company’s first collaboration with Over the Rhine—during Amador’s tenure as a dancer with the Cincinnati Ballet, where he says it “stayed with him” as one of his career highlights. Falling in love with the band’s music, he knew he wanted to elevate their depth and intensity once he became artistic director. As the ballet’s third collaboration with the band, there is no doubt that the addition of the CSO achieves just that.
With each choreographer granted the creative freedom to select five to six songs from the band’s extensive catalog, their distinct styles weave the band’s storytelling in a conversation between the dancers and the symphony. Together, they create a cohesive return to something profoundly human: to cling to one another through inevitable devastation, finding connection when all else seems lost, until first light breaks through the night.
Longstanding Over the Rhine listeners can look forward to some of their hits, including “Trouble,” “All of My Favorite People,” and “Faithfully Dangerous.”
“It’s exactly what humanity needs right now,” Tindall says. “It’s a way to connect back to what the soul is and why we’re here”
The creative process in bringing LIVE! to life unfolded as the three art forms met to “learn each other” in what Tindall described as “terror mixed with excitement.” As an international choreographer hailing from the United Kingdom, Tindall walked into a room full of 40 to 50 strangers, each bringing their own perspective and wondering what they might offer one another. As the dancers worked to interpret the music through the choreography and their own liminal experience, the artists mirror LIVE!’s belief in the power of human connection, and the caliber of artistry it yields.
“We’re all in there searching for excellence,” Tindall says. “We become a hive mind of artists that are just working towards that goal; it’s a really powerful, intoxicating environment.”
In an increasingly digitalized world, LIVE! underscores the enduring value of live performance: the exchange between artists and audience that cannot be manufactured. By bringing the art forms together, Cincinnati Ballet invites audiences across disciplines to come together and engage with an enduring hope that bridges digital distance. “We are working hard to change the narratives around who and what ballet is for,” Tindall says.
Whether drawn to Over the Rhine, the ballet, or simply want an evening of live performance, audiences can experience LIVE! and hear the band debut new songs alongside its beloved repertoire. Tickets for LIVE! are available on Friday, November 6, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, November 7, at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at Music Hall.
