Posted October 18, 2024
This month, Membership Manager Allie Haines sat down with our visionary Artistic Director of the Dayton Ballet, Brandon Ragland, for a fascinating chat about DPAA’s reimagined classical ballet, Coppélia—coming to the Victoria Theatre October 18-20! It’s guaranteed to surprise and delight Dayton audiences.
Allie Haines [Membership Manager]: Hi Brandon! Thanks for taking the time to meet with me over a glorious cup of coffee this morning. I am so excited to pick your brain about Coppélia and share it with our members this month.
Brandon: Hi Allie, it’s my pleasure—fire away!
Allie: Ok, let’s start at the beginning—why Coppélia? And why now?
Brandon: I really wanted to bring a full-length classical ballet to Dayton that we haven’t done before. And Coppélia has it all—love, mystery, and a little bit of magic. I danced as Franz in a production of Coppélia at the Louisville Ballet under the incredible director, Robert Curran, and it was really special. I knew I wanted Robert to come in as the director of this production and to give our dancers the opportunity to work with him. So having him involved is just amazing and a real “full circle moment.” Robert always says, “classical ballet is a contemporary art form,” and I just love that. In Robert’s vision, Coppélia is taken out of Germany and antiquity and transposed to a more modern context. It takes place in a quaint Midwestern town, right before the First World War. It’s this reimagining of a classic that’s unique and I think when put in the context of where WE live, makes it much more relatable. It gives it a fresh take, and we’re better able to connect to the story.
Allie: Wow, that sounds amazing.
Brandon: And as for why now? Coppélia is your classic love story, it’s about a couple and their journey and how their relationship goes through different stages. It’s a more human story, there’s no real fairy tale and again, I think that makes it more relatable. Not everyone can or wants to relate to a swan princess or a sugar plum fairy, but we can relate to feeling pressure to be something you’re not like Franz or feeling unseen like Swanhilda—and it’s not projected heavily, but it’s there. It does a really nice job of giving you this grounded sense of reality and still a little bit of that magic of a standard classical ballet. I think we as people want and need to escape reality for a bit. People want to be swept away to a place that’s beautiful, and I can’t think of a better way to do it than through the performing arts. It’s cathartic and liberating. And when you leave, whether you loved it or hated it, you’re changed. The experience changes your perception of things. And the classics are classics for a reason—they’re timeless.
Allie: Well said! I understand that Coppélia has a light-hearted tone and humor (which is unique for a classical ballet), but it also touches on deeper themes like identity and illusion. How do you navigate those elements in this piece, in both the choreography and the storytelling?
Brandon: You draw on your own life experiences, for sure. And timing! I find that having humor in dance has to be done really well and the dancers have to fully commit. You can’t be shy about it. For dancers, myself included, it was a challenge at first to perform comedic pieces. At times the humor is unexpected—it’s really cool to see. You have to connect the tone of the music with the tone of the movement. And often, staging things that require more of an acting presence with little movement is a real challenge and one that we examine quite a bit.
Allie: Are there any specific technical challenges for the dancers in Coppélia that audiences might not be aware of?
Brandon: It is deceptively hard. The movement is simple, but it is deceptively difficult. You can expect that classical ballet technique throughout.
Allie: What do you hope audiences take away from this production of Coppélia?
Brandon: I hope they take away having a new experience at the ballet! I think most people in our Dayton community haven’t seen it—so I want this to be a fresh new experience for them.