“In contemporary dance, you have a lot of different possibilities to use poetry, which I use a lot,” said Carolyn Carlson, choreographer of Woman in a Room, a solo piece danced by ballerina Diana Vishneva on Wednesday, November 6, at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa. The evening, called Diana Vishneva: On the Edge, included a double bill of works both performed by the Russian ballerina who dances for American Ballet Theatre. As the curtain came up at Segerstrom Hall, Vishneva premiered Jean-Christophe Maillot’s work, Switch, before taking the stage for Carlson’s new piece inspired by Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky (Solaris); both commissioned by the Segerstrom Center and Ardani Artists. Tarkovsky is known for his introspective movies exploring emotional states, and Carlson even included one of his poems, “Eurydice,” in the program. Carlson, who was born in Oakland and studied dance at the San Francisco School of Ballet, created a modern piece that took Vishneva out of her toe shoes and had the dancer contemplating solitude and various other moods as she stood in a room with a table and a window offering a view of a solitary tree.

Vishneva seemed restlessly caged inside the wooden room at times during Woman in a Room. As the piece progressed, she seemed restful, then almost embarrassingly giddy, then she was back to pacing and trying to move the large table across the room. “From poetry, I work with perception,” Carlson said. “In terms of contemporary dance, the world is so massive, I think there becomes a limit in the possibilities of imagination. So with Diana in this piece, it’s incredible how the imagination is opening. Hopefully we share a part of Diana, who she is as a person, at the perceptual level. The intimate side of who she is.” As Vishneva went about her day inside the room, dressed in various costumes created by Chrystel Zingiro, she worked through the drastically different emotional states, culminating in a scene that had her wielding a knife and cutting bitter lemons in half before squeezing them into her mouth. It was a tour de force in emotion, and each feeling was writ across Vishneva’s face and body as she performed her exquisitely-timed dance steps.

By Elizabeth Varnell

 

Pictured: Diana Vishneva
Photo Credit: © Sasha Gulyaev

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