photo/Stephanie Urso

The ’60s must be in the air this spring in Eugene’s arts world. Last month the Eugene Ballet did a bang-up dance interpretation of Tommy, the 1969 rock opera by the Who; and tonight at The Shedd, New York singer Nellie McKay will perform music from My Weekly Reader, her new album of ’60s rock covers.

Meanwhile, last night I was at the Hult Center and took in yet another ’60s show, Ballet Fantastique’s Cinderella, which is billed as “a rock opera ballet.”

Conceived and choreographed by Donna Marisa Bontrager and her daughter, Hannah Bontrager (who dances the lead role of Cindy), Cinderella was first done by the company in 2012 and is now the first show the five-year-old company has reprised. I didn’t see it then, though I spent some time at the BFan studio watching the Bontragers and the dancers pull the show together.

It’s all wrapped around a cool conceit: Instead of a fairytale ball at the palace, the dance here is a high school prom. It’s told as a live radio broadcast, narrated perfectly here by Fred Crafts, the former Register-Guard arts writer and a one-time radio guy in real life who now runs his own small theater company, Radio Redux. Crafts completely captures the tone of those teen-oriented ’60s pop shows that those of us of a certain age remember all too well.

The real armature to this Cinderella is the rock ‘n’ roll , a nice selection of early ’60s, mostly pre-Beatles tunes performed live by Shelley James and Callan Coleman and their band. The show opens with Big Girls Don’t Cry and plunges right on through such familiar hits as You Can’t Hurry Love, Mashed Potato Time, I Saw Her Standing There and Save the Last Dance for Me.

Through it all the BFan dancers interpret the familiar fairy tale, with the wicked stepmother and stepsisters (Jocelyn Wright, Ashley Bontrager and Krislyn Willes) vying with Cindy for the attentions of Prince Charming, danced lightly and wonderfully by Casey Myrick.

Leanne Mizoni is strong as the fairy godmother, and Lydia Rakov does an amazing, almost disjointed dance instructor from Dancing Divas.

My favorite scene is the colorful ensemble work that ends Act I, to the sounds of the Chordettes’ Mr. Sandman.

Classical ballet this isn’t, and much of the dancing in Cinderella seems more spirited than controlled. A bigger problem is that this is essentially a jukebox musical, with dancers. That’s fine for singing along, but this Cinderella lacks much semblance of an emotional arc as it moves from tune to tune. One remedy might be to forego the story and push even further into spectacle. Any Busby Berkeley fans in the local dance community?

But that might be taking things too seriously. Cinderella is a perfectly fun show, and even people much younger than baby boomers will recognize most of the music. You can see it tonight and tomorrow.

Cinderella: A Rock Opera Ballet

Ballet Fantastique, with live music by Shelley & Cal + the Agents of Unity
Continues 7:30 p.m. Saturday May 9 and 2:30 p.m. Sunday May 10
Soreng Theater, Hult Center for the Performing Arts

more: BalletFantastique.org

photo/Stephanie Urso

The 1969 rock opera Tommy by the Who isn’t quite a great piece of music, but it’s very, very good. I’ve loved the album ever since it came out, so I was thrilled to hear that Eugene Ballet’s Toni Pimble would be choreographing her own full-length ballet to the Who’s hard-driving rock ‘n roll.

Pete Townshend’s songs tell the story of little Tommy Walker, a witness to the murder of his mother’s lover by his father, who has unexpectedly returned from the war after having been declared dead. The grown-ups tell the boy he’ll never see or hear or remember anything about what he’s witnessed, and, as a result, he becomes blind, deaf and dumb — a condition that’s remedied when he finally becomes a pinball wizard and cultural hero.

If this storyline strikes you as extremely unlikely, you probably haven’t seen very much classical opera.

Happily, the Eugene ballet version, which opened Saturday for a two-performance run at the Hult Center, gives full rein to the rock ‘n roll sensibility. This may be ballet, but it’s still a rock concert, with lights and smoke machines. You may want to use earplugs, which are available. (Having blown out my own hearing listening to works like Tommy 40 years ago, I actually might’ve preferred the volume to be a little louder, myself.)

And it may be rock ‘n roll, but it’s also ballet — and, ultimately, opera. Somehow the synergy between the three art forms pushes the slender emotions of the original album to new heights in this production. You can actually feel the story here.

As the familiar overture begins, the dancers act out the beginnings of the tale: the wartime marriage, the soldiers lost in battle, Capt. Walker’s unexpected arrival home and the murder in front of the boy.

I was enthralled from the beginning. One reason may be this: In 1969 my college roommate and I settled in for an ecstatic evening of mescaline and Tommy on the hi-fi. The music made, let’s say, an impression on my synapses that hasn’t faded.

Adding dance to the mix absolutely brings the experience of the music up by an order of magnitude. The occasional clunky lyrics and repetitive passages of the original album, all too apparent on more recent listenings, are redeemed by the visual counterpoint of dance.

Tommy is danced here by three separate dancers. Ethan Ares, a student at Eugene Ballet Academy, portrays the very young Tommy; Antonio Anacan dances the main role with considerable charm, especially considering he is dancing the role of a nearly comatose person for most of the show. Anacan shakes and trembles blankly as Tommy is abused over and over again by people like his evil babysitting cousin Kevin (Isaac Jones).

A wonderful touch is the addition of a third Tommy, the inner Tommy if you will. Jun Tanabe, often seen as a reflection of the deaf, dumb and blind kid gazing in the mirror, is the Tommy who soars in his own mind and, on stage, for ours.

Danielle Tolmie is perfectly slinky as the gypsy acid queen who is called on to cure the boy’s problems with sex.

But the best dances actually come from the entire company, whether at a Christmas party in Tommy’s youth or — with highly mobile pinball machines — celebrating Tommy as the pinball wizard.

The live rock ‘n roll comes from a band put together by Tim McLaughlin.

While a purist might find a note or chord out of place here or there, the musicians do an excellent job of re-creating the album without making it sound like a recreation. One of the two vocalists, Siri Vik, is actually trained as an opera singer, and the only weak part of the music is that the rougher and looser voice of the other singer, Zak Johnson, isn’t a good match for the clarity and authority of hers.

A bit to my chagrin, the ballet cut some of the original story, leaving out the fabulously wicked uncle Ernie, who abuses the young Tommy with gusto in a song called Fiddle About. This sort of thing may be too much for our post-millennial sensibilities about sexual abuse, but I was sorry to see the song go.

That’s a small point. This show is a great fun, done with huge energy and enthusiasm, and if you have any love of rock ‘n roll or ballet either one you really ought to go see it Sunday afternoon.

Tommy the Ballet

Eugene Ballet’s Toni Pimble choreographs the Who’s 1969 rock opera about a deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard
Final performance 2 p.m. Sunday April 12
Hult Center Silva Concert Hall

EugeneBallet.org

Juan Carlos Amy-Cordero was one of Eugene Ballet’s best known and best loved dancers when he died in 2013, a suicide.

He always was an intense guy. JC, as he was known, was so disciplined and future-oriented that, as a child, he insisted on wearing a necktie to kindergarten, according to a story told by his family at a memorial after his death.

On Saturday, he’ll be remembered again – this time in an evening tribute of dance and music put on by Eugene Ballet and Eugene Concert Choir, with whom he often performed, at the Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall.

The program will open with a ballet, choreographed by Eugene Ballet’s Toni Pimble, to choral music by Rossini, Mahler, Debussy and Eric Whitacre, as well as an excerpt from Carmina Burana, and wrap up with a choral performance of the Mozart Requiem.

“I always was captivated by JC when he would dance,” said Diane Retallack, artistic director of the Eugene Concert Choir. “It was amazing to me how he could walk on stage and stand there and, having done nothing else yet, command the stage. I don’t know where that kind of charm comes from.”

The Radiance Orb in Paris

JC was a friend of the concert choir, Retallack said. “He performed with us a number of times, and I feel a connection to him. JC would be on stage, and I would be conducting the orchestra and chorus – there is some kind of connection from a conductor to a performer and back. It’s magical.”

For the tribute, Retallack and Pimble selected music that illustrates various sides of JC’s personality, from his intensity and his Latin heritage to his sweetness.

The ballet will close with a song by Mahler, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” or “I am lost to the world” – arranged, by Clytus Gottwald for 16-part chorus.

“It’s about the artist being so isolated from the world that he is dead to the world,” Retallack said.

During that final song, the Radiance Orb – a three-foot-diameter sphere of electronically controlled light panels – will appear above the Silva stage. Created by Eugene’s Light at Play, the Orb appeared recently at UNESCO’s International Year of Light in Paris.

Mozart Requiem and Choral Ballet

A tribute to Juan Carlos Amy-Cordero by the Eugene Concert Choir and Eugene Ballet

8 p.m. Saturday, February 28
Hult Center Silva Concert Hall

EugeneConcertChoir.org