New Artistic Director Leads Toast to the Washington Ballet at 40

Time is a funny thing, when you look at it.

The Washington Ballet, presided over by its new artistic director, former ABT uber-ballerina Julie Kent, threw itself a 40th-anniversary celebration where the past met up with the here and now, with an ambitious eye toward the future.

The Sept. 30 celebration in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater was just that, but it was also an homage to founder Mary Day, who created the company as “an institution of teaching and performance” in the 1940s, before establishing the dance company in 1976. It was also a spontaneously affectionate nod to the adventuresome Septime Webre and his stewardship of the Washington Ballet for the last 17 years.

And it was an introduction of and by Kent herself, who showed off some of the graceful star wattage that she achieved at American Ballet Theatre, where she was the longest-serving ballerina until her retirement in 2015.

Kent hosted and narrated a three-part program — complete with home movies, videos and often eye-popping and inspiring and inspired dancing — presenting the Washington Ballet story. She appeared before the audience wearing spectacular gowns by designer Reem Acra. Speaking with affection, sharing her ABT memories, saluting Day and Webre for their work and sharing her particular hopes and designs for the future, she dazzled the audience not only as the company’s new director but as its star, the embodiment of dance and dancer, legendary grace and beauty.

“Oh my god, will you just look at her?” a woman sitting next to me said as Kent made her second appearance of the night.

Dance, like great wine, great beauty and unforgettable music, has a transforming ability to make you forget traffic jams, impolite politicians and the bill collector. That past-present-future thing was working its own electricity all night long. The first segment, which included precious and energetic video imagery of Mary Day, puckishly and intensely watching students and dancers in a studio, showed just what a gigantic achievement the founder pulled off, with considerable persistence and daring. The daring came with Day bringing the young Chinese dancer and choreographer Choo San Goh to the company, with the result that the company and dancers were challenged with new work. Goh died in 1987, but not before he and his work had helped establish the Washington Ballet as a serious company.

The celebration featured Goh’s signature work “Fives,” a streamlined back-to-the-basics, high-energy, dynamic work that strips dance to its most simple and complicated essence, the human body as a instrument, dancers in red accomplishing feats that are timeless as well as Olympian, muscle and bone. The work defines simplicity, agility and the pain and difficulty of what dancers do, separately, in unison, from head to high-strung en pointe.

With the arrival of Webre, whose mother was born in Cuba, the direction of the company didn’t so much change as enlarge, enveloping a kind of new temperament while maintaining classical impulses. Webre himself was a free-spirited leader who reached out to the furthest corners of the city. He was also an ambitious choreographer — see his “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Sun Also Rises” and “The Great Gatsby.” Right at the beginning, he took the company to Cuba, with a frail Mary Day on the journey.

Over 17 years, Webre embodied in his person a certain elan and energetic approach to dance, reaching out everywhere to reflect the multicultural city in its dance company. The 40th-anniversary program saluted Webre with a work he created in the Latin-Cuban-very-high-temperature mode, “Juanita y Alicia.” The result resembled a night in Havana, with live music performed by the group orchestra Sin Miedo, performing Cuban hits like “Chan Chan,” “El Carratero,” “Solamente Percusion” and “Dos Gardenias.”

The third section spoke to the classic past and the possible future. We got a glimpse of the Washington Ballet’s “Nutcracker,” the pas de deux and coda from Act III of “Swan Lake,” a touch of “Don Quixote,” all of them selections from full-length story ballets, as well as “Theme and Variations,” with choreography by Balanchine.

It’s clear that Kent would like to enlarge the ambitions, expanse and reach of the Washington Ballet, having learned from her years at ABT how to build on an already solid and eclectic reputation. This can already be seen in the choreographer-heavy upcoming season, which begins with “The Nutcracker,” followed by the classic “Giselle,” then loads up with three presentations centered on the works of major choreographers, including a commissioned world premiere of works by English choreographers Antony Tudor and Sir Frederick Ashton in May of 2017.