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In its biggest show yet, the family-run Ballet Fantastique has set “The Little Mermaid” to an ’80s-soundtrack, and will premiere the show this weekend in the Hult Center’s Silva Hall as part of the company’s 25th anniversary season.
On a recent Friday afternoon, light streamed into a downtown Eugene rehearsal space as the Little Mermaid and her all-powerful father fretted over who was listening to who.
In Ballet Fantastique’s “Little Mermaid: The 80s Pop Ballet,” an uneasy pas de deux between the mermaid and Poseidon sketches out much of the emotional heart at the new ballet. It premieres this weekend at the Hult Center as part of the company’s 25th anniversary season.
Ballet Fantastique’s shows are all original choreography from the Bontrager family, who run the company and produce each new show as a world premiere. But this opening is even more special than usual: It’s the first time the dance company will have a world premiere in the 2,448-seat Silva Concert Hall.
As a resident company at the Hult, their premieres have typically been in the smaller, 495-seat Soreng Theater. But “Little Mermaid” demanded more.
“We knew we needed this much space to do it,” Hannah Bontrager said. “Previously, those doors have been closed to us.”
Now, the Bontrager family is inches away from their 1980s-soundtracked mermaid spectacle being unveiled to the world. But first: finishing the pas de deux between the mermaid and Poseidon, which choreographer-producer Hannah Bontrager described as the thematic heart of the show to dancers Brooke Geffrey Bowler and Preston Andrew Patterson in rehearsal.
“You love someone, but they have a different perspective,” she told them.
“We’re used to that,” joked her co-choreographer-producer, and mother, Donna Marisa Bontrager, before giving her a side-hug.
A ’80s-themed ‘Little Mermaid’ finds her legs
The path to “Little Mermaid” did not begin with the 1980s theme.
It started as a hip-hop take on the story pitched before the COVID-19 pandemic began, developed with a local group that doesn’t exist anymore. Once the hip-hop connection was nixed, they opened up the conversation to what musical approach could work: They had always wanted to do an ’80s-themed ballet, so that became the theme.
The ballet includes tracks like “Hey Mickey,” “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” “Legs” and more, but it was a challenge of finding the song to match the story beat, not retrofitting the story to a greatest hits playlist.
“I really wanted Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer,’ but I couldn’t fit it in,” said Hannah Bontrager. (“Like a Prayer” has been incorporated into the opening narration.)
The dance itself was carved out in a three-person choreography team, Hannah and Donna Bontrager and associate choreographer Gustavo Ramirez, husband to Hannah’s sister Ashley Bontrager. Both Ramirez and Ashley Bontrager are dancers in the show.
Juggling those voices, plus the different artisans with work in the show, can be tricky.
“There’s a lot of great ideas from different kinds of art coming into the project,” Donna Marisa Bontrager, who also lead the production’s costume design, said. “There’s music and musicians, there’s putting the story together in scenes. We have a lot of ideas, and then we have very strong wills too.”
Building a ballet from scratch, with foam insulation and Facebook Marketplace
For a smaller ballet company, a premiere in the Silva space is both a challenge and opportunity.
The backdrop for much of the show is a fluttering wall of fabric standing in for moving water. Challenge: Money to pay for swaths of silk. Opportunity: Hannah Bontrager found an internet vendor for wedding and party decor tablecloths, with silk at the cheapest price point she’s ever been able to find. (The fabric’s jagged edges? No sweat: Those are the boundaries of crashing waves.)
She pointed to the difference between a venue like the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, where they’re able to build the show’s set pieces in the space, and the revolving door for Silva shows at the Hult Center, where performances must be ready to pop up in a matter of days.
Also complicating matters is the from-scratch approach of Ballet Fantastique’s work, with each set piece custom-made ahead of the premiere. New pieces are courtesy of the set design team, and particularly from Debbie Peña and Lance Deal.
Deal, a former Olympian in the hammer throw, has a background in building hammer throw cages across the country, which Bontrager pointed to as a strength in pop-up building.
Deal is responsible for pieces of the set that need to be engineered, like parts of a wooden ship that dancers perform atop, or a rowboat that travels across the stage as the mermaid and her prince share a private moment.
The rowboat is thanks to a Facebook Marketplace find by Peña: a wheelchair battery, which the company has previously used for a magic carpet and now powers the boat ride.
Peña is responsible for the set design elements that lean on artistry and decór; much of the mermaid’s world is carved from insulation foam and painted to become a throne, a grotto backdrop, and other underwater ephemera, like sparkly fabric as seaweed, and glittery holiday decorations repurposed as parts of anemones.
The scrappy set work is necessary because the particular mix of 1980s and “The Little Mermaid” means exchanging set pieces with other companies is a nonstarter to fit the specific vision for the ballet.
Ballet Fantastique doesn’t do “Romeo and Juliet,” and can’t rent from Boston Ballet.
“No one’s done a 1980s ‘Little Mermaid,’” Hannah Bontrager said.
Cracking the Silva
In addition to being the company’s first world premiere in the Silva, “The Little Mermaid” is on track to be Ballet Fantastique’s top-selling show ever.
The path to the concert hall has been more than a decade in the making. Ballet Fantastique became a resident company in 2014 on a three-year trial period, when it had to meet requirements of being a resident company. But until now, the Silva had been reserved for the larger resident companies and touring shows demanding the larger space.
On the company’s first day setting up in the Silva, Hannah Bontrager walked into the lobby to see newly installed placards calling out the Hult Center’s resident companies: the Eugene Symphony, the Eugene Concert Choir, Eugene Ballet and Ballet Fantastique.
It was a full-circle moment for her. She grew up coming to the Hult Center to see the Eugene Symphony with her parents and every Eugene Ballet show she could.
“I just remember seeing there were these little bronze plaques on the wall that said the resident companies,” she said. “I just remember saying, ‘Our name’s going to be up there someday.’”
How to see Ballet Fantastique’s ‘Little Mermaid: The 80s Pop Ballet’
There will be two performances of Ballet Fantastique’s “The Little Mermaid” this weekend at the Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall, on Saturday, Feb. 28 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 1 at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets are available online starting at $34.
