Moonlight Madness Takes Over Liberty Theater

Posted

In case there was any question, Karl Penn did not expect to eat his children.

He’ll do just that on Saturday, twice. Penn will be the man inside an oversized ogre apparatus during performances of the third annual Moonlight Madness Ballet Spectacular put on by the Ballet Theatre of Washington at the Liberty Theater in downtown Centralia.

During the shows that start at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., Penn will use the costume built by BTW co-Artistic Director Mick Gunter to gulp down his 6-year-old son Milo. The display of cannibalistic parenting will be just one of many odes to the otherworldly hallmarks of Halloween spread across the program.

Vignettes from classic ballet works such as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty will be performed along with short creations by the young dancers themselves. 

Mick and Nancy Gunter, who started the Centralia Ballet Academy about a decade ago, used to have the company stage full-scale ballets in the fall. Then, the opportunity to perform The Nutcracker during the holiday season arose, and they couldn’t pull off two big productions in such a short time.

Thus, the creation of a fun, low-pressure show that gives dancers a wide latitude to express themselves and perform their favorite styles of dance and scenes from their repertoire before the pomp and circumstance of The Nutcracker takes over the theater.

Promotional material promises games, a “boo-pique,” a bake sale and other surprises during the show. Tickets run $8 for adults and $5 for children, students and senior citizens. They can be purchased at Book ’n’ Brush in Chehalis, Centralia Ballet Academy in Centralia or at brownpapertickets.com.



“It’s a collection of scenes from the classics with a mix of things people haven’t seen before, because they’re new from the minds of our dancers,” Mick Gunter said.

What members of the dance company drew on for inspiration while crafting their original choreographies is a surprise in itself.

One student-driven performance will be set to the song “I Put A Spell On You” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. It began as a collaboration between Zoe Ruiz and Jaysten Barada but quickly grew into a companywide effort.

“After a while, people started chiming in with ideas on how it could be better and different ideas for certain things, so we started trying them out in different spots,” Barada said. “This kind of show is good, because we get to play a goofy part, then a serious part, instead of just having one character in an entire show.”

Ruiz and Lilly Bradley credited the Gunters with allowing them and other dancers the creative latitude to craft their own performance from start to finish. Bradley noted that not a lot of dance studios would provide that sort of opportunity.

“It’s cool to be able to choreograph your own piece and see it come to life,” Ruiz said. “It’s super emotional when you get to work with friends, see it onstage and remember the fun, difficult times you had making it happen.”