ANN MARIE DEANGELO AND BALLET PACIFICA
At the end of DeAngelo's new ballet, Blackberry Winter, the audience at South Coast Repertory sat stunned. You literally could not get up from your seat and proceed as though nothing had happened; the ballet was too beautiful. Propelled through the most chaotic, split-second, ferocious and elegiac course, Ballet Pacifica's dancers allowed the experience of moving to be part of us. We felt how meaning changes and keeps changing -- the epiphany of every carefully chosen gesture. Conni Ellisor's score for dulcimer and other instruments indigenous to her native Tennessee was another great find in this memorable work by a choreographer who possesses immense and exciting talent -- and from whom we hope to see lots more in the next millennium.