There are three performance elements that can always be counted on when Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Principal Pops Conductor Jack Everly takes the podium: energy, variety and spectacle.
“Gotta Dance!” opens the BSO SuperPops season tonight at Strathmore and features these ingredients in spades with a program that encompasses a wide range of music and dance genres throughout the decades.
“Dance has really been sweeping the country these days and it’s something everyone is getting into,” said Matt Spivey, BSO manager of artistic operations. “The show will be a lot of fun because it has an incredible array of dance styles, ballroom, ballet, tap, hip-hop, Broadway — you name it, it’s in there!”
And these dance styles naturally accompany the fabulous musical classics that will be performed following the overture to “Gotta Dance.’ ” These include “Put on a Happy Face” from “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Dancing in the Dark” from “The Bandwagon,” “The Jellicle Ball” from “Cats,” along with big band hits and music from “Lord of the Dance.”
“Jack [Everly] knew he wanted to do a show about dance, he wanted it to have variety and … he wanted to have the best people,” Spivey continued. “He built the entire show around these people and you can certainly see that with the American Ballet Theatre and the Lombard Twins, [who are] funk-fusion dancers. There’s something here for everyone.”
All of the dancers will be in costumes representing the periods from which the dances originated. Ballet dancers Maxim Beloserkovsky and Irina Dvorovenko will perform the “White Swan Pas de Deux” from “Swan Lake” and then close the show with the Act IV finale from “Swan Lake.”
Dancer Bobby Smith, who has appeared on Broadway in “Crazy for You” and works as an actor and director in venues such as the Kennedy Center, the Shakespeare Theatre and the Olney Theatre Center, is thrilled to be making his debut with Everly and the BSO.
“I’m a veteran of many revues and I love them,” he said. “It’s like taking the best of each [show] and bringing it to life. My goal is to give Jack [Everly] what he wants.”
And what Everly has always wanted is to delight the audience with the ingredients they have come to expect.
“He knows how to have fun, and it’s infectious,” Spivey said. “He has this ability to bring everyone to a whole other world. [The show] is high-energy and really sets the stage for everything to come.”
