Review: Minnesota Orchestra’s “Music in Motion” Concerts

In Saturday’s (7/22) Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), Rob Hubbard writes “This weekend’s concerts were exactly what the Minnesota Orchestra had in mind when it announced its theme for Summer at Orchestra Hall as ‘Music in Motion.’ Not only is one piece built around a ballet (an Igor Stravinsky suite from ‘The Firebird’), but another is rooted in the waltzes that once wafted through Vienna, Maurice Ravel’s ‘La Valse.’ And how about some real live dancing that speaks to modern American life? BRKFST Dance Company has just the thing. Or at least the Twin Cities-based break-dancing crew did at Friday night’s first of two performances … The six-member troupe created a three-movement dance work to accompany the orchestra’s performance of Daniel Bernard Roumain’s 2010 piece, ‘Dancers, Dreamers and Presidents,’ and it proved the peak of an unceasingly exciting concert. That would likely be true even if there weren’t also a quite impressive performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’ featuring pianist Jon Kimura Parker … BRKFST troupe members weren’t the only ones dancing, for German conductor Elias Grandy proved a gracefully athletic leader on the podium, coaxing forth strong interpretations … The concert … inspired three standing ovations.”