Danced to a conglomeration of recorded music ranging from the sublime to the grating, the ballet contained strongly narrative sections and puzzling, empty ones.
One segment clearly based on “The Tell-Tale Heart” showed a man “buried” under layers of cloth that represent the floorboards in Poe’s story. Another showed Poe being intentionally separated from his mother by the Raven and her ensemble.
Katie Keith was Poe’s mother, Christy Forehand his wife, Erika Cole, in a potentially fertile role usurped by the Raven, was his muse and Grant Dettling was Poe’s surrogate father.
Karen Russo Burke’s “Hyding Inside” was less ambitious, more streamlined and more consistent.
It featured Dettling as “Dr. J.” and Dillon Anthony as his primitive doppelganger, “Mr. H.” The two halves began to diverge after a quartet of drunks and harlots (Robert Morrow, Christy Forehand, Erica Lehman and Christian Delery) accosted Dr. J. for money on the street, then injected him with a hypodermic they found in his bag.
He then began to pull away from civilized behavior and his fiancee (Halliet Slack), who was left to worry and to glance longingly at her engagement ring.
Unlike Poe, Dr. J. eventually fused his Jekyll & Hyde split as the 30-minute piece to music by Mussorgsky, Janacek and Berners ended with a scene in the forest.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDaily News.com.
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