Ballet Quad Cities' “Halloween Disco at the Club" at the Davenport Outing Club -- October 20 and 21.
Thursday, October 20, and Friday, October 21, 7:30 p.m.
The Outing Club, 2109 North Brady Street, Davenport IA
If the far reaches of your clothes closets happen to house bell bottoms, peasant blouses, beaded chokers, and feathered necklaces, you may think there's nowhere you can safely go in an outfit composed of such apparel – at least not without terrifying people. Consider, then, wearing them to Davenport's Outing Club on October 20 or 21, where your blend of the 1970s and the scary will be ideal for Ballet Quad Cities' second-annual fundraising production Halloween Disco at the Club.
Following the success of last year's Outing Club performances, the professional dance troupe's artistic director Courtney Lyon says that reprising an evening of spooky and comical '70s-themed vignettes was “almost a no-brainer. I mean, there's so much love-it-or-hate-it disco music. But it has such a great beat and great energy – I just picture Saturday Night Fever and John Travolta breaking through the crowd. And the audience can dress up in their '70s attire, which is super-fun. We get everything from hippies to Studio 54 dancers to everything in between.”
Regarding the employment of disco classics such as the Bee Gees' “Stayin' Alive,” Lyon says, “It gives our dancers the chance to strut their stuff and really show off their skills. And there are a lot of comical numbers. We have a dance where all of Dracula's vampire women are trying to wake him up to dance with him, and he just sleeps through the number. We have one with a dancer who's like a ballerina stuck in a music box. We do a glow-in-the-dark piece. We have dancing with skeletons and pumpkins. We have a trick-or-treat number.
“And we always end with a disco version of 'The Monster Mash,'” Lyon continues, “and that is, like, the crowd-pleaser. Where the disco ball starts spinning and everyone's clapping and the dancers are kicking high and doing flips. So everyone has a great time. The audience gets a great dinner and they get to dress up, and then the dancers just dance their pants off.”
With Lyon and Ballet Quad Cities' artistic associate Emily Kate Long serving as choreographers, Halloween Disco at the Club will boast, as Lyon says, “a few new numbers this year. But every year we give the audience a bit of familiar and a bit of new. We've been doing this formula of a Halloween production since 2016, and the audience does come over to us afterward and say, 'You know what piece I loved? I loved when you did such and such. So while we introduce new dances, I'll also go back into the archives and pull one of those favorites out and dust it off – the ones that were real crowd-pleasers.”
She adds that the company's October 20 and 21 productions are additionally special because the annual pointe-shoe fundraisers benefit more than just Ballet Quad Cities itself. “We've had have so many partners in the Quad Cities,” says Lyon. “I was trying to count them off over the past five or 10 years – how many organizations we've partnered with, how many schools, how many other nonprofits, how many arts organizations … . So if someone supports Ballet Quad Cities, they're really supporting many different aspects of the Quad Cities.”
Halloween Disco at the Club is being staged less than two weeks after Ballet Quad Cities performed its October 8 Adler Theatre production Our Will to Live, a night honoring Jewish composers, a number of whom lost their lives in the Holocaust. Yet while the dance company's latest presentation addresses far less weighty subject matter, Lyon says that Ballet Quad Cities' 15 dancers are rehearsing their latest with equal professional zeal.
“For dancers, it just feels good for them to dance,” says Lyon. “It feels good to move their bodies and to express themselves in any way. And sometimes those loud disco beats are just what you need to clear your mind and have fun and laugh.”
Ballet Quad Cities' Halloween Disco at the Club will be performed at Davenport's Outing Club October 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m., with the doors opening at 5:30 p.m. for a '70s-inspired buffet of Waldorf salad, chicken pot pie, honey baked ham, au gratin potatoes, broccoli with cheese sauce, and pineapple upside-down cake. (Plated parmesan risotto with roasted vegetables is available upon request.) Tickets for the fundraising performance start at $70, and more information and reservations are available by calling (309)786-3779 and visiting BalletQuadCities.com.
