PORT ANGELES — Dancing “Here Comes the Sun” feels like floating on light.
Moving through “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” with your partner, though, is more rough and tumble —like a scene from the most torrid love affair.
And “Light Rain,” well, “you’ve never seen anything like it,” says Heather Wallace, one of the 21 ballet dancers soon to arrive here.
The Eugene Ballet Company brings an evening of highly unusual dance in “All You Need Is Love,” a Beatles-and-then-some ballet at the Port Angeles High School auditorium, 304 E. Park Ave., this Sunday.
The 4 p.m. performance will travel through the Beatles’ songbook, from the “White Album” to “Abbey Road” and beyond, from “A Day in the Life” and “Blackbird” to “Let’s Do It in the Road” and “Across the Universe.”
“Love” also will take steps outside the Fab Four’s catalog, into a classical piece, the “Black Swan” pas de deux. Then there will come a comical work, “Channel Surfing,” a rapid-fire survey of 40 kinds of sport.
“Light Rain” a contemporary piece choreographed by Gerald Arpino, is also on the program. It has a way of electrifying audiences, Wallace said. “We’ve actually heard people gasp at the end,” the dancer said of “Rain.”
Much to her delight, she has heard people exclaim, “Oh, my,” as the dancers moved off stage.
With “All You Need Is Love,” the Eugene Ballet company members seek to enchant not only those who regularly go to the ballet, but also those who love popular music.
In addition to classics such as “Swan Lake,” the company has performed with the Portland, Ore., band Pink Martini and created a piece with Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” music.
The Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts is hosting the Eugene Ballet, which presented “Romeo and Juliet” here in October 2011. Tickets to “All You Need Is Love” are $20 to $25 for adults and $14 to $19 for youths age 12 and younger at www.JFFA.org; Port Book and News, 104 E. First St. in Port Angeles; and Pacific Mist Books, 121 W. Washington St. in Sequim.
Toni Pimble, the company cofounder who choreographed “Love,” grew up with the Beatles. She was born in England, 30 miles outside London and remembers discovering, and then following, the evolution of the four lads from Liverpool.
Like the Beatles’ music, many of “Love’s” dances “are just fun,” Pimble said. Others reflect the history the Beatles explored, from the loneliness that followed the carnage of World War II in “Eleanor Rigby” to the civil rights struggle in “Blackbird.”
“Love” starts out with the strains of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” with dancers portraying John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Soon, “A Day in the Life” dawns, and the dancers are off on the Beatles’ creative journey.
“We have nine men in the [ballet] company,” Pimble noted, “and they certainly get a workout” in “Love.”
In addition, eight of the men dance in the 11-minute “Channel Surfing” piece, evoking dozens of athletic events to music by Michael Torke.
“We reference the different sports very, very quickly,” Pimble said. Often, the audience recognizes the various events just as the dancers exit. “They get it, and they laugh a lot.”
Such laughter and applause are all welcome all the time, added Wallace. With the music in “Love,” she said, “it’s a different energy. Even with the serious pieces, there’s that backbeat going.”
No stiff tutus nor attitudes required for this outing, Wallace added.
“Ballet should be enjoyable,” she declared, “for everybody.”
