Folk duo Over the Rhine takes center stage in 3 new Cincinnati ballets

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Ballet will soon join local folk band Over the Rhine onstage for a weekend of live music and dance.

The Cincinnati Ballet will present “LIVE!” Nov. 6-7 at Music Hall. The program features the world premiere of three ballet works set to live music by Over the Rhine, a husband-and-wife musical duo consisting of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist.

Since forming in 1989, Over the Rhine has released 15 studio albums. “LIVE!” marks its third collaboration with Cincinnati Ballet.

The partnership began in 2011 and the band has since returned for the Cincinnati Ballet’s 50th anniversary season in 2014.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will join Over the Rhine and the dancers onstage, with Cincinnati Ballet Music Director Alyssa Wang conducting.

“It’s exciting to bring together the world of orchestra, Over the Rhine, and ballet in such a direct way,” Wang said in a statement. “Usually, when the Cincinnati Symphony performs with the ballet, the orchestra is in the pit, so getting to share the stage with the band and the dancers makes this performance feel especially collaborative and alive!”

The three works included in the show were created by choreographers Young Soon Hue, David Morse and Kenneth Tindall, who each drew inspiration from Over the Rhine’s discography.

Morse, director of the Otto M. Budig Academy at Cincinnati Ballet, created “In the Wake.” He told The Enquirer he dug into Over the Rhine’s catalog looking for a throughline across the duo’s vast body of work. Themes of mortality, mourning, prayer and nature emerged, inspiring a piece that explores the aftermath of losing a loved one and the yearning that follows.

Much of the couple’s music also references Southwest Ohio, giving Morse’s piece a “sense of place,” he said.

“Through this whole creative process, I felt such a responsibility to the two of them, because they’ve essentially put their heart out on their sleeves, really laid it all out musically,” Morse said. “I feel this deep choreographic responsibility to do their work justice and to really care for the beautiful work that they’ve made and how vulnerable they are in their writing and in their music.”

Part of the challenge with creating “In the Wake,” Morse said, was translating music with a strong identity and emotional history into a live dance performance without simply illustrating its lyrics. Instead, he wanted the choreography to add another layer of depth and meaning to the songs.

Through “In the Wake,” he hopes longtime Over the Rhine listeners will discover something new in the familiar music.

“If they’re OTR super fans, I hope that they come away hearing this music in a different or deeper way. I hope that the choreography can heighten people’s experience of this wonderful music that they already love,” Morse said.

“To be able to take a work of art that is already so thoughtful and so complete and so poetic and so rich and to be able to take it to another level and take it to a new place, that would be really amazing,” he continued.

In addition to “In the Wake,” the program features the world premiere of “Meet Me at the Edge of the World” by choreographer and dancer Kenneth Tindall. Natalie Lindsey, marketing associate for Cincinnati Ballet, said the piece, which is Tindall’s first collaboration with the company, explores “what lingers when something has begun to disappear.”

The third piece is “Trouble?” by South Korean choreographer Young Soon Hue, who has created 56 works for 25 companies worldwide, including Frankfurt Ballet, Zürich Ballet and Basel Ballet. For her Cincinnati Ballet debut, Hue drew inspiration from six Over the Rhine songs, including the duo’s 2007 track “Trouble.”

This article was underwritten as part of a promotional agreement between The Enquirer and the Cincinnati Ballet.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Folk duo Over the Rhine takes center stage in 3 new Cincinnati ballets