by Elizabeth Kramer for Courier-Journal
When Australian choreographer Lucas Jervies flew into Louisville almost six weeks ago, it was a homecoming of sorts.
He first came to here in 2015 to create a new work for the Louisville Ballet. This time, Jervies returned to create a work stemming from an idea he hatched with his friend and former colleague Robert Curran, who is now Louisville Ballet artistic and executive director.
The two men – who more than a decade ago staged this first work together at a company they started in their home country of Australia – created a ballet based on big ideas about love and loss and inspired in part on William Blake’s poem “The Human Abstract.”
This time, Curran wanted Jervies to reboot the project in an ambitious way by adding collaborating artists to the mix. He worked with Louisville Visual Art to have artists portfolios provided to Jervies. The choreographer chose to collaborate with Tiffany Carbonneau, Andrew Cozzens and Ezra Kellerman.