BalletX celebrates 50 years of the Highmark Mann with a colorful love letter to Mother Nature

As the long winter and cool spring finally began to recede and warmer weather unfurled in Philadelphia, BalletX opened its 50th anniversary season outdoors at the Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts Thursday night.

On the bill was the world premiere of a love letter to Mother Nature.

The Four Seasons Reimagined is an impressively ambitious work with each season created by a different choreographer, set to original music by Dan Deacon, and with costumes and sets designed by Emma Kingbury.

The performance was dedicated to the memory of Dito van Reigersberg, who performed as the widely popular drag queen Martha Graham Cracker, who passed away from cancer on Monday.

The work opens with Morgann Runacre-Temple’s “Summer,” which begins with the dancers, in socks, forming a flower and blooming on stage, making little staccato motions with their arms and legs as they reach toward the sky. Two dancers, Skyler Lubin and Minori Sakita, are lifted and dipped, like vines growing over the group.

Penny Saunders’ “Fall” section blows in like crisp air, with the dancers, again wearing socks, bending, contracting, and often performing lower to the floor, like leaves scattering in the wind.

“There is wisdom in autumn,” Saunders says in a video shown before the performance. That is reflected on stage as the dancers reach and reflect rather than move toward death.

Jamar Roberts’ “Winter” focuses on what is active in the cold weather rather than what is still. The dancers perform in silver sparkles, the women in pointe shoes. They step as though carefully lifting their legs through snow (their tights and shoes are a darker color) or flitting and floating like winter birds. This section is largely a group piece and can be seen as an ode to the corps de ballet — or even a take on Swan Lake, with all the struts and gently flapping arms.

Trey McIntyre’s “Spring” is a burst of color and bigger movements. It opens like Balanchine’s Serenade, with the dancers in parallel first position, an arm shading their eyes from the sun. The costumes are almost comically colorful, looking like bathing suits brought out when the frost finally breaks.

Also danced on pointe, this is the section that feels most like classical ballet format, with more turns, jumps, and smaller group sections.

Composer Deacon works in electronics, and he used Vivaldi’s score as a starting point. Deacon played his composition live along with eight other musicians in front of the stage, and bits of the familiar classic could be heard throughout.

In the outdoor theater, it’s sometimes hard to tell if the birdsong is real or part of the music, but it’s all part of being wrapped into nature. (Unfortunately, so is pollen, as evidenced by the frequent sneezes from audience members.)

The stage was teeming with dancers, but it would’ve been fun to get a better look at the musicians as well.

A constant through the piece is a large backdrop designed by Kingbury. It is a painted work that looks like a cloud formation, but depending on the lighting (designed by Christopher Ash), it takes on different colors and moods, looking light as a tutu or ominous like a storm rolling in.

Once in the theater, it was relaxing moving through the seasons, watching the moods and colors transition throughout the seasons, and seeing the dancers aptly move through different styles.

The pollen was not the only challenge. Getting to and into the theater was a project as traffic getting to the Highmark Mann already seemed backed up for World Cup prep.

Once there, the entrance and plaza are still very much under construction (delayed by the long winter, president and CEO Catherine Cahill said before the performance). Parking was confusing and walking up to the theater involved a long, very dusty path and stepping up a tall curb.

There are accommodations for those with disabilities, but everyone could have benefited from a planked walkway and some signs.

BalletX in “The Four Seasons Reimagined.” 7:30 p.m. Friday Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts, 5201 Parkside Ave., balletx.org