It’s a Monday night and the Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo is rehearsing its upcoming production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The practice room is positively electric—buzzing with dancers, young and old, working to perfect the complicated choreography they’ve learned over the past several weeks. They’re just weeks away from a two-day run at the Performing Arts Center, on Friday and Saturday, April 18 and 19.
Conceived and created by Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Drew Silvaggio, the original ballet is based not on the dazzling 1939 musical film but instead the film’s source material, L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
“I really wanted to do something big,” Silvaggio explained, big enough for the PAC stage instead of the smaller Spanos Theatre where past spring productions were staged. Silvaggio knew that to draw a big audience, he’d need source material with broad appeal.
“[The book] is very different from the movie that everyone knows and loves,” Silvaggio explained. “The backstory of the main characters is quite beautiful.”
For instance, the Tin Woodman in search of a heart is a sad love story about a woodman who falls for a Munchkin girl, but the Wicked Witch enchants her to not fall in love, so the woodman works harder and harder to make money to prove himself worthy, and in the frenzy he cuts off his limbs, which are replaced with tin prosthetics. He eventually works so hard and long that he cuts his heart out.
“The whole reason he’s trying to get a heart is to fall back in love with this Munchkin girl,” Silvaggio explained. “Viewers don’t need to know the book to enjoy the ballet because I can tell that story on stage with the beautiful pas de deux between he and this Munchkin girl.”
As his dancers rest, Silvaggio works one-on-one with 8-year-old Dillon Palazzo (who turns 9 on opening night). The young dancer has a solo to perfect, a series of moves before he throws a sly grin over his shoulder and then sashays to a hot air balloon, all to the sounds of The 5th Dimension’s 1967 song “Up, Up and Away.” Next, the company dancers need to incorporate their parts into Palazzo’s solo, making sure they don’t crash into one another as they weave across the stage.
Silvaggio is the ringmaster of this controlled chaos. He’s unrelentingly energetic, spitting out tongue-in-cheek criticisms and encouragements. He’s a born entertainer who in 2003 took over the reins of the ballet company started by his famed mother, Lorilee Moser Silvaggio, in 1978.
After the troupe practices another routine, he singles out one of the dancers for extra praise, telling the others that if they think they could immediately run the dance again, they’re not trying hard enough to be true to the choreography, which must be razor sharp. Despite these admonitions, the dancers seem inspired rather than scolded. They’re so dedicated to their craft that they’re hungry for every critique or suggestion that might improve their performance.
Next, Silvaggio begins to rehearse a big set piece to the sounds of Benny Goodman’s 1958 swing classic, “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing).” They’re practicing to a recording made by the show’s live 11-piece jazz band led by saxophone great Dave Becker and featuring local luminaries like vocalist Inga Swearingen, guitarist Damon Castillo, and a host of others. The band will be onstage with the dancers, rather than in the orchestra pit, and this song shows why: The dancers and musicians will interact with one another.
“It’s about nine minutes of the ballet,” Silvaggio noted. “It’s the moment Dorothy and her friends first arrive in Oz and see the Wizard. The back half of the song is instruments taking turns doing solos. When I heard that, it was the perfect opportunity for me to use those sections as each character asking the Wizard for what they want.”
Now the obvious question: Will there be flying monkeys?
“My flying monkeys are a group of greasers from the 1950s,” Silvaggio said. “They’re a gang called The Flying Monkeys, and they have leather jackets with an insignia. They come in on the back of a pickup truck and throw Dorothy and her friends into the truck and take them to the Wicked Witch of the East.”
If you’re expecting Broadway show-level staging, you should know Silvaggio’s aesthetic is leaner and cleaner. The show focuses on the movement, dancers, and musicians, but there are sets. For instance, a hot air balloon that comes out of the stage, and a house that floats off the stage, and the pickup truck.
“Part of the thing that makes me love theater is when you use the space in unconventional ways that help tell the story,” Silvaggio said. “I want the ballet to be about the work and seeing the dancers and the musicians and that kind of energy exchange.”
Silvaggio is also excited to work with PAC lighting designer Nathan “Nate” Deack.
“He’s just a fantastic, brilliant lighting designer.”
Another interesting innovation will be the use of green-tinted paper glasses that patrons will be asked to don as the show moves to the Emerald City.
“When you think of the Emerald City, you think of this opulent city of green, but in the book, nothing’s actually green,” Silvaggio explained. “It’s just that everyone who visits the Wizard is required to wear green-tinted googles.”
The Wizard’s power is, after all, an illusion.
“To me, this show is about finding home,” Silvaggio said.
Dorothy wants to get back to Kansas, but more essentially, “back to Aunt Em, her true home.” The lion suffers from “imposter syndrome” but is already brave. The scarecrow thinks she’s dumb, but “it’s her ideas that get the group out of tough spots.” Despite his protestations of being heartless, the Tin Woodman “is filled with empathy,” Silvaggio explains.
“These characters already possess everything they’re looking for, including Dorothy. At the end, she realizes she’s had the power to go home all along,” he said.
For ruby red slipper fetishists, I regret to inform you that in the book and this remarkably entertaining new ballet, Dorothy’s slippers are silver. Δ
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Apr 10-20, 2025.