OUR PART OF ‘TOWN’ : Ballet Pacifica Gives Us One Man’s Vision of the Essence of Thornton Wilder’s Play

Choreographer Philip Jerry has a simple answer when asked how he managed to reduce Thornton Wilder’s two-hour play “Our Town” to a 30-minute ballet.

“I captured as much as possible,” he says. “But it’s a distillation of the play. I’m faithful to the spirit but seeing it through the prism of dance.”

Jerry’s ballet will be danced by Ballet Pacifica on Friday and Saturday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. Works by Diane Coburn Bruning, Colin Connor and Rick McCullough will complete the program.

(Incidentally, those who want to stick with the Wilder original can head over to the Gem Theatre in Garden Grove, where the play is being staged as part of the Grove Shakespeare Festival through Nov. 2.)

Jerry recalls precedents for transforming stage plays into ballets. He cites “The Moor’s Pavane,” a stylized account of Shakespeare’s “Othello” for four dancers created by modern dance pioneer Jose Limon in 1949.

“That’s also a distillation of that long, huge play,” he says. “I’m not going to put my work in the same league. But in the same sense, I like to think this is the essence of something, that I’m not just trying to mime a production of ‘Our Town.’ ”

The ballet will tell the story “pretty much as in the play,” says the 36-year-old choreographer and ex-Joffrey dancer. “There are all the Gibbses and the Webbs. But there is no stage manager. That is a major difference.” Jerry cut the part, he says, because the stage manager has “a purely verbal role.”

Jerry was attracted to “Our Town” because Wilder “writes about the depths of human love and yearning and loss, and I think that speaks to everybody.”

The ballet, for 14 dancers, was created for the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Ballet in 1989. Jerry compiled a score from several works by Aaron Copland, including his music for the 1940 United Artists movie “Our Town” and the composer’s famous “Fanfare for the Common Man.” The ballet also has been danced by the Berkshire Ballet in Albany, N.Y., (Jerry’s hometown), and by the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Ballet.

Jerry was a principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet until he left in 1988. He had danced with the New York-based company for 13 years.

Now he is undergoing a career change and finds himself in his first semester as an undergraduate at Princeton University.

“I felt a certain gap in myself, in my academic side,” he says. “An academic background and credentials are something I missed and wanted.”

He hasn’t settled on a major but is taking general education courses such as French, Shakespeare, American Studies and Geology. He admits to having some problems with the science course.

“Rocks are not something that figured prominently in my life,” he says. “The only rocks I’ve dealt with before are (stage) prop rocks.”

What: Ballet Pacifica dances Philip Jerry’s “Our Town” and other works.

When: Friday, Oct. 25, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Oct. 26, at 2:30 and 8 p.m.

Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: On the UC Irvine campus, on Campus Road near University Drive, across from the Marketplace mall.

Wherewithal: $15, general; $12 for students and seniors.

Where to call: (714) 854-4646.