Live Shots: Farm-to-table, just add ballet, at Petaluma’s panoramic ‘LUNAE’

Nestled into Petaluma’s Tara Firma Farms, the culinary and dance experience that is LUNAE (through Sun/26) provides a multi-sensory feast. Its experience comes courtesy of rancher and sustainable land use proponent Aaron Lucich and his wife Julia Adam, a choreographer and former principal dancer for the San Francisco Ballet. The two melded their passions in creating JAD Experience, an immersive series designed to offer guests an opportunity to commune with the land and their fellow humans.

Upon their arrival, guests were greeted with cheeses, charcuterie, Enkidu wines, and housemade “shrubs”—the latter, costumes to be donned by dancers later on in the evening, but that were initially serving as a backdrop. The dancers themselves were doing double duty, pausing at one point to offer appetizers and drinks.

After this first course, guests could walk or take the hay ride to the top of the farm as they admired the contrast between golden hills and green trees with just a hint of the fog nestled in the valley. They eventually made their way to long, family style tables that facilitated conversation and a resplendent repast featuring a local bounty, the menu crafted by chefs Brian Leitner and Annette Yang of Pearl Petaluma.

Following a jaunty mid-dinner dance interlude, the production Lunae et Amore Amisso (“Of the Moon and Lost Love”) began at sunset. A reworked version of the Romeo and Juliet prologue introduced its narrative, followed by Adam’s choreography deftly depicting the complications of relationships. The sublime movements of the Houston Ballet’s Augustin Lehner, Ryan Williams, Saela Rivera-Martinez, Memphis Ballet’s Harry Warshaw, and Zoe Lucich, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s David O’Matz, New Orleans Ballet Theatre’s Lily Mangiaruga, and Kelsey McFalls and Tessa Barbour embodied Adam’s vision. Amada Farris’ costumes—featuring constrained corsets, with billowy sleeves and legs—accentuated the show’s motifs of holding back, giving, connecting, releasing. The exuberance, betrayal, playfulness, grace of the human condition were on display.

Under a luminous waxing crescent moon, with the Sonoma landscape as set, fluid movement, poignant story telling, and universal themes mesmerized the audience. We were spellbound for its duration—no chit-chat, no phones, just a shared experience. —Patty Riek

LUNAE runs through Sun/26. Tara Firma Farms, Petaluma. Tickets and more info here.

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