Festival Ballet Providence will be showcasing three wonderful pieces this Spring in April. Included in the repertoire are George Balanchine’s Rubies, Jerome Robbins’ 2 & 3 Part Inventions and a world premier by Viktor Plotnikov. Each piece has its own style and music for the audience to enjoy in addition to the amazing choreography.
Production: Rubies (evening and Sunday matinee only)
Balanchine’s production of Jewels is composed of three separate ballets-Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds, each independent of its sisters differentiated by the musical accompaniment. It was called the first full-length plotless ballet. In this production, you will see the most dynamic of the three, Rubies. Rubies reflects Balanchine’s American style through composer Igor Stravinsky in the brash, jazzy piece. It epitomizes the New World breakneck energy and syncopated rhythm that seized Balanchine’s imagination when he emigrated to urban America and fueled it for the rest of his career. The original central pair in Rubies was Patricia McBride and Edward Villella who made their performance a glorious duel of wits. The set for the piece is a sharp red color against a cindery light, described as a red with black in it, royal and radical at once. Costumes are hip-short and heraldic, with glittering bodices, intricately seamed and encrusted with jewels. Jazzy hip movements, dizzying pirouettes on the heel, miming rowing a boat, playing with an imaginary skipping rope; here we have the carefree spontaneity Balanchine so loved about America, a throwback to the musical comedies and films he created soon after his arrival in the United States.
Jennifer Ricci and Alexander Akulov in Balanchine’sRubies
In Rubies the men have remounted-they’re chess knights (and pawns)-and the girls are fillies, tomboys, pin-ups, Broadway gypsies, Gypsy Rose Lees, the whole fast-striding, high kicking, gear-stripping array of leggy American allure. It is overtly athletic, and more pointed. There are two female leads, but one is a principal, the other, a soloist. Throughout the performance, Balanchine leads us to man’s first story of seduction with a more recent story straight out of the ballet canon. Balanchine’s Rubies sees Woman as forbidden fruit, eternal Eve, downfall.
Choreographer: George Balanchine
World renowned choreographer George Balanchine was born in 1904 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. He began piano lessons at the age of five, and later studied piano and music theory at the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. This musical training made it possible for Balanchine as a choreographer to communicate with a composer of the stature of Stravinsky. He began to choreograph while still in his teens, his first piece was a pas de deux called La Nuit. In 1924 Balanchine and three other fellow dancers were given permission to tour Western Europe, but they never returned to their homeland again. While they were in London, they were asked to join Ballets Russes by Serge Diaghilev. Soon after Balanchine was promoted to ballet master of the company where he choreographed nine ballets and several smaller pieces; however, he also suffered a devastating knee injury which effectively ended his performance career. After Diaghilev’s death, Ballets Russes fell apart and Balanchine left to stage dances for another group. He returned when Ballets Russes settled in Monte Carlo. He again left the company, however, after Rene Blum passed control on to someone else. From there he formed his own company called Les Ballets.
In 1933, Balanchine came to the United States when he was 29 years old by invitation from Lincoln Kristein. One of Kirstein’s dreams was to create a ballet company in America specifically for American dancers. The two aimed to have the new company rival the long-established schools in Europe. The School of American Ballet was founded in 1934 by the two with the help of Edward M.M. Warburg. After a while the company eventually folded and Balanchine became a choreographer for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo til 1946. Then he formed a new dance company, which after several successful performances eventually became the New York City Ballet in 1948. From 1948 until his death in 1983, Balanchine served as ballet master for company, choreographing the majority of the productions the Company has introduced from its inception to the present day.
During his lifetime, Balanchine created and choreographed more than 400 works including Jewels, Serenade, Orpheus, The Nutcracker, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Swan Lake, Stars and Stripes, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and many more. He also choreographed for films, operas, revues, and musicals. Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet in the way he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance.
Composer: Igor Stravinsky
Born in Russia, Igor Stravinsky is acknowledged as one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. He began piano lessons at a young age and later studied music theory. In 1980 he saw a performance of Sleeping Beauty (by Tchaikovsky), and by 14 had mastered Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto in G minor. In 1909 his work Fireworks, was performed in St. Petersburg and was heard by Sergei Diaghilev who was impressed by the music and asked him to compose for more ballet pieces. In 1939, Stravinsky came to the United States where he worked on Symphony in C for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and planned to write an opera. His works encompassed styles as diverse as Romanticism, Neoclassicism, and Serialism. His ballets for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes included The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Apollo. His music has been used in over 30 ballets originating with New York City Ballet from 1948 through 1987, including Danses Concertantes, Orpheus, The Cage, Agon, Monumentum pro Gesualdo, Rubies, Symphony in Three Movements, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, Suite from L’Histoire du Soldat, Concertino, and Jeu de Cartes.
Production: Two- and Three-Part Inventions
Bach’s Inventions were designed as teaching pieces rather than for performance. This piece was choreographed by Jerome Robbins and performed by the School of American Ballet in 1994. It is set to 12 charming and simple piano Studies, Inventions, and Sinfonias. The piece took facility as its subject- Bach’s and Robbins’s- treated the students not as kooky kids in daisy chains, but as young artists in search of maturity, testing technique for its poetry. Robbins’ desire to the very end, that ceaseless reaching, was a deep bow to the art of ballet; Robbins also was known to be drawn to Bach in his last years.
Pictured: Vilia Putrius and Roger Fonnegra in
Jerome Robbins’ Two- and Three- Part Inventions
Choreographer: Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins, famous choreographer for not only ballet, but also his Broadway pieces,“West Side Story” and “Fiddler on the Roof”, was born in 1918 in New York City. He took an interest in theatrics and ballet and was an apprentice with Senya Gluck-Sandor’s Dance Center during the Depression. By 1939, he was dancing in the chorus of such Broadway shows as “Great Lady”, “The Straw Hat Revue”, and “Keep off the Grass” which were 
choreographed by George Balanchine. He let go of theater for a while in 1940 and joined the Ballet Theatre where he was a soloist and gained notice for his roles in Helen of Troy, Petrouchka, and Romeo & Juliet. In 1949 he joined George Balanchine’s new-born New York City Ballet company, where he was named Associate Artistic Director almost immediately. He danced in numerous quasi-dramatic roles for Balanchine, but it was as a choreographer that he made his mark. He composed pieces such as The Guests, Age of Anxiety, and The Cage. The ballets showcased his flair for drama, his all-American sass and energy, and his affinity for modern music. His talent was seen on Broadway as well in such productions as “Stars In Your Eyes”, “Giselle”, “On The Town”, “Billion Dollar Baby”, “The King and I”, “West Side Story”, and “Fiddler on the Roof”.
Robbins left New York City Ballet after sharing an Oscar for West Side Story (the movie version) to form his own company, Ballets: USA. The company however failed to find an ongoing audience in the United States and was dissolved in 1961. He continued choreographing for American Ballet Theatre and Broadway, but eventually returned to New York City Ballet where he shared the title of Ballet Master with Balanchine. Robbins composed Two-and Three-Part Inventions in the last decade of his life, along with other great works such as A Suite of Dances and Brandenburg. Next year marks the 10th anniversary of his death.
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 into a family of successful musicians for the past two centuries. Although later in his career he became most noted for his choral and other church-related compositions, he also left a large body of instrumental music for solo instruments and ensembles. While his popular reputation was eclipsed by the fame of his sons, he was respected by musicians and composers. Finally in the nineteenth century Mendelssohn brought his music to public attention and he became recognized as one of the greatest of all composers.
Bach composed Inventions and Sinfonias between 1720 and 1723 to help instruct his son in the playing and handling of 2 and 3 part pieces. They are mostly short studies and have been given neither tempi nor dynamic marks. There are as many interpretations as there are pianists, as one can conclude by those recorded. Jerome Robbins has selected about a dozen of all the pieces for his work.
Production: WORLD PREMIERE of Coma
Viktor Plotnikov’s piece is more contemporary than the other two from American Masters. Based on Plotnikov’s previous works, this one is likely to be just as captivating and thrilling as his others. His last work created for Festival Ballet Providence, “Loof and Let Dime”, was reviewed as “mesmerizing” and “transfixing”. His use of movement and the visual quality of his choreography are amazing to see and differ greatly from the neo-classicism of the other two. His theme: the emotional struggles of those family members caring for a comatose patient vs the inner peace of those in the coma. The result is thoroughly engaging, emotional, theatrical and thought-provoking.
Choreographer: Viktor Plotnikov
Viktor Plotnikov was born in Kharkov City, Ukraine, and began his training at the age of 11 at the Kiev-Ukraine School and continued at the St. Petersburg Ballet Academy. From 1987 to 1990 he was a soloist with Donetsk Ballet Company in Ukraine. In 1990 Viktor joined Ballet Mississippi as a principal dancer. Additionally he has appeared as a guest artist with Tulsa Ballet Theatre and Dance Inc, and has toured Russia and the US.
Viktor Plotnikov
In 1993 he joined Boston Ballet as principal dancer, performing major roles in the company’s classical and contemporary repertory including the title role in Onegin, Conrad in Le Corsaire, Albrecht in Giselle, Prince Desire in The Sleeping Beauty, Cavalier, Snow King and Dr. Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker, Solor in La Bayadere, Dracula in Dracula, and “Tico-Tico” in Paul Taylor’s Company B. He has created roles in the World Premieres of Tharp’s Waterbaby Bagatelles, Spencer/Colton’s Before Ever After, and Daniel Pelzig’s Nine Lives: Songs of Lyle Lovett, The Princess and the Pea, and Flights and Fancy. His repertoire also includes Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, Theme and Variations and The Four Temperaments, Roland Petit’s Le Jeune Homme et La Mort, Mark Morris’ Maelstrom, Rudi van Dantzig’s Four Last Songs, and Laszlo Berdo’s Below Down Under.
Recently Plotnikov has created works specifically for Boston Ballet dancers and members of Boston Ballet II. He has choreographed a number of works for institutions throughout the region, including performances in Boston Ballet’s Grand Studio, Dance on the Top Floor, Company performances in Nantucket, and Khachaturian’s Centennial at Boston Conservatory. Plotinokov created solos and duets, performed at International Gala Performances. His most recent creations include works for the 2002 International Ballet Competition in Jackson, MS. Plotnikov also created two one act ballets My Impressions, set to symphonic Pink Floyd and Short Stories for A Small Magazine for the Dancer’s Resource Fund, and at the well received choreographic event Raw Dance in collaboration with Boston Ballet and Boston Center for the Arts. His original two-act ballet, Carmen, commissioned by Festival Ballet Providence, was premiered in October, 2003.Questions:
