FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 21, 2006
CONTACT: Mark Fleisher, 401.353.1129
Providence, RI -
Festival Ballet Providence’s popular series, Up CLOSE, on HOPE, showcasing exciting mixed repertory works in an intimate studio setting, will present the third program of the season in March. Following the sellout opening Up CLOSE programs in October and November, the March program features three world premieres with a dynamic program. Up CLOSE on HOPE performances offer the chance to see thrilling, original dance, to meet the dancers, and to mingle with the evening’s choreographers. Critics are in complete agreement: Up CLOSE on HOPE is a great way for audiences to see dance!
The performances will take place March 4, 11, & 12 at the company’s East Side studios at 825 Hope Street on Saturdays at 7:30 pm and on Sunday at 6:00 pm. Performances take place in the Leach Grand Studio black box theater, for a limited audience of 90.
The success of Up CLOSE, on HOPE is largely due to the intimacy of the theater and the repertory chosen by Festival Ballet Providence Artistic Director Mihailo Djuric. The diverse programming is intended to expand the audience’s taste for different dance styles.
This program will include an exciting mixture of world premieres and works from the company’s extensive repertory. With funding from The Rhode Island Foundation’s New Works Initiative, Boston-based choreographer Lorraine Chapman has been commissioned to create a collaborative new work with young hip-hop artists from AS220 Broad Street Studio’s Rhode Show. Festival Ballet Providence artistic director Mihailo Djuric was inspired by a young poet from this group to initiate this collaboration between the two organizations. This piece, tentatively titled “…and sometimes Why” will include engineered music tracks, spoken word by youth artists from the Rhode Show, and Festival Ballet Providence dancers. Ms. Chapman noted, “This variety of extrapolation has never, to my knowledge, been done before. I believe that by abetting this union there will be surprisingly congruous and exhilarating results. The work will be based on a story created by the Broad Street Studios, whose members are skilled orators. Their informative and engaging poetry is based on their own personal life experiences. I believe that the joining of these groups has the potential to become not only an enjoyable experience for both the performers and audiences, but also an educational experience, accessible, and unlike anything they have ever experienced before.” This is the major work of the evening, performed in eight movements with 6 members of the Rhode Show and six dancers from Festival Ballet Providence.
The program will also feature two other world premieres by Festival Ballet Providence Company members Piotr Ostaltsov and Mark Harootian. Mr. Harootian, a veteran choreographer for Up CLOSE on HOPE (Ain’t Misbehavin’, Breaking the Limits, Let it Go for a While) will create a new work for eight dancers to George Winston’s “Autumn”. Making a break from his earlier jazzy and theatrical works, Mark is making a completely different piece, simple and elegant, taking advantage of the strong, clean training of the Festival Ballet Providence dancers, to create a piece reflecting the feeling of the music with a theme of “air”. While the women will be wearing pointe shoes, this piece promises to be more contemporary, with elements of fall and recovery, cannon, partnering and group sections.
Mr. Ostaltsov will create a dramatic, narrative piece, to Edvard Grieg’s “Wedding Day in Troldhaugen”. This contemporary work takes place at the wedding of a young couple in an arranged marriage. While the true loves of each attend the event and cause doubt and second thoughts, the parents insist that the ceremony proceeds. Ostaltsov has cast twelve dancers, with Emily Bromberg, Carolyn Dellinger, Karla Kovatch, Gleb Lyamenkoff, Ty Parmenter and Andrew Skeels in feature roles. Piotr’s previous works for Up CLOSE on HOPE include Tristan and Isolde, On the Turning Away, Casta Diva, Antonio and Wolfgang: The Little Tragedy, and Tombe La Neige.
Andrew Skeels and Emily Bromberg will dance the Bluebird Pas de Deux from The Sleeping Beauty. This young pair of dancers has applied to participate in the Jackson International Ballet Competition in Mississippi, and have been learning several pas de deux from the classical repertory as preparation for this prestigious event. Performance for a live audience is an important part of their training, and so Mr. Djuric is pleased to give them this opportunity.
To round out the evening, Mr. Djuric will set his contemporary duet, Extremes, on dancers Leticia Guerrero and Alexander Akoulov. With music by Providence-based composer Barbara Kolb, Extremes explores the polarities of male and female, much as the score uses two opposites of the orchestra, flute and cello, to build a contrasting tension.
Audience members will have the opportunity to further expand their knowledge of Hope Street with hors d’oeuvres and wine intermissions sponsored by neighboring East Side restaurants. The intermission sponsors of our March performances are Pizzico and Rue de L’Espoir, accompanied by wines courtesy of Laurine Ryan Perry and the Martignetti Companies of Rhode Island.
Tickets are available for $30 as general admission seating. Tickets are available by contacting Festival Ballet Providence, 401.353.1129. For further information, send email inquiries to info@festivalballet.com.
The 2005-2006 Up CLOSE on HOPE series is made possible in part by a generous sponsorship from GLAD WORKS, and ongoing support from NBC10 and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Additional support has also been received from The Rhode Island Foundation’s New Works Initiative
The Festival Ballet Providence and the Festival Ballet Providence Center for Dance Education are together a not-for-profit arts organization whose EIN is 05-0377245 and whose Rhode Island Corporate ID number is ND-27-137.
For digital photos or to contact any of the artists, please contact Mark Fleisher, Tel 401.353.1129 or mfleisher@festivalballet.com.
Wines for the intermissions will be provided courtesy of the Martignetti Companies of Rhode Island and Laurine Ryan Perry.
Lorraine Chapman, Guest Choreographer
Lorraine Chapman was awarded the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Artist Grant for Choreography ‘04-05’. She has danced with Eliot Feld Ballets/NY and Ballet British Columbia, and received her training at The Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and L’Ecole Superieure De Danse Du Quebec. As an independent choreographer Ms. Chapman has created works for The National Ballet of Canada’s Choreographic Workshop, Impulse Dance Company, Choreographers Group, the Northwest New Works Festival Seattle, and The Bessie Schonberg Residency at The Yard. Since its’ official inception in 2002, Lorraine Chapman, The Company Inc. has been chosen for several exciting productions including World Music/Crasharts Tens The Limit and Dance Straight Up!, Dancing Nor’easters 8th International Festival of Arts & Ideas New Haven, and The Vox Consort’s St. John Passion by J.S. Bach. In 2004 she created an original work for the Alberta Ballet. Amy Spencer & Richard Colton awarded her with a Choreographer’s Project Fellowship for Summer Stages Dance 2005, and the work she created for this fellowship caught the eye of David Parker (of David Parker and The Bang Group) who is producing it in NYC in March 2006 at the West End Theater. World Music/Crasharts, a great supporter and presenter of LCTC, Inc. has commissioned a 45 minute world-premiere from Lorraine for Dance Straight Up! May 2006.
“Lorraine Chapman’s work combines dynamic, sharp-edged movement and compelling theatricality. (Her) dancers don’t just move, they somehow provoke- by their relationships to one another, by the way they relate to the audience. It’s not only satisfying on a visceral level but on a cerebral level as well” Karen Cambell, Boston dance critic.
Lorraine Chapman: Statement of choreographic intent
The young women and men of the Broad Street Studios are prodigious individuals with unique and powerful voices. Festival Ballet Providence is one of the most classic, provocative, and extraordinary ballet companies in New England. Acting as a medium, I would like to liaison these two groups, essentially creating a new means of creative expression as determined by the seemingly disparate types of artistic languages and methods involved. By combining the Hip Hop genre with the more prosaic esthetic of classical ballet technique, I would like to explore the possibilities of how the two can inform and transform each other through the development of style, form, and content. This variety of extrapolation has never, to my knowledge, been done before. I believe that by abetting this union there will be surprisingly congruous and exhilarating results. The work will be based on a story created by the Broad Street Studios, whose members are skilled orators. Their informative and engaging poetry is based on their own personal life experiences.
I believe that the joining of these groups has the potential to become not only an enjoyable experience for both the performers and audiences, but also an educational experience, accessible, and unlike anything they have ever experienced before.
AS220 Broad Street Studio’s Rhode Show
The AS220 Broad Street Studio (B.S.S.) is a transitional arts program that employs and engages Rhode Island youth, but focuses specifically on those recently released from the state’s juvenile detention facility, the Rhode Island Training School (R.I.T.S.), and those under the wing of the Department of Children, Youth and Families. A major goal of the Broad Street Studio is to transition youth from the R.I. R.S. back into the community in order to break the cycle of recidivism, using the arts. The B.S.S. focuses on three mediums: Visual Art, Performance Art and Literary Art.
The Rhode Show is an anti-corporate performance youth troupe representing the AS220 Broad Street Studio. Our goal is to equip Rhode Island Youth with the tools and information to make responsible decisions of their own. The group performs at local schools, libraries, and community events trying to expose the truth about corporate predators to prey on your young population and manipulate their culture, the truth about our personal and social experiences in modern society, and the truth about the openness, freshness and empowerment of art.
