29th SEASON OPENER:
October 20-22
Daniel Pelzig’s The Princess and the Pea, with George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Allegro Brillante
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Providence, RI
Festival Ballet Providence opens its 29th season on October 20-22, 2006 with a program with broad audience appeal. It incudeds Daniel Pelzig’s The Princess and the Pea, and two works by George Balanchine, Allegro Brillante and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. This production offers the rare opportunity to view a program that pairs a much heralded comedic story ballet with the more elegant abstract neo-classicism of George Balanchine.
Daniel Pelzig’s The Princess and the Pea opened in Boston with immense critical aclaim in 1995, and has not been seen locally in more than 10 years. Based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson, The Princess and the Pea combines playful physical comedy and clever staging with imaginative choreography.
The Princess and the Pea is a rarity, a genuinely funny but sophisticated ballet perfect for audience members of all ages. It was a critics’ favorite, being listed as one of the top five dance events of the 1995 Boston season. The story of a Prince looking for a wife and the Queen who must put the Princess to the test was praised by The Boston Globe as “imagination run wild”. A ballet awash with pirouetting topiary, cart-wheeling mattresses, a nerd-Prince who wears glasses and a Princess spunky enough to scale a Mt. Everest of a bed, The Princess and the Pea was called “an absolute delight…fresh, inventive, wonderfully witty and very entertaining. The sumptuous costumes and colorful sets are fabulous” by The Boston Herald. The score is artfully arranged selections of British composers Gustav Holst and Percy Grainger.
Allegro Brillante ( 1956), which received its Rhode Island premiere last year, is a showcase of Balanchine style and Festival Ballet Providence’s dancers. A stunning work that is still performed regularly in the repertory of New York City Ballet, Allegro Brillante is a quick-paced work for five couples that sparkles with precision, speed, musicality and freshness, showing clearly why Balanchine is considered the greatest ballet choreographer of the 20th century. Balanchine has been quoted as saying, “It contains everything I know about the classical ballet in 13 minutes.”
His technically challenging Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960) is an audience favorite, showing Balanchine’s ingenuity in reshaping the classical language, down to its final syncopated leaps into breath-taking fish dives. It’s a wonderful display of ballet bravura and technique. The music was originally composed in 1877 for Act III of Swan Lake, but was not included in the published score. After over 75 years unnoticed in the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin Russia, it was rediscovered in 1953 by members of the Tchaikovsky Foundation of New York. Balanchine, delighted with this new discovery, created a ballet that reflected his new home and the music of his homeland. Both ballets are being set by Balanchine Repetiteur Elyse Bourne.
In designing the program, Festival Ballet Providence Artistic Director felt audiences would enjoy the opportunity to experience excellence and variety within the same program. He’s pleased that the George Balanchine Trust has granted the company the rights to acquire more of the master’s ballets, and that Rhode Island will have the chance to see the work of this icon of 20th century ballet. Since seeing Pelzig’s Princess in 1995, Djuric has dreamt of including it in one of his seasons. He noted, “I want to be performing new material whenever possible, both for our audience and our dancers, giving the opportunity to grow and redefine tastes for dance. Danny’s production of The Princess and the Pea is top-notch, a comedy that really delivers, and the two pieces by George Balanchine are just tremendous for audiences who like to be entertained by magnificent dance. This is a program for people new to ballet, and for those who already really love it.”
This production is made possible in part by our sponsors, The Providence Journal, season television sponsor NBC10, ongoing operating support from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the VMA Arts & Cultural Center.
The Princess and the Pea, with works by Balanchine will run October 20-22nd at the VMA Arts & Cultural Center, 1 Avenue of the Arts, with performances at 7:30 pm Friday, 7:30 pm on Saturday, and 2:30 pm on Sunday. Reserved tickets (priced from $17 to $62, which includes a $2.00 VMA Facility Fee) and season subscriptions are available by contacting www.tickets.com, 800.919.6272, the VMA Arts & Cultural Center (401.272.4862) during box office hours. For additional information about the production, visit www.festivalballet.com or send email inquiries to info@festivalballet.com. Senior, Child and Group discounts are available.
Special related events:
“Up CLOSE at VMA”, a learning opportunity for Festival Ballet Providence audience members, features pre-curtain programs to learn behind the scenes details about the evening's production from two dancers from the Company. This 15-minute program begins 45 minutes before the Saturday and Sunday performances in the right front orchestra section of the theater. Ushers will welcome audience members who wish to be part of this informative addition to Festival Ballet Providence main-stage performances.
“UP CLOSE at VMA” will take place on Saturdays(6:45 pm) and Sundays (1:45 pm).
SELECTED BIOS:
George Balanchine Biography
[Allegro Brillante (1956) and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960)]
Rights to perform these works granted by the George Balanchine Trust
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Balanchine (1904-1983) is regarded as the 20th century’s foremost contemporary ballet choreographer. He came to the United States in late 1933, at the age of 29, accepting the invitation of the young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907-96), whose great passions included the dream of creating a ballet company in America. At Balanchine's behest, Kirstein was also prepared to support the formation of an American academy of ballet that would eventually rival the long-established schools of Europe.
This was the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934, the first product of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration. Several ballet companies directed by the two were created and dissolved in the years that followed, while Balanchine found other outlets for his choreography. Eventually, with a performance on October 11, 1948, the New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983.
Balanchine's more than 400 dance works include Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), Le Palais de Cristal, later renamed Symphony in C (1947), Orpheus (1948), The Nutcracker (1954), Agon (1957), Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972), Vienna Waltzes (1977), Ballo della Regina (1978), and Mozartiana (1981). His final ballet, a new version of Stravinsky's Variations for Orchestra , was created in 1982.
He also choreographed for films, operas, revues, and musicals. Among his best-known dances for the stage is Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, originally created for Broadway's On Your Toes (1936). The musical was later made into a movie.
A major artistic figure of the twentieth century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. This had an inestimable influence on the growth of dance in America. Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world.
For more extensive information about George Balanchine and his works, visit www.balanchine.org
DANIEL PELZIG is a choreographer and director for theatre, opera and ballet.
Mr. Pelzig choreographed the new musical A YEAR WITH FROG AND TOAD at the Cort Theatre on Broadway and off-Broadway has choreographed Douglas Carter Beane’s THE BIG TIME for The Drama Dept, Paul Rudnick’s VALHALLA at New York Theatre Workshop (Lortel nomination), City Center Encores! THE NEW MOON, NEWYORKERS at Manhattan Theatre Club (Lortel nomination) and PRIVATES ON PARADE at the Roundabout. Recent projects include Jon Jory's adaptation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE at the Arizona Theatre Co/ San Jose Rep/ Alliance Theatre; Mary Zimmerman’s PERICLES at the Goodman Theatre and the Shakespeare Theatre Co; Stephen Wadsworth’s DON JUAN at the Shakespeare Theatre Co/McCarter Theatre/Old Globe/Seattle Rep, GUYS AND DOLLS at Long Wharf Theatre, CABARET AND MAIN at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, SWEENEY TODD for the Sondheim Celebration at the Kennedy Center, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM and AS YOU LIKE IT at Seattle Rep and COMPANY and THE MIKADO at the Huntington Theatre. Other theatre work includes RAGTIME (Pioneer Theatre), CANDIDE, IOLANTHE, and A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Huntington Theatre), MY FAIR LADY and PETER PAN (Paper Mill Playhouse), LADY IN THE DARK (City Center Encores!), THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER and STARCROSSED (Goodspeed), HAPPY END at Sundance Theatre Lab as well as concert versions of SHOWBOAT and CAROUSEL at the Hollywood Bowl.
Upcoming project include IPHIGENIE EN TAURIDE at the Metropolitan Opera and Seattle Opera, DIE FLEDERMAUS for Lyric Opera of Chicago, THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN at Houston Grand Opera and direction and choreography for TURANDOT at Fort Worth Opera.
Other opera credits include REGINA and THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN at Lyric Opera of Chicago; MOSCOW: CHERRY TREE TOWERS for Francesca Zambello at Bard Summerscape; DEATH IN VENICE at Chicago Opera Theatre; DON GIOVANNI at New York City Opera and Opera Pacific; SALOME and Zambello's FLORENCIA EN EL AMAZONAS at Seattle Opera; SAMSON AND DALILA (with Denyce Graves) at Houston Grand Opera and Los Angeles Opera; AIDA (with Deborah Voigt) at the Los Angeles Opera, UN BALLO IN MASCHERA for Pittsburgh Opera, LA TRAVIATA, FAUST, LE NOZZE DE FIGARO, THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE and ROMEO ET JULIETTE for Boston Lyric Opera and Robert Carsen's production of REGINA for the Scottish Opera. In three seasons as resident choreographer for the Santa Fe Opera he choreographed ARIADNE AUF NAXOS, CAPRICCIO, SALOME, Kurt Weill's THE PROTAGONIST and Zambello's production of David Lang's MODERN PAINTERS.
He has directed and choreographed Adam Guettel's song cycle MYTHS AND HYMNS, Mary Zimmerman’s production of Philip Glass’ AKHNATEN for the Opera-National-du-Rhin in Strasbourg, COUNTESS MARITZA for the Santa Fe Opera, SEMELE and THE MESSIAH for Boston's Handel and Haydn Society and GUYS AND DOLLS at the recently renovated Maltz Jupiter Theatre.
He served four years as resident choreographer for the Boston Ballet, where he choreographed nearly a dozen ballets including THE NUTRCRACKER, ROMEO AND JULIET, NINE LIVES: THE SONGS OF LYLE LOVETT, and the world premiere of RESURRECTION, accompanied at its premiere by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. His ballets have been recently seen in the repertoire of Pennsylvania Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet and Tulsa Ballet, among others.
Awards include a gold medal at the Boston International Choreography Competition and numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been a visiting professor at Barnard College and SUNY Buffalo and earned his degree in cellular biology from Columbia University.
The Princess and the Pea
Choreography: Daniel Pelzig
Music: Gustav Holst and Percy Grainger
Sets: Michael Annania
Costumes: Mariann Verheyen
Premiered at Boston Ballet in October 1995 as part of “Happily Ever After”, his first new work for the company as Boston Ballet’s Resident Choreographer at Boston Ballet
Quotes:
Karen Campbell, The Boston Herald, October 13, 1995
…an absolute delight…fresh, inventive, wonderfully witty and very entertaining…sumptuous costumes and colorful sets are fabulous….
Christine Temin, The Boston Globe, October 13, 1995
The trick with fairy-tale ballet’s is picking fairy tales with choreographic potential – or else being willing to re-write, even fracture, the tale in question, which is what Daniel Pelzig has done brilliantly in his over-the-top treatment of “The Princess and the Pea”….”Pea”… is imagination run wild… Pelzig produced dancing topiary, cart-wheeling mattresses, a nerd-Princess, spunky enough to scale a Mount Everest of a bed – after warming up with a few plies…. A throne that doubles as a townscape, baroque-fantasy head-gear resembling fruit bowls and schooners, and that wacko bed…it was clear that from the sound of the sound that lots of the laughter came from children in the house. But “Pea” is also a grown-up work, a sophisticated send-up of certain conventions of 19th century ballet: the eligible princesses from different nations, the dancing peasants and courtiers whose presence is de rigueur at royal weddings…Pelzig succeeds in dance’s most difficult genre – the comic ballet – but when a serious episode is needed, he’s wise enough to provide it…
Christine Temin, The Boston Globe, December 31, 1995
He’s a natural story teller, as his delightfull “The Princess and the Pea” proved this fall… his animated story about insomnia… Audiences laughed out load…
Iris M. Fanger, in Dance Magazine
…on opening night, the hit was Pelzig’s “The Princess and the Pea” that rarity, a genuinely funny ballet. The jokes were first of all based on character and, secondly, on some swipes at ballet’s sacred cows…
The Princess and the Pea
Synopsis of the ballet by Daniel Pelzig
Once there was a very smart and well-read prince who loved books and wished to marry an equally smart princess. In order to make his mother, the Queen, happy he had to make sure the woman he married was a real princess. The Queen said the Prince must only marry a princess who possessed the most important royal virtue of all: sensitivity.
A royal call went out and many princesses came to the castle to visit the Prince. They came to meet and hoped to marry him, but none of the princesses interested the Prince an they did not seem to posses an appropriate amount of sensitivity. After meeting many princesses, the Prince became sad and began to think he might never find a bride. As a last resort the Prince sent his friend, the Royal Court Jester, into the world to seek out the perfect princess bride.
One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. A knocking was heard at the castle gate, and outside the gate a mysterious woman stood shivering. What a sight the rain and the wind had made of her. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said she was a real princess. Enchanted by her honesty and her adventurous natures, the Prince immediately fell in love with the beautiful young woman. He decided to marry her.
But the Queen was suspicious of the young woman’s self-proclaimed royalty. So she devised a secret test: she fetched twenty mattresses and piled them on the bed in the castle’s guest quarters. This is where the young woman would sleep. Underneath the bottom mattress on this impossibly tall bed, the Queen placed a single, tiny pea. She proclaimed that only a real princess with the right amount of sensitivity would be able to detect the pea beneath the many layers.
The next morning, the mysterious woman complained of a terrible backache and said she could not sleep all night. The Queen was satisfied that the mysterious woman was indeed a real princess with the right amount of royal sensitivity. She gave her blessing to her son’s marriage and the entire kingdom celebrated the arrival of their new princess. The famous pea was put on exhibition at the royal museum where you can go see it, if it hasn’t been stolen.
The Princess and the Pea
By Hans Christian Anderson
1835 Translated from the original Danish text
Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He traveled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess.
One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.
It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! What a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran dwon from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. AN yet she said that she was a real princess.
“Well, we’ll soon find that out,” thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went to the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider down beds on top of the mattresses.
On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.
“Oh, very badly!” said she. “I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It’s horrible!”
Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds.
Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.
So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum, where it still may be seen, if no one has stolen it.
There, that is a true story.
