Festival Ballet Providence

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 27, 2007

Festival Ballet Providence, 401.353.1129

Masters of Motion
February 8-10, 2008

Providence, RI -

Festival Ballet Providence show features three great works by three masters!

Festival Ballet Providence artistic director Mihailo Djuric has assembled a trio of paramount works by acclaimed choreographers, fittingly titled Masters of Motion, and set for a weekend series at VMA Arts and Cultural Center in Providence, RI, February 8, 9 & 10, 2008. The triple bill program will bring audiences a wonderful mix of works by choreographers not only noted for their motion, but also for the emotional qualities of their works. The choreographers and their works are Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, Antony Tudor’s Leaves are Fading, and Viktor Plotnikov’s Coma.

Djuric, (who with Milica Bijelic will be setting the season ending Swan Lake on the Company), confesses he is most inspired by repertory programming. “I am constantly challenging our dancers, choreographers and audience to embrace more styles and to be exposed to more inspiring dance works. The choreographers and works I have chosen for Masters of Motion are among the best you will see today, affecting, provoking and entertaining us. Each is uniquely flavored, and created by artists who have embraced dance as their lifelong art form. We considered calling the program ‘Masters of Emotion’, since each choreographer brings a highly human sentiment and a personal and creative movement style to his work, but as a choreographer, to me it’s the motion that conveys to us the emotion.”

Festival Ballet Providence founder Christine Hennessey included Agnes de Mille’s Golden Age in the Company’s 3rd season. To celebrate the company’s 30th season, Djuric was able to successfully acquire de Mille’s high energy, western-themed romance, Rodeo, created in 1942 for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Capturing the vibrant American spirit with Aaron Copeland’s rousing score, Rodeo was an immediate sensation, and lead to de Mille being chosen to choreograph Broadway’s ground-breaking Oklahoma. Paul Sutherland, whose first performance on joining Ballet Theatre in 1957 was Rodeo, will set the ballet on Festival Ballet Providence. He has set the renowned work on over 50 ballet companies world wide. The story portrays a tomboy in search of love amid a backdrop of cowboys, hoedowns, cattle-roping and horseback riding. The ballet is a showcase of American spirit and frontier optimism.

As part of the international celebration of Antony Tudor’s centennial year, Mr. Djuric also chose Leaves are Fading, Tudor’s last major work before his death, to be a part of this program. The ballet, abstract though clearly a mature reflection of the aspects of past young love, will be staged by former ABT principals Amanda McKerrow and her husband John Gardner, both of whom were regularly chosen by Tudor to dance in his ballets. The only stagers authorized by the Tudor Trust to set the ballet, McKerrow and Gardner worked with Festival Ballet Providence dancers for ten days in November and again for two weeks in January, between setting ballets at ABT and Ballet West. They have imparted their strong connection with the ballet to the dancers.

Duric rounded out the program with the reprise of a commissioned work by Viktor Plotnikov, the youngest of the trio of choreographers. Coma, while originally inspired by a memorable image in the film, ultimately draws from much deeper feelings and existential questions. Premiering in April 2007 to an audience audibly gasping at the first image, this striking ballet received stunning reviews. As noted in Dance Magazine by Theodore Bale, “What makes this work so exciting is Plotnikov’s skillful blend of cryptic, non-ballet movement and gesture with good old-fashioned ballet showmanship.” Bryan Rourke in the Providence Journal noted, “Plotnikov, a legend in the making, certainly among the most innovative and evocative choreographers in the country.”

“Masters of Motion” will take place February 8, 9, &10, 2008 with three performances at VMA Arts & Cultural Center. Performance times are at 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday, and 2:30 pm on Sunday. Pre-performance chats with dancers, choreographers and production staff take place Saturday and Sunday in the theater, 45 minutes before curtain.

VMA reserved tickets (priced at $17, $32, $42, $52 & $62, with group, child and senior discounts available, family 4-packs for $40, and student rush pricing) and season subscription information are available by contacting www.tickets.com (800.919.6272), VMA Arts & Cultural Center, 401.272.4862, Festival Ballet Providence, 401.353.1129, by sending email inquiries to info@festivalballet.com or visiting www.festivalballet.com .

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. All venues are handicapped-accessible.

Additional digital images are available by contacting mfleisher@festivalballet.com

Antony Tudor’s Leaves are Fading
Music: Antonin Dvorak (“Cypresses” for string quartet, with other chamber music for strings
World Premiere: New York State Theater, 1975
Original Cast: Marianna Tcherassky, Amy Blaisdell, Nanette Glushak, Linda Kuchera, Kristine Elliot, Hilda Morales, Elizabeth Ashton, Christine O’Neal, Michael Owen, Raymon Serrano, Charles Ward, Richard Schafer, Clark Tippet, Gelsey Kirkland and Jonas Kage.

This season’s performance of Leaves are Fading, © 1977 Antony Tudor, presented by arrangement with The Antony Tudor Ballet Trust, proudly salutes the artistry, vision, enduring relevance of Antony Tudor’s works and commemorates the Centennial of his birth, 1908 – 2008.

As noted in the September 9, 2007 New York Times, “This English-born choreographer was one of ballet’s foremost modernists (widely if simplistically called its psychologist), and there remain today several authorities who maintain (as very many did in the 1940s and ‘50s) that he was the foremost ballet choreographer of his era. He was a central part of American Ballet Theater from its foundation, and in the 20 years since his death a number of his ballets have been danced by ballet companies worldwide.”

Bio: Antony Tudor (born William John Cook) was born in London on April 4, 1908. He grew up in Finsbury, a working class neighborhood in London's East End. His artistic aptitudes surfaced early and were encouraged by his parents. His father took him to music shows, his mother tutored him on the piano, and he sang soprano in the church choir until his voice deepened. At sixteen Tudor spent evenings in London's theatre district where he became interested in ballet. He credits ballerina Anna Pavlova and Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with his choice to become a dancer and choreographer.

At 19 Tudor took ballet classes with Dame Marie Rambert, cofounder of the modern British ballet movement. She formed the Ballet Club in 1929 and hired Tudor as her general assistant. It was during this time that he changed his name to Antony Tudor for professional reasons. He premiered his first ballet, Cross Gartered, with the Ballet Club in 1931. In 1934 he choreographed The Planets, which was composed of episodes, each evoking the symbolic meaning of a planet through gesture and movement. Three years later Tudor's choreography evolved. Jardin aux Lilas (1936) portrayed the bittersweet relationship between lovers confined by Victorian strictures. In Dark Elegies (1937) performed to Songs on the Death of Children, the dance expressed grief and mourning.

In 1939 he moved to New York City to help Lucia Chase and Agnes de Mille establish Ballet Theater (later known as American Ballet Theater). He was the resident choreographer for the next ten years. In 1942 he created Pillar of Fire about the coming of age of a heroine amid sexual repression and small town provincialism. In 1949 he left Ballet Theater to stage new works and revivals in the United States and abroad. Leaves Are Fading (1975) was the most acclaimed of his later works. It is considered to be an abstract work that traces psychological threads of relationships.

Tudor will be remembered for his influence in contemporary ballet that stemmed from his psychological probing of his characters. He died at 79 of a heart attack on April 19, 1987 in New York.
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Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo (1942)
The performances of Rodeo, choreography by Agnes de Mille, are presented with the cooperation of de Mille Productions, Anderson Ferrell, Director.

Music: Aaron Copland

Cast:	Cowgirl
	Champion Roper
	Head Wrangler
	Rancher's Daughter
	Kansas City Girls (3)
	Womenfolk (5)
	Cowhands (8)

With its world famous score by Aaron Copeland, Rodeo is Agnes de Mille's most beloved and most frequently presented ballet. Rodeo had its world premiere with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House, October 16, 1942. Agnes de Mille danced the leading role and received 22 curtain calls. The ballet was the beginning of her success as a choreographer of worldwide reputation.

Summary: Rodeo is the touching story of a tomboy in search of love. The cowgirl, who de Mille admitted was based on herself as a young woman, is a misfit among the men and women in her community. Agnes has said, "She acts like a boy, not to be a boy, but to be liked by the boys." Hers is a bitter lesson, but she learns it at the ballet's denouement when she puts on a dress and goes to the hoe-down. She finds her man, and she finds him through dancing. The ballet features bravura dancing for the men in a unique style derived from horseback riding and cattle roping. A work, by turns robust and tender, and full of optimism, Rodeo is a celebration of the pluck and spirit of the American character.

Original Cast: Agnes de Mille, Frederic Franklin, Casimir Kokitch, Milada Mladova, Eleanora Marra, Dorothy Etheridge, Ruth Riekman

See www.agnesdemilledances.com for complete danceography and Agnes de Mille bio.

Viktor Plotnikov’s Coma (2007)
Music: Arvo Pärt
Movement 1. Our Dreams
Movement 2. Reality
Movement 3. Their Dreams

Premiere: VMA Arts & Cultural Center, April 2007
Original Cast: Leticia Guerrero, Gleb Lyamenkoff, Vilia Putrius, Erica Chipp, Heather O’Halloran, Jennifer Ricci, Eivar Martinez, Henry Montilla, Ty Parmenter

Summary, from a 04/07 preview by Johnette Rodriguez in the Providence Phoenix:
In the new piece, titled Coma — inspired by the image of suspended bodies in the ’78 film Coma — Plotnikov gets inside the minds and hearts of those who are keeping a vigil next to someone who is comatose, those who must make a decision to let go of someone they love, and those who are in the comas themselves. Its three movements are “Our Dreams,” “Reality,” and “Their Dreams,” and the ballet is set to the transfixing music of Arvo Pärt.

“The first movement has all the suffering and bad dreams of those outside the coma,” Plotnikov explained, after a rehearsal last week. “We think they can hear us and we try to comfort them; we spend time sitting with them. Plus our work makes us so busy, gives us such overload. These are the dreams that make us unhappy.”

Thus, the people in this first section express their anguish as they twist their bodies from side to side, their hands in fists. The second movement deals directly with two people coming to terms with their loss, as the woman visits her male companion for the last time.

Watching Plotnikov create this tragic pas de deux with Guerrero and Gleb Lyamenkoff was fascinating. The choreographer felt deeply and precisely what he wanted to convey in the intricate partnering of the two dancers: the female initially inconsolable, the male trying to comfort her. At one point Lyamenkoff holds her slumped across one knee while she circles her feet along the floor, wrung-out but resigned to what she must do.

The third section, in contrast, is, “peaceful, happy, like little kids,” stressed Plotnikov. Indeed, the eight dancers march doll-like, arms swinging along their sides; they surprise each other with playful swipes; they treat each other as jungle gyms, sliding over and under torsos and legs; two dancers even hang monkey-like, one from each shoulder of a third dancer. The dancers also strike poses that evoke the long comatose hours that stretch into infinity: pendulum arms, rocking bodies, ticking limbs.

“Comatose persons are not necessarily suffering,” Plotnikov observed. “They are in a beautiful place already. Everything’s a little bit more intense in their dreams, because they are basically in heaven.”

Bio: Viktor 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 the Ukraine. In 1990 Viktor joined Ballet Mississippi as a principal dancer.

In 1993 he joined Boston Ballet as principal dancer, performing major roles in the company’s classical and contemporary repertory and 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.

While at Boston Ballet, Plotnikov created works specifically for Boston Ballet dancers and members of Boston Ballet II, and has choreographed works for institutions throughout the region, Dance on the Top Floor, Company performances in Nantucket, the Dancer’s Resource Fund, and Khachaturian’s Centennial at Boston Conservatory. Plotnikov created solos and duets, performed at International Gala Performances. His creations include works for the 2002 International Ballet Competition in Jackson MS, the Dancer’s Resource Fund, the Bolshoi Ballet and Raw Dance. With Crazy Nun, Viktor won the Choreography Award at the 2005 Helsinki International Ballet Competition. He currently creates choreography for companies and dance schools throughout the US.

Plotnikov has created numerous commissioned works for Festival Ballet Providence, including the world premiere of Carmen in 2003, The Widow’s Broom in 2004, his stunning Loof and Let Dime in 2006, the mesmerizing Coma and wildly creative Cinderella in 2007. Viktor has set numerous works on Festival Ballet Providence dancers for Up CLOSE on HOPE performances including Elegant Souls, Viktorations, Tension and Beauty, and Crazy Nun and created Blue, Blue Canary for the Festival Ballet Providence Junior Company.

Subscriptions to Festival Ballet Providence remaining VMA performances are available at considerable savings with multiple benefits. VMA subscriptions for the remaining two performances are 33% off regular prices, costing as little as $24 per person for both. UP CLOSE on HOPE tickets for Program 2 in March are still available at $40 each. Festival Ballet Providence subscribers receive the added benefit of a voucher to attend one of three shows at Trinity Repertory Company and a voucher to attend one of three remaining Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra Rush Hour series concerts.