A Suite of Dances - Schedule, Program & Tickets

A Suite of Dances

GLASS PIECES
musical direction
Benjamin Pope
composer
Philip Glass
choreography
Jerome Robbins
stage
Jerome Robbins
Ronald Bates
Costumes
Ben Benson
light
Ronald Bates
Rehearsal
Jean-Pierre Frohlich
DUO CONCERTANT
composer
Igor Stravinsky
choreography
George Balanchine
light
Ronald Bates
Rehearsal
Ben Huys
A SUITE OF DANCES
composer
Johann Sebastian Bach
choreography
Jerome Robbins
costume
Santo Loquasto
light
Jennifer Tipton
Rehearsal
Jean-Pierre Frohlich
violoncello
Ditta Rohmann
THE CONCERT
choreography
Jerome Robbins
composer
Frédéric Chopin in an orchestration by Clare Grundman
stage
Saul Steinberg
Costumes
Holly Hynes after Irene Sharaff
light
Jennifer Tipton
Rehearsal
Ben Huys
piano
Igor Zapravdin

A dance festival of American neoclassical music with works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins - newly combined from the Viennese repertoire and supplemented by the state ballet premiere of "A Suite of Dances"!

Rooted in the ballet world of tsarist Saint Petersburg, the past became a stepping stone into the future for George Balanchine. In Paris he joined the Ballets Russes in the 1920s - and thus the avant-garde. From 1934 he made New York the new home of ballet. With his œuvre comprising 425 works, Balanchine further developed classical academic dance for the 20th century and founded the New York City Ballet, one of the most important modern companies. When he appointed Jerome Robbins as Associate Artistic Director in 1949, he too began to work for over 40 years with Balanchine's ensemble. With his ballets and his works for Broadway, Robbins succeeded in a fascinating way to bring high art and commercial entertainment together. Musicals such as “West Side Story”, “Fiddler on the Roof” or “The King and I” are as much associated with his name as subtle choreographic studies of modern man.

Robbins was one of the first choreographers to be inspired by the music of the American minimalist Philip Glass, who is so popular and often used today for dance. In 1983 he created his »Glass Pieces« for excerpts from »Glassworks« and the opera »Akhnaten«, a ballet that is driven by the energies of urban life. As if under high voltage, 42 dancers develop an architecture of bodies and movements through the fusion of athleticism and elegance, classical ballet, modern dance and everyday life. In addition to the repetitive structures of the music, which find their visual counterpart in a graph paper-like latticework as a backdrop, Robbins designs a movement study on de-individualization and being driven based on the basic elements of human locomotion such as simple, everyday walking, stylized steps, running and running of the human. The world stands still for just a moment in this breathtaking event: a pas de deux created for the two NYCB principals Maria Calegari and Bart Cook, with which Robbins moves the focus away from the crowd with great intimacy, but without any sentimentality directs to the individual - man and woman, a couple, meeting at eye level.

At the center of the program are two chamber play-like miniatures of American neoclassical music: In Balanchine's “Duo Concertant” (1972), based on the work of the same name for violin and piano by Igor Stravinsky, a dancer initially stands as silent listener behind a concert grand piano and listens to the music. But soon they interfere in the concert performance and lose themselves with a wealth of the most refined choreographic ideas in a couple dance that condenses into a touching chamber play about love and desire.

Subject to changes.

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