
Like Water for Chocolate
New York Premiere
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Like Water for Chocolate - Synopsis
Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon
Scenario by Christopher Wheeldon
Scenario by Joby Talbot
Music by Joby Talbot
Orchestrations by Ben Foskett
Sets and Costumes by Bob Crowley
Lighting by Natasha Katz
Video Design by Luke Halls
Music Consultant: Alondra de la Parra
Associate Costume Designer: Lynette Mauro
Costume Design Associate: Sukie Kirk
Associate Set Designer: Jaimie Todd
Associate Lighting Designer: Jonathan Goldman
Assistants to the Choreographer: Jason Fowler
Assistants to the Choreographer: Gregory Mislin
Assistants to the Choreographer: Edward Watson
Christopher Wheeldon
Christopher Wheeldon, OBE trained at The Royal Ballet School, won the Prix de Lausanne Gold Medal, and joined The Royal Ballet in 1991. In 1993, he joined New York City Ballet and was promoted to soloist in 1998. He was named NYCB’s first Resident Choreographer in July 2001. Since then, Wheeldon has created and staged productions for many of the world’s major ballet companies, including San Francisco Ballet, The Bolshoi Ballet, The Mariinsky Ballet, The Paris Opera Ballet, and Hamburg Ballet, among others.
In 2007, Wheeldon founded Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company and was appointed an Associate Artist for Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. He was appointed as Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet in 2012 for which he has created many works such as Tryst, DGV: Danse à grande vitesse, Electric Counterpoint, Trespass, and Strapless, as well as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale, two co-productions with The National Ballet of Canada. Like Water for Chocolate was his latest full-length ballet for The Royal Ballet, which premiered June 2022.
In 2012, his ballet Cinderella premiered at Het Nationale Ballet and has since been performed across the world. For the Metropolitan Opera, Wheeldon choreographed Dance of the Hours for Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (2006) and Richard Eyre’s production of Carmen (2012), as well as ballet sequences for the feature film Center Stage (2000) and the musical Sweet Smell of Success on Broadway (2002).
Wheeldon created a special excerpt for the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, and, in April 2016, served as Artistic Director for the Fashion Forward exhibition in Paris at La Musée Arts et Decoratif. In 2014, Wheeldon directed and choreographed the Broadway production of An American in Paris, which played in New York, Paris, and London, and toured throughout America, China, Japan, and Australia, and earned him a Tony Award® for Best Choreography, as well as an Outer Critics Award for Best Choreography and Direction. His rendition of The Nutcracker saw its world premiere with The Joffrey Ballet in 2016 and, in 2017, Wheeldon directed and choreographed Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon starring Kelli O’Hara and Patrick Wilson at New York City Center. 2019 saw the premiere of Corybantic Games at The Royal Ballet and a re-staged version of Cinderella for the English National Ballet at Royal Albert Hall. Most recently, MJ The Musical opened on Broadway, winning Wheeldon a Tony Award® for Best Choreography. Wheeldon’s other works include Continuum, Rush, and Within the Golden Hour in San Francisco, Misericordes with Bolshoi Theatre, The Sleeping Beauty with The Royal Danish Ballet, and Swan Lake with The Philadelphia Ballet.
Among Wheeldon’s awards are the Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, the American Choreography Award, the Dance Magazine Award, South Bank Show Award, multiple London Critics’ Circle Awards, and the Léonide Massine Prize for new choreography. Wheeldon’s productions of Cinderella and The Winter’s Tale received the Prix Benois de la Danse, while his ballets Aeternum for The Royal Ballet and Polyphonia for Morphoses each won an Olivier Award. He is an Honorary International Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was appointed an OBE in 2016.
Joby Talbot
Joby Talbot was born in London in 1971. He studied composition under Brian Elias, as well as at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, before completing a Master of Music (Composition) at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under Simon Bainbridge.
Talbot’s early works include the choral piece Path of Miracles, written for Tenebrae and performed in 2005, and the trumpet concerto Desolation Wilderness, first performed by Alison Balsom and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 2006. In 2006, Talbot made his Royal Ballet debut, creating the score for Royal Ballet Resident Choreographer Wayner McGregor’s Chroma.
Talbot’s diverse catalogue includes the narrative ballets Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2011) and The Winter’s Tale (2014), both collaborations with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon for The Royal Ballet and National Ballet of Canada that have since entered the repertory of companies worldwide. The Winter’s Tale of which was awarded the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse a year after its premiere. Tablot’s other works include Worlds, Stars, Systems, Infinity (2012), an additional movement to Holst’s The Planets for the Philharmonia Orchestra’s interactive digital installation titled Universe of Sound under Esa-Pekka Salonen, Genus Quartet, a composition created for Los Angeles’ acclaimed Calder Quartet in 2013, which premiered as part of the Barbican’s weekend of new music curated by Nico Muhly, and Everest, an opera given its premiere by The Dallas Opera in 2015.
Talbot’s film and television credits include, The League of Gentlemen, The Hitchhiker’s Gude to the Galaxy, Son of Rambow, Franklyn, Closed Circuit, and the hugely popular animated feature Sing. For the BBC Proms, Talbot has written The Wishing Tree (The King’s Singers, 2002), Sneaker Wave (BBC National Orchestra of Wales, 2004), an arrangement of Purcell’s Chacony in G Minor (BBC Symphony Orchestra, 2011), and Ink Dark Moon, a concerto for the acclaimed guitarist Miloš Karadaglić (BBC Symphony orchestra, 2018).He has been twice commissioned by the British Film Institute, to re-score silent films The Lodger (1999) and The Dying Swan (2002). A new score to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 Vampyr for LA Opera’s Off Grand season at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles was presented on October 27, 2018.
Talbot’s dance composition background additionally includes Wheeldon’s Fool’s Paradise (Morphoses, 2007), McGregor’s Entity (Wayne McGregor/Random Dance, 2008), and Genus (Paris Opera Ballet, 2007) and Chamber Symphony for Medhi Walerski’s Chamber (Residentie Orkest/Nederlands Dans Theater and Norwegian Opera and Ballet, 2012). Current and in-progress works include a Cantata commissioned by Independent Opera for Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate, among others.
Ben Foskett
Ben Foskett is a composer, songwriter and arranger working across many different genres from classical concert music to ballet, dance, theatre, pop, film, TV, and sound libraries. Born in Germany in 1977, Foskett began his musical education at the Royal College of Music Junior department where he went on to study with Edwin Roxburgh. It was there that he wrote a remarkable set of orchestral songs, Three Gascoyne Settings. Foskett then went on to study with Simon Bainbridge at the Royal Academy of Music until 2003, after which he has earned his living entirely as a musician – composing, copying and working as an orchestrator for composers including Joby Talbot and Christian Henson.
Foskett’s music has been characterized by a strong narrative sense, evident in a series of collaborations with the dance company Thresh, where music and movement have often evolved in tandem. Foskett has also worked on more traditional, full-length scores, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel for the London Children’s Ballet in 2006. Writing for dance has influenced Foskett‘s composition for other pieces like his clarinet solo Hornet, which premiered in the Park Lane Group Series in 2002, and its ensemble “double,” Hornet II.
Throughout his career, Foskett has worked with musicians, ensembles, and companies such as the London Sinfonietta, BBC Proms, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Spitfire Audio, Psappha, BalletBoyz, Didy Veldman/Umanoove, Thresh, Les Désespérant Idiots, The Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, London Children’s Ballet, Christian Gerhaher, The Divine Comedy, Travis, and Keaton Henson, as well as on films and TV series such as King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Poirot.
Bob Crowley
Designer Bob Crowley was born in the Irish city of Cork. After studying fine art at the Crawford Art School, he moved to England to train in theatre design at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Crowley’s breakthrough production was The Duchess of Malfi at the Royal Exchange, a huge critical success that resulted in Crowley being invited to work for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. He later made his Royal Opera debut in 1987 creating designs for The King Goes Forth to France, directed by Nicholas Hytner, and has since created designs for La Traviata, directed by Richard Eyre, and The Knot Garden and Don Carlo, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Crowley has additionally created designs for The Royal Ballet, including the 1996 revival of Kenneth MacMillan’s Anastasia and Christopher Wheeldon’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale, and Strapless.
Over the years, Crowley has designed more than twenty productions for the National Theatre, including Pinocchio, The Hard Problem, Travelling Light, The Habit of Art, Phèdre, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Collaborators, Fram - which he also co-directed - His Girl Friday, Mourning Becomes Electra, and The History Boys. He’s also designed numerous productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company, including The Plantagenets for which he won an Olivier Award, along with Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Crowley has designed extensively for Broadway and the West End, including in 2018 for My Name is Lucy Barton and Alys Always at the Bridge Theatre, as well as in 2019 for Inheritance, which was transferred from the Young Vic. His designs have been featured in movies and television films, including Othello, Tales from Hollywood, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Crucible. Other opera designs include Great Scott at the Dallas Opera, The Magic Flute at the English National Opera, and The Cunning Little Vixen at Théâtre du Châtelet. Additional designs were made for The Glass Menagerie, Carousel, The Capeman, Disney’s Aladdin, Aida, and Mary Poppins, The Year of Magical Thinking, Coast of Utopia, Once, The Audience, Skylight, Don Carlo, La Traviata, An American in Paris, and Tarzan, which he also directed.
Crowley’s many accolades include The RDI Award, seven Tony Awards, three Olivier Awards, The Royal Designer for Industry Award, and the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatrical Design.
Natasha Katz
Natasha Katz is a lighting designer who works extensively in the worlds of Broadway, Opera, and Ballet. She trained at Oberlin College and was mentored in the early stages of her career by Roget Morgan. She recently received her 15th Tony Award nomination and 7th Tony win for lighting design for MJ The Musical. Among her over 65 Broadway show credits are lighting designs for Gypsy (1989), My Fair Lady (1993), Beauty and the Beast (1994), Aida (2000, Tony Award), The Glass Menagerie (2005, 2013, Tony Award), The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005), A Chorus Line (2006), The Coast of Utopia (2007, Tony Award), The Addams Family (2010), Follies (2011), Once (2012, Tony Award), An American in Paris (2015, Tony Award), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2016, Tony Award), Hello, Dolly! (2017), Frozen (2018), Springsteen on Broadway (2021), and MJ The Musical (2022, Tony Award). She has subsequently recreated her designs for many of these productions around the world and was recently inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in New York.
Katz frequently works with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, collaborating on projects including The Winter’s Tale, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Tryst, Cinderella, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake. Other collaborations with Wheeldon include Continuum for San Francisco Ballet and Carnival of the Animals and An American in Paris for New York City Ballet. Her other dance work includes American Ballet Theatre’s production of Don Quixote and productions with companies including The Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, the Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Opera.
Her film work includes Barrymore starring Christopher Plummer and Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth. She has also worked on the HBO television specials Mambo Mouth and Side-O-Rama.
Her permanent audio-visual shows include The Masquerade Village at the Rio Casino in Las Vegas and Big Bang at the Hayden planetarium in New York.
Luke Halls
British video designer Luke Halls has produced video designs and animations for a wide variety of music, theater, and dance performances. Halls owns his own award-winning, multidisciplinary studio that works in projection and video design. As a video designer, Halls made his Royal Opera House debut in 2014, working with regular collaborator designer Es Devlin on Don Giovanni for The Royal Opera and Connectome and The Unknown Soldier for The Royal Ballet. Additional opera work includes Otello for the Metropolitan Opera, Der Freischütz and The Cunning Little Vixen for Royal Danish Opera, Marco Polo in Guangzhou, Porgy and Bess for English National Opera, Elegy for Young Lovers for Theater an der Wien, Carmen at Bregenz Festival Lake Stage, and Das Liebseverbot, Król Roger, and Lucia di Lammermoor.
Hall’s theater work includes West Side Story at the Broadway Theatre, The Nether at the Royal Court, The Starry Messenger, Everyone’s Talking About Jamie, Ugly Lies The Bone, The Moderate Soprano, Frozen, Alys Always, My Name is Lucy Barton, and The Lehman Trilogy. Halls has worked prolifically for music artists, creating video designs and animation for tours by Adele, Dua Lipa, Beyoncé, Pet Shop Boys, U2, and Rihanna, among others. In 2012, he was Creative Director of screen content for the London Olympic and Paralympic Closing Ceremonies. He has received three Knight of Illumination nominations and one Drama Desk nomination, winning Knight of Illumination Awards for Don Giovanni and Adele’s world tour. Halls additionally won a BAFTA for “The Cube.”
Alondra de la Parra
Alondra de la Parra has conducted many highly renowned orchestras in the world, including the Orchestra of Paris, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchestra Zürich, Swedish Radio Symphony, Staatskapelle Berlin, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, WDR Symphony Orchestra, Le Verbier Festival Orchestra (VFO), the BBC Philharmonic, the Rundfunk-Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, and L’Orchestra – Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
In 2004, at the age of 23, while studying piano and conducting at the Manhattan School of Music, de la Parra founded the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA) with the goal of creating an orchestra to showcase young performers and composers from the Americas, placing the music of the Americas among the standard orchestral repertoire. Her first recording, Mi Alma Mexicana, was released by Sony Classical to celebrate the Anniversary of Mexico’s Bicentennial. It reached the top 10 of the US classical music charts and was the first classical music recording in Mexico to reach platinum sales, which it achieved in just 2 months.
She made her Royal Ballet debut on the company’s 2017 tour to Australia, conducting The Winter’s Tale. Throughout 2017-2019, de la Parra was Music Director of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. De la Parra serves as a regular guest at the Royal Opera House in London, being the institution’s first Mexican orchestra conductor. She most recently directed the acclaimed world premiere of Joby Talbot’s ballet Like Water for Chocolate for The Royal Ballet at The Royal Opera House. De la Parra continues with American Ballet Theatre in the co-production of Like Water for Chocolate, traveling to Segerstrom Center for the Arts and to the Metropolitan Opera House, where she holds distinction of being the first Mexican woman to conduct professionally in New York City.
In April 2022, de la Parra was named principal guest conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, marking a new chapter for the artist. In this role, de la Parra will conduct the orchestra twice a season for the next two years. Her compelling musical vision and her passion have made her a respected artist around the world.
Lynette Mauro
English associate costume designer Lynette Mauro made her debut with The Royal Ballet in 2016, recreating costume designs for Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour. Her extensive work as costume supervisor for the National Theatre include A Woman Killed with Kindness, Travelling Light, and Nation. Her costume supervisor credits elsewhere include Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Glyndebourne Festival), Long Day’s Journey into Night (Apollo Theatre), The Seagull and The Winter’s Tale (Royal Shakespeare Company), Into the Woods, The Wild Duck, and Proof (Donmar Warehouse), The Iceman Cometh and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Almeida Theatre), and The Graduate (West End). Further credits include associate costume designer for The Sound of Music (West End, Australia) and assistant costume designer for The Iceman Cometh, Fiddler on the Roof, Nine, The Seagull, and The Invention of Love (Broadway). Costume design credits include A Moon for the Misbegotten (Old Vic, Broadway) and the short films Come and Go and Rough for Theatre II. She was associate costume designer for Wheeldon’s An American in Paris (Théâtre du Châtelet, Broadway).
Sukie Kirk
Sukie Kirk has previously worked with Bob Crowley and Christopher Wheeldon on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as Costume Design Associate for The Australian Ballet and The Staasballet, Munich, as well as Assistant Supervisor on An American in Paris at the Dominion, London; and Strapless and The Winter’s Tale at The Royal Ballet.
Other work includes supervising The Outcast for the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg and Wien Moderne Festival, Vienna; childrens’ cast change supervisor for the UK and Ireland tours of Matilda; Royal Shakespeare Company; and operas, ballets, plays, and musicals for The Royal Opera, English National Opera, Glyndebourne Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the National Theatre. Kirk also worked on the Ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympic Games and the Commonwealth Games handover ceremony in Delhi, 2010.
Jaimie Todd
Jaimie Todd studied at Wimbledon School of Art. Credits include: Disgraced, The Royale, Perseverance Drive, Christmas is Miles Away (Bush Theatre); The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, Pretend You Have Big Buildings (Royal Exchange Theatre); Be My Baby (Salisbury Playhouse); Sweeney Todd, Hairspray, Cats, West Side Story (DUCTAC, Dubai); Rabbit (Trafalgar Studios). He has completed seven productions for Theatre of Debate and also several international Shakespeare tours.
As an associate, he has worked on productions at the National Theatre: Collaborators, Phèdre, The Habit of Art, People, Juno and the Paycock, Travelling Light, The Hard Problem, The Power of Yes; plus The Audience, Orpheus Descending, The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, Aladdin, The Inheritance (West End and Broadway), The Glass Menagerie, La Belle Sauvage, Straight Line Crazy, Billy Elliot: The Musical (West End). He has also worked with The Royal Ballet on their productions of Anastasia, Strapless, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale, and Like Water for Chocolate.
Jonathan Goldman
Jonathan Goldman worked extensively in the world of theatre and dance alongside some of the world’s most prolific lighting designers. Previous Associate/Assistant design credits include Broadway’s Freestyle Love Supreme, Burn This, The Prom, Mean Girls, King Kong, Groundhog Day, Marvin’s Room, An American In Paris, Holiday Inn, Elf, National Tours of The Prom, Bandstand, Something Rotten!, On Your Feet!, The Sound of Music, An American in Paris, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Off-Broadway productions of Curse of the Starving Class, Dead Poets Society, Tiny Beautiful Things, Layover, and Prodigal Son. Dance credits include The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella, and Alexei Ratmansky’s Firebird. Goldman was formerly an Associate Lighting Director for American Ballet Theatre and is thrilled to return as a part of Like Water for Chocolate.
Jason Fowler
Jason Fowler, originally from Dallas, Texas, began his ballet training at the Dallas Ballet Center and Dallas Ballet Academy. In 1993, Mr. Fowler entered the School of American Ballet, the official school of New York City Ballet. He was invited to join the company in April of 1996 and was promoted to soloist in 2006. In addition to his vast corps de ballet repertoire with NYCB, he has performed soloist and principal roles in Mauro Bigonzetti’s Vespro, George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, Scotch Symphony, Agon, Symphony in C, The Four Temperaments, La Valse, and Chaconne, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia, among many of his other works. In 2010, Fowler worked as ballet master for Morphoses, The Wheeldon Company, and then continued to stage works for Wheeldon internationally.
Since 2010, Fowler has staged ballets for Wheeldon at The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, Paris Opera, Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Ballet Arizona, The Australian Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, Royal DanishBallet, Rome Opera Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Karlsruhe Ballet, The National Ballet of Japan, Joffrey Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Bavarian State Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, and the Mariinsky Ballet.
Gregory Mislin
French Benesh Choreologist Gregory Mislin joined The Royal Ballet in 2014 and has since written new creations of works, including Liam Scarlett’s Sweet Violets, The Age of Anxiety, Frankenstein, Symphonic Dances, and Swan Lake, Hofesh Shechter’s Untouchable, and Crystal Pite’s Flight Pattern, as well as working on the current repertory of The Royal Ballet.
Mislin trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School and graduated into Paris Opera Ballet. He later joined the Bavarian State Ballet as a soloist, dancing ballets by Marius Petipa, Serge Lifar, Bronislava Nijinska, Leonid Massine, Mikhail Fokine, John Cranko, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Kenneth MacMillan, Frederick Ashton, Rudolf Nureyev, Patrice Bart, Ray Barra, Peter Wright, John Neumeier, Merce Cunningham, Lucinda Childs, Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Nacho Duato, Martin Schläpfer, Jiří Kylián, Hans Van Manen, and Jacopo Godani, among others.
He graduated from the Benesh Institute as a choreologist in 2012, and that year also gained the French State Diploma (DE) as a dance teacher. Work away from The Royal Ballet includes remounting Ivan Liška’s Le Corsaire for Finnish National Ballet and Boston Ballet and Frankenstein for San Francisco Ballet, as well assisting Bavarian State Ballet on ballets including Ray Barra’s Swan Lake.
Edward Watson
Former Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson is a répétiteur of The Royal Ballet. He trained at The Royal Ballet School and graduated into The Royal Ballet in 1994 and was promoted to principal in 2005. He was appointed répétiteur in 2020.
Watson was born in Bromley, South London. His repertory with The Royal Ballet included major roles in works by Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan, and numerous role creations for choreographers including Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon, and Alexei Ratmansky. His many role creations for McGregor included in Symbiont(s), Qualia, Chroma, Infra, Limen, Carbon Life, Raven Girl, Tetractys, Woolf Works, Obsidian Tear, and Multiverse, and for Wheeldon Lewis Carroll/The White Rabbit (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), Leontes (The Winter’s Tale), and John Singer Sargent (Strapless). Watson has worked with many other choreographers, including Siobhan Davies, David Dawson, Javier De Frutos, Alastair Marriott, Cathy Marston, Ashley Page, and Arthur Pita.
His numerous awards include the 2012 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance, the 2015 Prix Benois de la Danse, and Critics’ Circle Awards in 2001 and 2008. He was awarded an MBE in 2015.

Giselle
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Giselle - Synopsis
Giselle - History
Choreography after Jean Coralli
Choreography after Jules Perrot
Choreography after Marius Petipa
Staged by Kevin McKenzie
Music by Adolphe Adam
Orchestrated by John Lanchbery
Scenery by Gianni Quaranta
Costumes by Anna Anni
Lighting by Jennifer Tipton
Jean Coralli
Jean Coralli was born in Paris in 1779. He trained at the Paris Academie, which is now the Paris opera. Coralli made his debut there in 1802. He danced and choreographed in Milan, Lisbon, and Marseille, before returning to Paris, in 1825, as choreographer for the Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin.
He was choreographer in residence at the Paris Academie, where, during the height of ballet’s Romantic period, he choreographed for such famous ballerinas as Fanny Elssler and Carlotta Grisi, creator of the title role in Giselle. Coralli also helped establish Elssler’s popularity by including in several of his ballets the spectacular pas de caractere, or theatricalized folk dances, in which she excelled.
In addition to Giselle, which he choreographed with Jules Perrot. Coralli also choreographed such successful and frequently revived ballets as Le Diable Boiteux , La Tarentule, and La Peri.
Jules Perrot
Jules Perrot was born in France in 1810. He studied with Auguste Vestris and Salvatore Vigano, two of the principal exponents of expressive ballet (as opposed to pure or formal ballet). He made his debut in 1830 at the Paris Opera, where, despite the period’s prejudice against male dancers, he was highly applauded for both his classical and his mime dancing. A combination of knee trouble and the professional jealousy of his partner Marie Taglioni led to his resignation in 1835. He then toured Europe as a dancer and choreographer and in Naples was joined by the young ballerina Carlotta Grisi, whom he trained and later married. Perrot again danced in Paris in 1840, but only Grisi was hired to perform at the Opera. Since he frequently arranged her solos, his choreography is now believed to include that of her title role in Giselle, still considered a consummate challenge to a ballerina’s artistry; Jean Coralli, however, received all official credit for choreographing Giselle.
From 1842 to 1848 Perrot worked in London, making it an important ballet centre by choreographing such ballets as Ondine, Esmeralda, and the Pas de Quatre, staged for Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Lucile Grahn, and Fanny Cerrito. In 1848 Perrot became premier danseur at the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, where he created eight more ballets and revived many others.
Perrot died in France on August 24, 1892.
Marius Petipa
Marius Petipa, the “father of classical ballet,” was born in Marseilles, France, in 1819. He began his dance training at the age of seven with his father, Jean Petipa, the French dancer and teacher. Marius was educated at the Grand College in Brussels and also attended the conservatoire, where he studied music. Although he disliked dancing in those early years, his progress was so great that he made his debut in 1831 in his father’s production of Gardel’s La Dansomanie.
In 1834 Jean Petipa became Maitre de Ballet at the theatre in Bordeaux and it was here that Marius completed his education. At the age of sixteen, he became premier danseur at the theatre in Nantes, where he also produced several short ballets.
In 1839 Marius left Nantes to tour North America with his father, and on their return visit went to Paris. The following year he made his debut at the Comedie Francaise, where he partnered Carlotte Grisi in a benefit performance. He continued his studies with A. Vestris and became a principal dancer in Bordeaux.
Petipa next went to Spain in 1845, to work at the King’s Theatre. While in Madrid, he studied Spanish dance and choreographed Carmen et son Terero, La Perle de Seville, L’Aventure d’une fille de Madrid, La Fleur de Grenade, and Depart Dour la Course des Toureaux.
Petipa returned to Paris as a principal dancer, but in 1847 left for Russia. He had signed a one-year contract with the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre, but was to remain there for the rest of his life. As a principal dancer, Petipa often appeared with Fanny Elssler and was much acclaimed for his performances in such ballets as Paquita (which he restaged and in which made his debut), Giselle, La Peri, Armida, Catarina, Le Delire d’un peintre, Esmeralda, Le Corsaire and Faust. Considered an excellent dancer and partner, his acting, stage manners and pantomime were held up as examples for many generations of dancers.
When Giselle was revived in 1850, Petipa made some changes in the Wilis scenes, which became the Grand Pas des Wilis of 1884. In 1854, he married Maria Sourovshchikova, a student in the graduating class of the Imperial School, who later danced in many of her husband’s ballets. (Petipa’s second marriage was to Lubova Leonidovna, a member of the Moscow Ballet, in 1882.) In 1854 he became an instructor in the school, while continuing to dance and to restage ballets from the French repertoire.
Sources differ on the first original work he staged for the Imperial Theatre: some state it was The Star of Granada, others that it was A Marriage During Regency. But all sources concur that his first great success was The Daughter of Pharoh (staged in six weeks), which resulted in his appointment as Choreographer-in-Chief in 1862 — a position he held for nearly fifty years.
In 1869 Petipa became Premier Ballet Master of the Imperial Theatre. The value of his accomplishments is inestimable: he produced more than sixty full-evening ballets and innumerable shorter works and he is considered to have laid the foundation for the entire school of Russian ballet. The ballet repertoire in the Soviet Union is still based mainly on his works.
Those who felt the dramatic content of ballet should be strengthened began to oppose Petipa toward the end of his career. His noble classicism and consciousness of form was considered old-fashioned, and in 1903, at age 84, Petipa was forced to retire from the Imperial Theatre as a direct result of the failure of his ballet, The Magic Mirror. His last years were filled with bitterness and disillusionment because his beloved theatre had been taken away. He died in St. Petersburg in 1910.
Marius Petipa is considered one of the greatest choreographers of all time. He researched the subject matter of the ballets he staged, making careful and detailed preparations for each production, and then worked closely with the designer and composer. Petipa elevated the Russian ballet to international fame and laid the cornerstone for 20th Century ballet. His classicism integrated the purity of the French school with Italian virtuosity.
Sources:
1. The Dance Encyclopedia, Compiled and edited by Anatole Chujoy and P. W. Manchester, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1967.
2. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet, Horst Koegler, Oxford University Press, London, 1977.
3. Complete Book of Ballets. A Guide to the Principal Ballets of the 19th Centurv, Cyril Beaumont, Putnam, London, 1937.
4. Russian Ballet Master: The Memoirs of Marius Petipa, Ed., Lillian Moore,Tr. Helen Whittaker, Adam and Charles Black, London, 1958. Researched and compiled by Fran Michelman.
Kevin McKenzie
Kevin McKenzie was a leading dancer with both The Joffrey Ballet and the National Ballet of Washington before joining American Ballet Theatre as a Soloist in March 1979. He was appointed a Principal Dancer the following December and danced with the company until 1991. A native of Vermont, McKenzie received his ballet training at the Washington School of Ballet. In 1972, McKenzie was awarded a silver medal at the Sixth International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria.
As a Principal Dancer with ABT, McKenzie danced leading roles in all of the major full-length classics including Solor in Natalia Makarova’s full‑length production of La Bayadère, Don Jose in Roland Petit’s Carmen, the Prince in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s production of the full‑length Cinderella, Franz in Coppélia, the Gentleman With Her in Dim Lustre, Basil and Espada in Baryshnikov’s Don Quixote (Kitri’s Wedding), Albrecht in Giselle, a leading role in The Garden of Villandry, Her Lover in Jardin aux Lilas, the male lead in The Leaves Are Fading, the Friend in Pillar of Fire, the leading role in Raymonda (Grand Pas Hongrois), a featured role in Requiem, the Champion Roper in Rodeo, Romeo and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Prince Desire in The Sleeping Beauty, Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, James in La Sylphide, and leading roles in Other Dances, Paquita, Les Sylphides, Sylvia Pas de Deux, and Theme and Variations. He created Amnon in Martine van Hamel’s Amnon V’Tamar and a leading role in Clark Tippet’s S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.
During his performing career, McKenzie appeared as a Guest Artist throughout the world, including in Spoleto, Italy; Paris, London, Tokyo, Havana, Moscow, Vienna, and Korea, dancing with, among others, the London Festival Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, the National Ballet of Cuba, and the Universal Ballet in Seoul. In September 1989, McKenzie was appointed a permanent guest artist with The Washington Ballet and, in 1991, assumed the position of Artistic Associate. He has also acted as Associate Artistic Director and choreographer with Martine van Hamel’s New Amsterdam Ballet.
McKenzie was appointed Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre in October 1992. His previous choreographic credits include Groupo Zambaria (1984) and Liszt Études (l991) both for Martine van Hamel’s New Amsterdam Ballet, Lucy and the Count (1992) for The Washington Ballet and, for American Ballet Theatre, The Nutcracker (1993), Don Quixote (1995, in collaboration with Susan Jones) a new production of Swan Lake (2000), the conception and direction of a new production of Raymonda (2004, with choreography by Anna-Marie Holmes), and a new production of The Sleeping Beauty with Gelsey Kirkland and Michael Chernov. In 2014, McKenzie, with ABT Principal Répétiteur Irina Kolpakova, staged a new production of Raymonda Divertissements.
McKenzie has received numerous awards including honorary degrees from Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont (1993) and Adelphi University in Garden City, New York (2019), the Dance Magazine Award (1999), and the Medal of Honor for Achievement in Dance from the National Arts Club (2019). In addition, he appeared in two Emmy Award winning broadcasts, The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore (1970) and American Ballet Theatre in Le Corsaire (1998) both for PBS’s Dance in America series. McKenzie is a founding board member of Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli, New York.
In December 2022, McKenzie retired as American Ballet Theatre Artistic Director, after three decades of leadership.
Adolphe Adam
French composer Adolphe Adam was born in Paris on July 24, 1803 and died there on May 3, 1856. He was the son of a musician who did his best to dissuade him from following the same career; but he was eventually allowed to enroll at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied under Boieldieu. After helping Boieldieu to orchestrate the overture to his opera La Dame Blanche in 1825, he came to the notice of the Opera‑Comique and had his first one‑act opera Pierre et Catherine produced there in 1829. His brother‑in‑law, Francois Laporte, was musical director at Covent Garden and through him a couple of Adam’s works were staged there in 1832. Up to then he had written in the conventional opera‑comique style, but in La Chalet (1834) he wrote what is considered to be the first true French operetta, light and frivolous with music nearer to the popular vaudeville idiom. The opera which established his reputation and has been most frequently performed is Le Postillon de Longjumeau (1836): the aria Mes amis, ecoutez l’histoire has remained a tenor favorite.
In 1844 he was elected a Member of the Institut, in 1849 professor of composition at the Conservatoire. He died suddenly seven years later.
His reputation during his lifetime was not limited to his own country. He wrote ballets for London, Berlin and St. Petersburg, which capitals he also visited personally. The ballets which brought him some of his greatest successes were Faust (London, 1833); La Fille du Danube (Paris, 1836, for Taglioni); La Jolie Fille de Gand, (Paris, 1842) and especially Giselle (Paris Opera, June 28, 1841).
Adam attempted four kinds of dramatic composition: (l) grand opera, in which he utterly failed; (2) ballet, in which he produced some charming melodies; (3) comic opera, the one and only real domain of his talent; (4) incidental music for nearly thirty plays, which is ephemeral. He also wrote church music, pianoforte pieces and songs, including Cantique de Noel (1847), known in English as O Holy Night.
Richard en Palestine is considered his most successful grand opera; Giselle, his most successful ballet; and Le Postillon de Longjumeau, his most successful comic opera.
Sources:
The New Oxford Companion of Music, Oxford University Press, 1983, Oxford, England
Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th Edition, edited by Eric Blom, MacMillan & Co., Ltd., London, England, 1954
John Lanchbery
Born in London, John Lanchbery won the Henry Smart Scholarship in Composition in 1942 which enabled him to study at the Royal Academy of Music, where his teachers included Sir Henry Wood. During the war he served in the Royal Armoured Corps, and at the war’s end, returned to the Royal Academy to complete his studies.
Lanchbery spent two years in his first professional conducting post as the Music Director of London’s Metropolitan Ballet. He then went on to work with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, serving as the principal conductor of the company, later known as The Royal Ballet, from 1960-1972. After a tour with The Australian Ballet to the United States in 1970, Lanchbery became that company’s guest conductor and was subsequently appointed the company’s music director in 1972.
Lanchbery arranged the scores for Sir Frederick Ashton’s ballet La Fille Mal Gardée, and the Franz Liszt music for Kenneth MacMillan’s full-length ballet, Mayerling, which was given its World Premiere in the spring of 1978 at Covent Garden. He arranged the Franz Lehár score for the first full-length ballet production of The Merry Widow by The Australian Ballet, the first of five successful collaborations with choreographer Ronald Hynd, and subsequently conducted the Adelaide Symphony and Singers in a 1976 recording of highlights from The Merry Widow, which earned him a Gold Record in 1977. Lanchbery has composed music for films and various BBC sound and television programs, and his work on the film score for The Tales of Beatrix Potter was highly acclaimed. Other film score arrangements included Evil Under the Sun and the Oscar-nominated The Turning Point. Most recently, Lanchbery arranged a score for the special restoration of D.W. Griffith’s silent film classic The Birth of a Nation (1915), and composed an original score for John Ford’s silent film The Iron Horse (1924).
In Lanchbery’s past association with American Ballet Theatre, he conducted several performances of Giselle in the Spring of 1977 and conducted for the triumphant World Premiere of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s Don Quixote (Kitri’s Wedding) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 1978. Lanchbery specially arranged the Ludwig Minkus score for Natalia Makarova’s full-length production of La Bayadère, which received its premiere in 1980 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. He also served as American Ballet Theatre’s Music Director from 1978-1980.
While maintaining his close association with The Royal Ballet, Lanchbery appears regularly as ballet conductor with many of the world’s leading opera houses including Paris, Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, New York, and Houston. He has also toured with The Australian Ballet to Japan, Russia, China, and London. He recently returned to The Australian Ballet for a year as chief conductor, which included the company’s 1990 summer tour of the United States.
Most recently, Lanchbery completed a score for Ben Stevenson’s Dracula, to music of Franz Liszt.
John Lanchbery received many honors. He was the first foreign conductor to receive the Bolshoi Medal. In 1989, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance and the Carina Ari Medal, presented by HRH Princess Christina of Sweden “for the furtherance of the Art of Dance.” In 1991, he was awarded the OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.
Lanchbery died in February 2003 aged 79.
Gianni Quaranta
The Milan-born art director, costumer, interior designer and painter studied at the prestigious Brera Academy of Fine Arts and considered a career as an architect before turning to the theatre and cinema.
A few of Quaranta’s noteworthy credits in the field of cinema include Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900, Paul Mazursky’s Tempest, NBC’s epic miniseries Jesus of Nazareth and the recently acclaimed A Room With a View directed by James Ivory.
Long a favored collaborator of director Franco Zeffirelli, Quaranta was art director on Otello starring Placido Domingo. Two earlier films he did with Zeffirelli — Brother Sun, Sister Moon and La Traviata — netted Quaranta nominations for an Academy Award while he was still in his thirties. The two worked together when Quaranta executed sets for Zeffirelli’s new production of Puccini’s Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Quaranta, in fact, is as active in theatre, opera and ballet as in cinema. He has done operatic productions at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice (Wolf Ferrari’s Quattro Rusteghi); at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston (La Traviata); at the Bregenz Festival (Verdi’s Finto Stanislavo) and at the Dallas Opera (Carmen). He also designed Luigi Cherubini’s Demophoon, directed by Luca Ronconi, at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera.
Some of his theatrical credits include Volpone (Theatre de la Ville, Paris); Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (Teatro Quirino, Rome); Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors at the outdoor theatre in Ostia outside Rome; and Alfred De Musset’s Lorenzaccio at the Comedie Française, directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
Quaranta has kept active over the years as an architect (private commissions), interior designer and painter. His drawings and paintings were exhibited at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto as part of a large show entitled New Tendencies in Italian Contemporary Painting.
Quaranta’s work for Herbert Ross’ A Time to Dance is the two-part assignment that is in one sense unique. His stage designs for the ballet Giselle, incorporated in the film, will be seen first in the theatre and only later on the screen. After presentation in Los Angeles in March 1987, his Giselle production traveled to New York for American Ballet Theatre’s regular season at the Metropolitan Opera.
Anna Anni
Born not far from Florence in 1926, Anna Anni attended the prestigious Istituto d’Arte di Firenze and started out as a painter of murals. In the early 1950s she turned to the theatre, becoming costume assistant to Franco Zeffirelli, the latter then emerging on the international scene as a designer and director for opera and theatre.
Anni collaborated on the celebrated production of Rossini’s Cenerentola during the 1952-53 season at La Scala, designed and directed by Zeffirelli. She stayed on as Zeffirelli’s assistant for the next six years, working principally at La Scala and Venice’s Teatro La Fenice on a variety of productions.
In 1959 she made her solo debut as a costume designer in the highly successful Fenice production of Handel’s Alcina sung by Joan Sutherland. This led to many other operatic assignments, generally in collaboration with directors Mauro Bolognini or Sandro Sequi.
For Sequi, in fact, she designed costumes for productions of Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment (Covent Garden), Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Amsterdam), and Monteverdi’s Orfeo (at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon).
Anni returned to Zeffirelli to collaborate on the stage production of La Lupa, starring Anna Magnani, which subsequently traveled to London and New York. Again with Zeffirelli, she designed costumes for Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at La Scala, the ballet Swan Lake at La Scala, the film version of Otello starring Placido Domingo, Turandot (1987 at the Metropolitan Opera) directed by Franco Zeffirelli, and Rudolf Nureyev’s Don Quixote (1987 at La Scala).
When she wasn’t engaged in an international production that took her far from home, Anni lived in her native Florence where she taught fashion design. Anni died in Florence on January 1, 2011.
Jennifer Tipton
Well-known to dance and theatre audiences alike, lighting designer Jennifer Tipton was born in Columbus, Ohio and attended Cornell University where she majored in English. After graduation, Tipton came to New York to study dance. Her interest in lighting began with a course in the subject at the American Dance Festival, Connecticut College.
Tipton has been awarded two Bessie Awards and a Laurence Olivier Award for lighting dance; her work in that field includes pieces choreographed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jiří Kylián, Dana Reitz, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Dan Wagoner, and Trisha Brown, among many others. Her work in the theatre has garnered a Joseph Jefferson Award, a Kudo, a Drama-League Award, two American Theatre Wing Awards, an Obie, two Drama Desk Awards (the first for The Cherry Orchard and Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf; the second for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, Waiting for Godot, and Long Day’s Journey into Night), and two Tonys for The Cherry Orchard and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Her work in opera includes Richard Jones’s production of Hansel und Gretel and David McVicar’s production of Il Trovatore both at the Metropolitan Opera as well as Aida directed by David McVicar at the Royal Opera House in London. In the fall of 1991 she directed a production of The Tempest at the Guthrie.
Tipton has been an artistic associate with the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. In 1982, she received the Creative Arts Award in Dance from Brandeis University. She held a Guggenheim Fellowship for the 1986-87 season and received the 1989 Commonwealth Award in Dramatic Arts. In 1991, she received a Dance Magazine Award. She has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Theatre Program Distinguished Artist Award, and a grant in the National Theatre Artist Residency Program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. She received the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in 2001, the Jerome Robbins Prize in 2003 and the Mayor’s Award for Arts and Culture in New York City in April 2004. In 2008, she became the United States Artists Gracie Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow. Tipton also teaches lighting at Yale School of Drama.
Tipton’s lighting has been represented in American Ballet Theatre’s repertory since A Soldier’s Tale in 1971. Among many ballets in the Company’s repertory that she has lit are Amnon V’Tamar, Bach Partita, Le Baiser de la Fée, Ballet Imperial, Brief Fling, Bruch Violin Concerto No.1, Bum’s Rush, Don Quixote (Kitri’s Wedding), Eccentrique, Enough Said, Everlast, Field, Chair and Mountain, Gala Performance, Giselle, The Informer, Interludes, Intermezzo, In the Upper Room, The Leaves are Fading, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s production of The Nutcracker, Alexei Ratmansky’s production of The Nutcracker, The Other, Push Comes to Shove, Raymonda, Grand Pas Hongrois, Sinatra Suite, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Sunset, and Theatre.
Most recently, Tipton created the lighting for the production of Twyla Tharp’s A Gathering of Ghosts, which entered the Company’s repertory in the 2019 Fall season at the David H. Koch Theater. She also designed the lighting for the first productions of Tharp’s The Brahms-Haydn Variations and In the Upper Room. In addition, Tipton created lighting for Tharp’s Bach Partita, Brief Fling, Everlast, Push Comes to Shove, and Sinatra Suite, which were given World Premieres by American Ballet Theatre.

Swan Lake
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Swan Lake - Synopsis
Choreography by Kevin McKenzie
after Marius Petipa
after Lev Ivanov
Music by Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
Scenery and Costumes by Zack Brown
Lighting by Duane Schuler
Kevin McKenzie
Kevin McKenzie was a leading dancer with both The Joffrey Ballet and the National Ballet of Washington before joining American Ballet Theatre as a Soloist in March 1979. He was appointed a Principal Dancer the following December and danced with the company until 1991. A native of Vermont, McKenzie received his ballet training at the Washington School of Ballet. In 1972, McKenzie was awarded a silver medal at the Sixth International Ballet Competition in Varna, Bulgaria.
As a Principal Dancer with ABT, McKenzie danced leading roles in all of the major full-length classics including Solor in Natalia Makarova’s full‑length production of La Bayadère, Don Jose in Roland Petit’s Carmen, the Prince in Mikhail Baryshnikov’s production of the full‑length Cinderella, Franz in Coppélia, the Gentleman With Her in Dim Lustre, Basil and Espada in Baryshnikov’s Don Quixote (Kitri’s Wedding), Albrecht in Giselle, a leading role in The Garden of Villandry, Her Lover in Jardin aux Lilas, the male lead in The Leaves Are Fading, the Friend in Pillar of Fire, the leading role in Raymonda (Grand Pas Hongrois), a featured role in Requiem, the Champion Roper in Rodeo, Romeo and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Prince Desire in The Sleeping Beauty, Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, James in La Sylphide, and leading roles in Other Dances, Paquita, Les Sylphides, Sylvia Pas de Deux, and Theme and Variations. He created Amnon in Martine van Hamel’s Amnon V’Tamar and a leading role in Clark Tippet’s S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.
During his performing career, McKenzie appeared as a Guest Artist throughout the world, including in Spoleto, Italy; Paris, London, Tokyo, Havana, Moscow, Vienna, and Korea, dancing with, among others, the London Festival Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, the National Ballet of Cuba, and the Universal Ballet in Seoul. In September 1989, McKenzie was appointed a permanent guest artist with The Washington Ballet and, in 1991, assumed the position of Artistic Associate. He has also acted as Associate Artistic Director and choreographer with Martine van Hamel’s New Amsterdam Ballet.
McKenzie was appointed Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre in October 1992. His previous choreographic credits include Groupo Zambaria (1984) and Liszt Études (l991) both for Martine van Hamel’s New Amsterdam Ballet, Lucy and the Count (1992) for The Washington Ballet and, for American Ballet Theatre, The Nutcracker (1993), Don Quixote (1995, in collaboration with Susan Jones) a new production of Swan Lake (2000), the conception and direction of a new production of Raymonda (2004, with choreography by Anna-Marie Holmes), and a new production of The Sleeping Beauty with Gelsey Kirkland and Michael Chernov. In 2014, McKenzie, with ABT Principal Répétiteur Irina Kolpakova, staged a new production of Raymonda Divertissements.
McKenzie has received numerous awards including honorary degrees from Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont (1993) and Adelphi University in Garden City, New York (2019), the Dance Magazine Award (1999), and the Medal of Honor for Achievement in Dance from the National Arts Club (2019). In addition, he appeared in two Emmy Award winning broadcasts, The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore (1970) and American Ballet Theatre in Le Corsaire (1998) both for PBS’s Dance in America series. McKenzie is a founding board member of Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli, New York.
In December 2022, McKenzie retired as American Ballet Theatre Artistic Director, after three decades of leadership.
Marius Petipa
Marius Petipa, the “father of classical ballet,” was born in Marseilles, France, in 1819. He began his dance training at the age of seven with his father, Jean Petipa, the French dancer and teacher. Marius was educated at the Grand College in Brussels and also attended the conservatoire, where he studied music. Although he disliked dancing in those early years, his progress was so great that he made his debut in 1831 in his father’s production of Gardel’s La Dansomanie.
In 1834 Jean Petipa became Maitre de Ballet at the theatre in Bordeaux and it was here that Marius completed his education. At the age of sixteen, he became premier danseur at the theatre in Nantes, where he also produced several short ballets.
In 1839 Marius left Nantes to tour North America with his father, and on their return visit went to Paris. The following year he made his debut at the Comedie Francaise, where he partnered Carlotte Grisi in a benefit performance. He continued his studies with A. Vestris and became a principal dancer in Bordeaux.
Petipa next went to Spain in 1845, to work at the King’s Theatre. While in Madrid, he studied Spanish dance and choreographed Carmen et son Terero, La Perle de Seville, L’Aventure d’une fille de Madrid, La Fleur de Grenade, and Depart Dour la Course des Toureaux.
Petipa returned to Paris as a principal dancer, but in 1847 left for Russia. He had signed a one-year contract with the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatre, but was to remain there for the rest of his life. As a principal dancer, Petipa often appeared with Fanny Elssler and was much acclaimed for his performances in such ballets as Paquita (which he restaged and in which made his debut), Giselle, La Peri, Armida, Catarina, Le Delire d’un peintre, Esmeralda, Le Corsaire and Faust. Considered an excellent dancer and partner, his acting, stage manners and pantomime were held up as examples for many generations of dancers.
When Giselle was revived in 1850, Petipa made some changes in the Wilis scenes, which became the Grand Pas des Wilis of 1884. In 1854, he married Maria Sourovshchikova, a student in the graduating class of the Imperial School, who later danced in many of her husband’s ballets. (Petipa’s second marriage was to Lubova Leonidovna, a member of the Moscow Ballet, in 1882.) In 1854 he became an instructor in the school, while continuing to dance and to restage ballets from the French repertoire.
Sources differ on the first original work he staged for the Imperial Theatre: some state it was The Star of Granada, others that it was A Marriage During Regency. But all sources concur that his first great success was The Daughter of Pharoh (staged in six weeks), which resulted in his appointment as Choreographer-in-Chief in 1862 — a position he held for nearly fifty years.
In 1869 Petipa became Premier Ballet Master of the Imperial Theatre. The value of his accomplishments is inestimable: he produced more than sixty full-evening ballets and innumerable shorter works and he is considered to have laid the foundation for the entire school of Russian ballet. The ballet repertoire in the Soviet Union is still based mainly on his works.
Those who felt the dramatic content of ballet should be strengthened began to oppose Petipa toward the end of his career. His noble classicism and consciousness of form was considered old-fashioned, and in 1903, at age 84, Petipa was forced to retire from the Imperial Theatre as a direct result of the failure of his ballet, The Magic Mirror. His last years were filled with bitterness and disillusionment because his beloved theatre had been taken away. He died in St. Petersburg in 1910.
Marius Petipa is considered one of the greatest choreographers of all time. He researched the subject matter of the ballets he staged, making careful and detailed preparations for each production, and then worked closely with the designer and composer. Petipa elevated the Russian ballet to international fame and laid the cornerstone for 20th Century ballet. His classicism integrated the purity of the French school with Italian virtuosity.
Sources:
1. The Dance Encyclopedia, Compiled and edited by Anatole Chujoy and P. W. Manchester, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1967.
2. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet, Horst Koegler, Oxford University Press, London, 1977.
3. Complete Book of Ballets. A Guide to the Principal Ballets of the 19th Centurv, Cyril Beaumont, Putnam, London, 1937.
4. Russian Ballet Master: The Memoirs of Marius Petipa, Ed., Lillian Moore,Tr. Helen Whittaker, Adam and Charles Black, London, 1958. Researched and compiled by Fran Michelman.
Lev Ivanov
Lev Ivanov was born in Russia in February, 1834. He is said to have been the natural son of Tia Adamova and that his mother placed him in a foundling hospital when he was 11 months old. She reclaimed him in 1837. (He is listed in the Imperial School’s records as the “illegitimate son of the spinster Tia Adamova.”) Ivanov was brought up by a merchant’s family until age eight, sent to a boarding school for two years, and then enrolled in the Imperial School of Ballet in St. Petersburg.
Ivanov studied first with Pimenov, then with Gredlu, Frederic and Jean Petipa. While a student, he danced with Muravieva in La Peri, and with Fanny Elssler in Catarina, Esmeralda and La Filleule des Fées. As a young pupil, he displayed a phenomenal musical aptitude ‑‑ it was said that if he heard a ballet once, he could play the entire score by ear. For this gift, he was reproved by his dance teachers and several times (unsuccessfully) invited to transfer to the Imperial School of Music by the director.
In 1852, Ivanov completed his training and became a member of the corps de ballet of the Maryinsky. Jules Perrot, then maitre de ballet, was not partial to Russian dancers and made little attempt to advance Ivanov. Ivanov’s first opportunity occurred in 1855 when the ballerina T. P. Smirnova suggested that Ivanov partner her in a pas de deux in La Fille Mal Gardée. His debut was so successful, that Perrot began to give him minor roles. In 1858, he was appointed dance teacher and married Vera Lyadova the following year. (He was remarried in 1875 to Varvara Ivanova.)
When Marius Petipa succeeded Perrot as maitre de ballet, Ivanov became premier danseur and mime. He was known for his roles in the following ballets: Faust, Esmeralda, Catarina, Fiammetra, Satanella, La Fille du Pahraon, and La Bayadère.
In 1885, he was appointed Petipa’s assistant. In his diary he wrote: “I was so good a soldier, that I went through every step of the ‘service.’ I have been in the corps de ballet, coryphé, first dancer, played character roles, and was a teacher of dancing and they finally made me balletmaster.”1
Ivanov’s first production was a revival of La Fille Mal Gardée. He then staged many ballets, new ones and revivals, for the Imperial Theatre which included: The Wilful Wife (1885); The Haarlem Tulip (1887); The Enchanted Forest, The Beauty of Seville, Casse‑Noisette (1892); The Magic Flute (Drigo, 1893); Flora’s Awakening (1893); The Mikado’s Daughter, Marco Bomba, Camargo, Swan Lake (Acts 2 and 4) (1894‑95); Cinderella (Act 2), Acis and Galathea, The Trials of Damis (1900); and Sylvia (unfinished).
The majority of these works were produced in collaboration with Petipa and historians are still divided, with the Petipa faction declaring that Ivanov was only a competent craftsman vs. the Ivanov faction maintaining that the latter was a choreographic genius held back constantly by the jealous Petipa. Although it is difficult to rank the importance of Lev Ivanov in the history of ballet in Russia, partly because he was a modest man (Ivanov’s last message to young dancers was “never be too self‑loving: do not regard yourself as better than the others: be modest.”2) and partly because of the above argument, he was considered unlike any of the previous ballet masters in his approach to the music. “In the dances of Ivanov there is a choreographic embodiment overheard and emotionally felt with the music. Present‑day theorists of the ballet maintain that out of Ivanov’s exciting forms and creative fantasies came Fokine’s3 most important inspiration.”
And as a teacher , there is no question that he contributed much to the excellent technical training of the Maryinsky company. Among his students were E. I. Sokolova, A. F. Vergina, Ekaterina Vazem, M. N. Gorshenkova, V. A. Nikitina, K. M. Kulichevskaya and Olga Preobrazhenskaya.
In 1891, Ivanov was awarded the Order of Stanislaus, 3rd Class; in 1893, the Order of Anne, 3rd Class; and in 1901, the Order of Stanislaus, 2nd Class.
Swan Lake marked the apex and close of Ivanov’s achievement. While working on Sylvia, he became ill and died in December, 1901. A short time before his death he wrote (perhaps as a message to the rising generation of dancers) in his diary: “May you ever be blessed with the spirit and strength not to regard your profession merely as a means of livelihood, but as an Art to which you are resolved to dedicate your very soul.”4
Footnotes
1. From Masters of the Ballet of the Nineteenth Century V ‑ Lev Ivanov, by Joan Lawson, in The Dancing Times, March, 1940, page 344.
2. Loc Cit.
3. From Masters of the Ballet of the Nineteenth Century I, by Joan Lawson, in The Dancing Times, November, 1939, page 60.
4. From The Ballet Called Swan Lake, by Cyril W. Beaumont, London, 1952, page 56
Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, born in Kamsko‑Votnsk in the district of Viatka on May 7, 1840, was the son of a mining engineer. Although he began piano instruction at the age of five and showed signs of musical precociousness, a musical career was not anticipated at that time. In 1850, he was enrolled in the preparatory class of the School of Jurisprudence when his family moved to St. Petersburg. He was admitted to the School of Jurisprudence in 1852, and while he was still a student there, he composed a canzonetta that became his first published work.
In 1859, he completed his course of study and took a post as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice, but he continued to pursue musical studies, including voice, thoroughbass and composition. He resigned from his post in l863 and became a full-time student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, directed by Anton Rubinstein. It was during this period that he made his debut as a conductor and composed The Storm, his only student composition to be heard with any frequency today. In it, he already exhibited stylistic elements prominent in his later works, including the influence of Russian folk-melody, a command of Western compositional techniques and a flair for brilliant orchestration. Even before his graduation in 1865, he was offered a position as teacher of harmony at what was to become the Moscow Conservatory. In 1866, he moved to Moscow. There he came under the influence of Anton’s brother Nikolai Rubinstein and met Peter Jurgenson, who would eventually become his publisher.
His First Symphony, begun in 1866, proved to be a difficult and laborious exercise for Tchaikovsky, who found the structural demands of the symphonic sonata form incompatible with his own style. It was not performed until 1869, but it was well received. His began first opera, Voyevoda, in 1867, the year in which he met Berlioz and Balakirev, leader of the nationalistic movement in Russian music. Balakirev conducted the first St. Petersburg performance of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic fantasia Fatum, composed in 1868. Tchaikovsky later destroyed the work, as he would several others, but it was eventually reconstructed. Balakirev’s influence was also felt in Tchaikovsky’s first masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet, which he rewrote several times at Balakirev’s suggestion.
From 1870 to 1874, Tchaikovsky became increasingly interested in nationalistic music, although his conservatory training and familiarity with Western techniques kept him outside the circle of “The Mighty Five” (Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov). His nationalistic tendencies came to a peak with the opera Vakula the Smith, first staged in 1876, by which time his infatuation with nationalism in music had declined.
He wrote his first music for solo instrument and orchestra from 1874 to 1877, including his celebrated First Piano Concerto (1875), and in 1875–76 composed his first ballet, Swan Lake. The first performance in 1877 was considered a failure, based less upon Tchaikovsky’s score (which was severely cut and further compromised with interpolations by other composers) than by a poor performance and mediocre physical production. Swan Lake was later revived with new choreography by Petipa and Ivanov in 1895, at which time it was recognized as a masterpiece of the ballet repertoire.
Around the end of 1876, Tchaikovsky began to receive financial support from a wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck, who was to remain his devoted patroness for the next 14 years. With a new found financial security, Tchaikovsky embarked upon a period of incredible musical fecundity, producing such cornerstones of the international repertoire as his Fourth Symphony, the violin concerto and the opera Eugene Onegin.
Most of his compositions from the years 1878–84 have not proved as enduring, although his stature in Russia continued to grow, as exemplified by two events in 1884: his opera Mazeppa was given concurrent productions in St. Petersburg and Mosocw and he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir by the Tsar.
In 1887, Tchaikovsky undertook his first foreign tour as a conductor, during which he met such notables as Brahms and Grieg. It was almost immediately after composing his Fifth Symphony in 1888 that he began work on his second ballet, The Sleeping Beauty. The work was given an elaborate premiere and was well received, but the public reaction did not meet the expectations of the composer, choreographer (Petipa) and designer-impresario (Vsevolozhsky), and it was to be some years before the work was recognized as one of the pinnacles of classical ballet.
Tchaikovsky went on without pause to compose the opera The Queen of Spades, which received a successful premiere in 1890 and, along with Eugene Onegin, became an international repertory item. Its success brought about a commission from the Imperial Theatre for two one-act works, the opera Iolanta and the ballet The Nutcracker, one of his most enduringly popular works despite its disappointing reception at its 1892 premiere.
Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, his most profoundly pessimistic work, was first performed October 28, 1893. Nine days later, he died. His death is universally considered to have been a suicide, but the circumstances leading to it have become a musicological controversy that is yet to be resolved.
Once considered by his contemporaries to be too Western in his style, Tchaikovsky was later lionized by Igor Stravinsky as the most Russian of Russian composers. His greatest strength, his incomparable gift for melody, was also responsible for his difficulty in composing within the structures of the German school of composition, and his blatant emotionalism has alienated some commentators. Nonetheless, he is today one of the most popular of all composers, and he created masterpieces in every genre. His music seems uniquely suited to ballet, with its inexhaustible stream of melody, an instinctive sense of movement considered ideal for the human body, and an irresistible rhythmic pulse and brilliant orchestration. It is no coincidence that all three of his ballets are firmly entrenched in the international repertoire.
Zack Brown
Zack Brown has worked extensively as a set and costume designer for many of the principal dance, opera, and theatre companies in the United States and Europe.
Brown’s previous work for American Ballet Theatre was as set designer on La Sonnambula and Jardin aux Lilas, both of which were filmed for “Dance in America” on PBS. He also designed the sets for Gaîté Parisienne and Raymonda — Grand Pas Classique.
He has designed scenery and costumes for The Nutcracker, for Milwaukee Ballet, American Repertory Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet and Alberta Ballet, and Atlanta Ballet’s and Miami City Ballet’s Swan Lake, Act II. His work has also been seen at the Hamburg Ballet for an all-Ravel evening Trilogie, choreographed by John Neumeier and for Balanchine’s Theme and Variations. For the National Ballet of Canada he designed John Neumeier’s Now and Then to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. and scenery for Balanchine’s Don Quixote for Suzanne Farrell.
On Broadway Brown designed the sets and costumes for the Tony Award winning revival of On Your Toes starring Natalia Makarova. In addition, he has worked frequently at the Circle in the Square — most recently for Suddenly Last Summer and Salome with Al Pacino.
As Principal Designer for the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center from 1980 to 1994, he created sets and costumes for forty-two productions. He has also designed for the Metropolitan Opera (Rigoletto) and the San Francisco Opera (Prince Igor, Don Carlo, Le Nozza de Figaro, and La Gioconda). He was awarded two Emmys, one for sets and one for costumes, when La Gioconda was telecast.
Brown’s work for American Ballet Theatre includes his designs for Raymonda ((2004), Dorian (2003), Marimba (2001), Swan Lake (2000), Jardin aux Lilas (1990), and the costumes for Getting Closer (1999), Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra (2002) and Glow – Stop (2006).
Duane Schuler
Lighting designer Duane Schuler’s work encompasses opera, ballet, and theatre. Opera productions include Turandot (La Scala), Pelleas et Melisande and Cendrillon (Metropolitan Opera), La Fanciulla del West (Opéra Paris), Elektra (Salzburg Festival), Fidelio (Covent Garden), Beatrice et Benedict (Glyndebourne), Candide (Santa Fe Opera), and Don Giovanni (Lyric Opera of Chicago). Ballet credits include Swan Lake and Of Love and Rage (American Ballet Theatre), The Sleeping Beauty (Stuttgart Ballet), Giselle (Deutsche Ballet), and The Nutcracker (Houston Ballet). Theatre credits include House and Garden (Manhattan Theatre Club), The Royal Family (Ahmanson Theatre), The Importance of Being Earnest (Broadway), and Ragtime (The 5th Ave Theatre). Upcoming productions include Ernani (San Francisco Opera) and Fidelio (Metropolitan Opera).
Schuler is a founding partner of Schuler Shook, the theatre planning and architectural lighting design firm whose projects include Seattle’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

Romeo and Juliet
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Romeo and Juliet - Synopsis
Choreography by Kenneth MacMillan
Music by Sergei Prokofiev
Scenery and Costumes by Nicholas Georgiadis
Lighting by Thomas R. Skelton
Kenneth MacMillan
Kenneth MacMillan was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1929. His strength of purpose can be traced back to the very beginning of his career when he read an advertisement announcing that scholarships for boys were available at the Sadler’s Wells (now Royal) Ballet School. He was determined to make his way there and he did. MacMillan completed his dance training at the Sadler’s Wells School and in 1946 became a founding member of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, a new company formed by Ninette de Valois. He gained his first dance experience at the Wells and then moved to Covent Garden.
In 1952, he returned to the Wells and there found his true vocation as a choreographer. At Sadler’s Wells, a gifted group of young dancers was in the process of forming a Choreographic Group to give performances of new works. The first performance by the Group was on February 1, 1953, and the hit of the evening was MacMillan’s first ballet, Somnambulism, to music by Stan Kenton.
The following year he staged a story ballet, Laiderette, and Dame Ninette decided to commission an entirely new work from MacMillan: Danses Concertantes. This work immediately established MacMillan as a choreographer of note. His ballets continued with Noctambules (1956), The Burrow (1958), Le Baiser de la Fée (1960), The Invitation (1960), The Rite of Spring (1962), Romeo and Juliet (1965), and Das Lied von der Erde (1965).
In 1966, MacMillan received an invitation to direct the ballet company at the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin. Encouraged to accept by Dame Ninette, he took over the company and staged his own productions of The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. He also created the one‑act ballet Anastasia, which was to become the third act of his full‑length Anastasia.
MacMillan had proved himself as the natural successor to Ashton as Director of The Royal Ballet, a post he assumed (at first in association with John Field) at the beginning of the 1970‑71 season.
MacMillan continued to choreograph and in 1974 created both Manon (his third full‑length work) and Elite Syncopations. In 1976, MacMillan made Requiem for the Stuttgart Ballet and in 1978 he created for that company My Brother, My Sisters. Mayerling was first produced at Covent Garden on February 14, 1978. As in so many ballets, he took a compassionate view of doomed characters, seeking to show why tragedy overtakes them. Mayerling had a triumph at its American premiere in Los Angeles in 1978 and was the subject of a London Weekend Television film which won the 1978 music category of the prestigious Prix Italia – the first ballet ever to do so.
More recent works have been La Fin du Jour, which draws inspiration from the style of the 1930’s and the fashionable way of life shattered by World War II, and Gloria, a lament and a thanksgiving for the generation that perished in World War I. MacMillan created his fifth full‑evening ballet, Isadora, in 1981. It received its world premiere at Covent Garden on April 30, 1981.
Since creating The Wild Boy for American Ballet Theatre in 1981, MacMillan produced Quartet (1982) to Verdi’s String Quartet in E minor for the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet; and Orpheus (1982) to the music of Igor Stravinsky, Valley of the Shadows (l982) to the music of Tchaikovsky and Martinu, Requiem (1983) to the music of Faure, and The Judas Tree (1992) to the music of Brian Elias; all for The Royal Ballet. For American Ballet Theatre, MacMillan staged Triad (1984), Anastasia (one act), and Romeo and Juliet (1985). He also created Requiem (1986), and The Sleeping Beauty (1987).
MacMillan made his debut as a director of plays when he staged Ionesco’s The Chairs and The Lesson at the New Inn, Ealing. He also produced Strindberg’s Dance of Death at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre.
MacMillan died in London in October, 1992 at the age of 62. At the time of his death he was choreographing a revival of the musical Carousel. He received his knighthood in the 1983 Birthday Honours, and resided in London with his wife Deborah and daughter Charlotte.
MacMillan was an Artistic Associate of American Ballet Theatre from 1984-1989.
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka, named Krasnoye, in the government of Ekaterinslav in 1891, and died in Moscow in 1953. He was a pupil of Liadov, Rimsky‑Korsakov, and others at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He became widely known as a brilliant pianist and applied his knowledge of the piano in his compositions, at twenty‑three winning the Rubinstein prize with his First Piano Concerto. His appearances were usually as the interpreter of his own compositions. For some years he lived in exile, travelling on a League of Nations passport. He visited Russia in 1927, 1929, and again in 1932. He finally settled in Moscow with his family in 1934.
His style may be described as the antithesis of that of Scriabin. He aimed at the realization of primitive emotions, and playfulness and satire are also characteristics. His sympathies and taste inclined towards the classical but his manner was independent.
Among his works are the Scythian Suite, for orchestra, the ballets, Chout (or The Buffoon), The Prodigal Son, Romeo and Juliet, and Cinderella, eleven operas, including The Love for Three Oranges (libretto after Gozzi), War and Peace, The Flaming Angel, et al., a fairy tale for children, Peter and the Wolf (a monologue with spoken voice with orchestral accompaniment, 1936), five piano concertos, violin concertos, symphonies, the brief piano pieces Sarcasms, nine piano sonatas, songs, etc.
In 1948 Prokofiev, along with other leading musicians, came under censure by the Soviet authorities for the alleged “formalistic distortions and anti‑democratic tendencies of his music” and he promised to begin “a search for a clearer and more meaningful language.”
He died on the same day as Joseph Stalin, and in 1957 his Seventh Symphony was posthumously awarded a Lenin Prize.
Nicholas Georgiadis
Nicholas Georgiadis was born in Athens, Greece and studied at the National Metsovian University before winning a Fulbright scholarship in 1952 to study at Columbia University, New York. The following year he moved to London to study stage design at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he later became a lecturer.
His designs for ballet included MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes, House of Birds, Noctambules, Agon, The Burrow, The Invitation, Las Hermanas, Song of the Earth, Manon, Mayerling, Orpheus (for The Royal Ballet), Swan Lake (for the Berlin Opera House); Nureyev’s production of The Nutcracker and The Tempest (for The Royal Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet), Swan Lake (Vienna State Opera House), The Sleeping Beauty (La Scala, Milan, National Ballet of Canada, Vienna State Opera and London Festival Ballet), Raymonda (American Ballet Theatre, Zurich Opera House and Paris Opera Ballet), Manfred (Zurich Opera House), Don Quixote (Zurich, Berlin and Paris Opera Houses, and International Ballet Festival, Boston); and Lynn Seymour’s Intimate Lovers (Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet).
Georgiadis’s designs for Orpheus and The Tempest won him the London Evening Standard Ballet Award for the most outstanding achievement in 1982. His designs for opera included Aida and The Trojans (The Royal Opera); Medea (Frankfurt Opera House); Anna Bolena (Athens Opera House) and Don Giovanni (Athens Festival). His designs for plays include Lysistrata (Royal Count), Montherlant’s La Reine Morte (Oxford Playhouse), Julius Caesar (Old Vic), Anthony and Cleopatra (Prospect Theatre Company), All for Love (Prospect), Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (Haymarket); and his costume designs for films include Euripides’s The Trojan Woman, and the reconstruction of the Ballets Russes designs for Nijinksy.
Georgiadis received the C.B.E. at the 1984 Birthday Honours in June and was admitted to the Greek Academy of Arts in 2000. He died in March, 2001 at the age of 77.
Thomas R. Skelton
Thomas R. Skelton, one of the most distinguished lighting designers in America, designed the lighting for many Broadway productions, including The King and I, Guys and Dolls, Coco, Gigi, Purlie, A Matter of Gravity, Death of a Salesman (both the Dustin Hoffman and George C. Scott revivals), Absurd Person Singular, Jimmy Shine, Caesar and Cleopatra, Mike Downstairs, Your Own Thing, Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, Shenandoah, Lena Horne, the Lady and Her Music, The Kingfisher, Westside Waltz and revivals of Oklahoma!, Peter Pan, Brigadoon and The King and I. He also designed lighting for numerous productions at the Circle in the Square, Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Shakespeare Festival. Skelton received Tony nominations for Indians and All God’s Chillun Got Wings.
For the ballet stage, he illuminated Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering, Robert Joffrey’s Astarte, Heinz Poll’s Scenes From Childhood, Jose Limon’s The Moor’s Pavane, Paul Taylor’s Aureole, Martha Graham’s Rite of Spring, Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table, Gerald Arpino’s Kettantanz, Leonide Massine’s Parade and numerous other ballets for The Joffrey Ballet, Boston Ballet, The Feld Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Paul Taylor Dance Company, Nureyev and Friends, and the Ohio Ballet.
He designed the lighting for American Ballet Theatre’s productions of John Neumeier’s Hamlet Connotations (1976), Antony Tudor’s The Tiller in the Fields (1978), Eliot Feld’s Variations on ‘America’ (1981), Peter Anastos’s Clair de lune (1982), Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet (1965) and The Sleeping Beauty (1987), Agnes de Mille’s Fall River Legend (1989 revival), Coppélia (1991 revival, with original staging by Arthur Saint-Leon and choreography by Enrique Martinez), Nicholas Beriosoff’s staging of The Firebird (1992), Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon (1993), the revival of David Blair’s staging of Swan Lake (1993) and Kevin McKenzie’s production of The Nutcracker (1993).
Skelton taught at the New York Studio and Forum of Stage Design and at Yale University. He served on the Board of DANCE/USA and was the Associate Director for the Ohio Ballet, which ran in Akron, Ohio until 2006. Skelton died in August 1994, aged 66.