
The Nutcracker
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The Nutcracker - History
The Nutcracker - Synopsis
Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Music by Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
Scenery and Costumes by Richard Hudson
Lighting by Jennifer Tipton
Alexei Ratmansky
Alexei Ratmansky was born in St. Petersburg and trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow. His performing career included positions as principal dancer with Ukrainian National Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and Royal Danish Ballet. He has choreographed ballets for the Mariinsky Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Kiev Ballet, and the State Ballet of Georgia, as well as for Nina Ananiashvili, Diana Vishneva, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Ratmansky’s 1998 work, Dreams of Japan, earned a prestigious Golden Mask Award by the Theatre Union of Russia. In 2005, he was awarded the Benois de la Danse prize for his choreography of Anna Karenina for the Royal Danish Ballet. He was made Knight of the Order of Dannebrog by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 2001. He won his second Benois de la Danse for Shostakovich Trilogy in 2014.
Ratmansky was named artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet in January 2004. For the Bolshoi Ballet, he choreographed full-length productions of The Bright Stream (2003) and The Bolt (2005) and re-staged Le Corsaire (2007) and the Soviet-era Flames of Paris (2008). Under Ratmansky’s direction, the Bolshoi Ballet was named “Best Foreign Company” in 2005 and 2007 by The Critics’ Circle in London, and he received a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for The Bright Stream in 2006. In 2007, he won a Golden Mask Award for Best Choreographer for his production of Jeu de Cartes for the Bolshoi Ballet. In 2009, Ratmansky choreographed new dances for the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Aida. Ratmansky joined American Ballet Theatre as Artist in Residence in January 2009. In 2012, Ratmansky choreographed a new version of The Golden Cockerel for the Royal Danish Ballet. The Golden Cockerel received its American Premiere by American Ballet Theatre on June 6, 2016.
For American Ballet Theatre, Ratmansky has choreographed On the Dnieper (2009), Seven Sonatas (2009), Waltz Masquerade, a ballet honoring Nina Ananiashvili’s final season (2009), The Nutcracker (2010), Dumbarton (2011), Firebird and Symphony #9 (2012), Chamber Symphony, Piano Concerto #1 and The Tempest (2013), The Sleeping Beauty (2015), Serenade after Plato’s Symposium (2016), Songs of Bukovina (2017), Whipped Cream (2017), Harlequinade (2018), The Seasons (2019), Of Love and Rage (2020), and Bernstein in a Bubble (2021).
Ratmansky was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for 2013. In 2020, he received a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Best Classical Choreography for his work with San Francisco Ballet on Shostakovich Trilogy, a co-commission with American Ballet Theatre.
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.
Richard Hudson
Born in Zimbabwe, he trained at Wimbledon School of Art. He has designed sets and costumes for operas at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, La Scala Milan, Maggio Musicale Florence, English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Kent Opera, Opera North, Wiener Staatsoper, Munich, Chicago, Copenhagen, Athens, Bregenz, Amsterdam, Zurich, Barcelona, Madrid, Brussels, Houston and Washington and Rome. He has also designed for the Aldeburgh Festival, Royal Ballet, Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Royal Court, Almeida and Young Vic. In 1988 he won an Olivier Award for a season of plays at the Old Vic, and for The Lion King he received a Tony Award in 1998.
He is a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). In 2003 he won the Gold Medal for set design at the Prague Quadrenniale, and in 2005 he was given an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Surrey. Recent work includes Rushes, Goldberg Variations and Invitus Invitam (Royal Ballet, Covent Garden), Rigoletto (Wiener Volksoper), Armida (Metropolitan Opera, New York), Tamerlano (Royal Opera, Covent Garden), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Opera di Roma), Romeo and Juliet (National Ballet of Canada), Le Coq D’or and La Bayadère (Royal Danish Ballet), Das Rheingold and Die Walküre (Teatro Massimo, Palermo) and Versailles, (Donmar Warehouse Theatre). In addition, are Hudson’s Peter Grimes at Lyon and La Traviata at Grange Park, both in 2014.
For American Ballet Theatre, Hudson has designed The Nutcracker (2010), Dumbarton (2011) and The Sleeping Beauty (2015). The Golden Cockerel, which was given its World Premiere by the Royal Danish Ballet in 2012, received its American Premiere by American Ballet Theatre in 2016.
Jennifer Tipton
Well-known for lighting theater, opera, and dance, 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 Tony Awards® 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. Her recent work includes Pictures from Home and To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway, Samuel Beckett’s First Love for Zoom, and all of Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck plays, a remount of Richard Strauss’s Electra for the Dallas Opera, Amy Hall Garner’s Somewhere in the Middle for the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and Jerome Robbins for the Paris Opera Ballet. She created her own installation, Our Days and Night at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
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 is a Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Design at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and the Yale Repertory Theatre Lighting Design Advisor.
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, Crime and Punishment, Don Quixote (Kitri’s Wedding), Eccentrique, The Elements, Enough Said, Everlast, Field, Chair and Mountain, Gala Performance, A Gathering of Ghosts, Giselle, The Informer, Interludes, Intermezzo, 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.

Crime and Punishment
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Crime and Punishment - Synopsis
Choreography, Co-Direction, and Treatment by Helen Pickett
Direction and Treatment by James Bonas
Music by Isobel Waller-Bridge
Sets and Costumes by Soutra Gilmour
Lighting by Jennifer Tipton
Assistant to the Choreographer: Sarah Hillmer
Associate Costume Designer: Caitlin Rain
Helen Pickett
Choreographer Helen Pickett, a native of San Diego, California, has created over 60 ballets for stage and film in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.
Emma Bovary, which premiered in 2023 with the National Ballet of Canada, made The Top 10 Best Dance Performances in Toronto. The Crucible, Pickett’s full-length for Scottish Ballet, toured to the Kennedy Center and Spoleto Festival USA in 2023 to national acclaim. The Crucible premiered at Edinburgh International Festival in 2019 and won two awards, UK Theatre Critics Award and the Herald Angel Award. Pickett’s dance film, Warehouse Variations (After Hours), won the Best of Boston. From 2020-2021, Pickett choreographed 12 dances for film, including The Air Before Me, which won the Audience Choice Award for Screen Dance International Festival, and Hurley Burley, which was nominated for an Emmy Award.
While resident choreographer for Atlanta Ballet (2012- 2017), she was named Best Choreographer in 2014, and won Best Choreographer and Best Dance Production for her full length, Camino Real in 2015. In 2016, Pickett received an Honorary Doctorate from University of North Carolina School of the Arts, from then Dean of Dance and current Artistic Director of American Ballet Theatre Susan Jaffe.
Since 2005, Pickett has choreographed work for Boston Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Ballet West, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Semper Oper/Dresden Ballet, Vienna State Opera, Scottish Ballet, Philadelphia Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Alberta Ballet, Tulsa Ballet, Charlotte Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Washington Ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Louisville Ballet, Ballet X, Smuin Ballet, Oklahoma City Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, Washington Ballet, West Australian Ballet, Ballet Rhode Island, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Kansas City Ballet, and Cincinnati Ballet. In addition, she choreographed for the Chicago Lyric Opera, Les Troyens, and, in London, an evening length, multi-media musical, Voices of the Amazon.
Pickett’s 12 dance films were choreographed and rehearsed on Zoom. Home Studies, a five-film series, was later translated to the stage for a premiere at Jacob’s Pillow in August 2021. Three films from her series The Shakespeare Cycle,were featured on PBS. The film The Air Before Me, created with director Shaun Clarke, made four Official Selection lists around the world and won the Audience Choice Award for Screen Dance International Festival. For the films, Pickett worked with dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Boston Ballet, Charlotte Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Kansas City Ballet, Les Grands Ballet Canadians de Montreal, and Royal Swedish Ballet. In August 2020, Scottish Ballet premiered Trace, a duet created for film, in “My Light Shines On: An Evening with Scottish Ballet” for the Edinburgh International Festival.
In April 2021, Pickett founded the Female Choreographer’s Big Round Table, a Zoom meeting place for female choreographers to build community and forge avenues for more equitable work environments. To date, 150 female choreographers have joined the Roundtable.
In 2020, Pickett created a YouTube talk show. The one-on-one conversations would become “Creative Vitality Jam Sessions.” Pickett created CVJS to not only highlight extraordinary dance and theater artists but also to support and build an inclusive, equitable dance community across 83 sessions.
Pickett danced with William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt 1987-1998. She was involved in 20 original productions in her time with Ballet Frankfurt. During her last season with Ballet Frankfurt, Pickett simultaneously performed with The Wooster Group (director, Elizabeth Le Compte) in the OBIE award winning House/Lights and North Atlantic. From 2005-2012, Pickett reprised the speaking role Agnes in William Forsythe’s Impressing the Czar as a guest artist with The Royal Ballet of Flanders. Impressing the Czar received the Laurence Olivier Award in 2009, and the Prix de la Critique award for outstanding performance of the year in 2012. From 2013-2017, Pickett performed Agnes with Dresden Semper Oper Ballet.
Pickett collaborated, as an actress and choreographer, with the installation video artists and filmmakers Eve Sussman, Toni Dove, and Laurie Simmons. Pickett, a founding member of Eve Sussman’s The Rufus Corporation, played the Queen in 89 Seconds at Alcazar, which premiered at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She also acted in Sussman’s feature length film, The Rape of the Sabine Women. She choreographed the bubble dance and played Sally Rand in Toni Dove’s video installation and film, Spectropia. Pickett choreographed the dance sequences for Laurie Simmons’ The Music of Regret, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Pickett was the co-director, along with Milton Meyers, of the Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Summer Dance School Program in 2021. She created a choreographic intensive for college age choreographers entitled Choreographic Essentials, which she has taught in universities around the country. She has taught Forsythe Improvisation Technologies throughout the United States. In addition, Pickett is a mentor to young choreographers and undergraduate and MFA students throughout the United States. She was Distinguished Visiting Artist at University of North Carolina School of the Arts from 2016-2020.
In 2011, Pickett earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Hollins University. For her Master’s Thesis she collaborated with Christopher Janney, sound and light architect, and Kathleen Breen Combes and John Lam from Boston Ballet.
Pickett received a Fellowship Initiative Grant from New York Choreographic Institute (2006). Dance Magazine named Pickett one of “25 to Watch” (2007). Jacob’s Pillow awarded her a Choreographic Residency (2008). Pickett was one of the first choreographers to receive the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential Works Grant.
In 2006, Dance Europe published Pickett’s article, “Considering Cezanne.” In 2019, The American Stroke Association published the ode to her parents entitled, “A Tribute to Love.”
James Bonas
James Bonas is a traditional storyteller for the modern era, combining imagination and intellect with a curiosity for technology and new forms, whether directing classical or contemporary theatre, opera, or dance. He studied Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University, prior to training as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and developing his career as a director.
Bonas’s recent work in opera includes the world premiere of Isabelle Albouker’s L’Archipel(s) with La Maîtrise de L’Opéra Comique, Leonard Bernstein’s Candide at Welsh National Opera, Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos at Theater Magdeburg, and – with his regulator collaborator, animator Grégoire Pont – the French premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s Snow Queen for Opéra national du Rhin, winner of the 2022 French critics’ award for Best Scenic Elements/Scenography. Other work with Pont includes Carl Orff’s Der Mond and Maurice Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole and L’Enfant et les Sortilèges for Opéra de Lyon. These works enjoy regular revivals at houses across Europe and the United States, with further performances scheduled at Semperoper Dresden and at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
Bonas also works in dance and enjoys an ongoing collaboration with choreographers Helen Pickett and Sophie Laplane. Recent projects with Helen Pickett include Emma Bovary for the National Ballet of Canada in 2023 and The Crucible for Scottish National Ballet, an award-winning narrative ballet which premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2019, with further runs at Sadler’s Wells in London, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, Tennessee. With Sophie Laplane he created the celebrated short film Dive, also for Scottish Ballet. Dive has been featured in dance film festivals worldwide, including the 2021 Venice Biennale and Cinedans 2022, where it won the Grand Jury Prize.
An advocate for multi-disciplinary performance, Bonas collaborated with Damon Albarn as Artistic Consultant on the creation of Le Vol du Boli, an exploration of the complex and often brutal relations between Europe and West Africa, at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Appearing regularly at the BBC Proms, he staged Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale with the Hebrides Ensemble at the Drill Hall, Lincoln, as well as Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with Aurora Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. For the 2022 BBC Proms he collaborated with Anthony Roth-Costanzo and ENO on Glass Handel at the Print Works in London.
Isobel Waller-Bridge
Isobel Waller-Bridge is an award-winning composer known for her scores for film, television and theatre, alongside her work in electronic and contemporary classical music. She works in a wide range of genres, extending across large-scale orchestral music, electronic sound design, experimental music and song writing.
Waller-Bridge has scored a multitude of feature films, including Munich: The Edge of War (Netflix, dir. Christian Schwochow), The Phantom of the Open (BBC Films, dir. Craig Roberts), Emma. (Focus Features / Working Title, dir. Autumn de Wilde), I Came By (Netflix, dir. Babak Anvari), BAFTA and Oscar-winning short The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Bad Robot/NoneMore Productions, dir. Charlie Mackesy and Peter Baynton), The Lesson (dir. Alice Troughton), Embers (dir. Christian Cooke), Magpie (dir. Sam Yates), Wicked Little Letters (dir. Thea Sharrock), and Mother Mother (dir. K’naan). For television, her work includes music for Fleabag (BBC/Amazon), Black Mirror (Netflix), the limited anthology series Roar (Apple), critically acclaimed docuseries The Way Down (HBO), and Sweetpea (Sky).
Alongside her commission Temperatures for the Philharmonia Orchestra, which premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in November 2021, she has also collaborated with fashion houses Alexander McQueen and Simone Rocha, and Francesca Hayward, principal ballerina at the Royal Opera House, for her dance film Siren. For theatre, Waller-Bridge has worked with Florian Zeller in The Son (West End) as well as his play The Forest (Hampstead Theatre). Other theatre credits include Woyzeck, adapted by Jack Thorne (Old Vic), Blood Wedding (Young Vic), and Knives In Hens (Donmar Warehouse). She has recently composed music for the new ballet The Limit, which opened in October 2023 at the Royal Opera House. More recently she has worked on The House of Bernarda Alba (National Theatre).
Waller-Bridge’s releases include her 2015 album Music for Strings, her single “Illuminations” on Mercury KX / Decca, and the original soundtrack album for Munich: The Edge of War, out on Milan Records / Sony Music. Waller-Bridge’s latest release VIII was released in November 2022 on Mercury KX / Decca. In February 2023, she performed VIII alongside other pieces at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, which was followed by another performance with the BBC Concert Orchestra in summer 2023 at Blue Dot Festival. She performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in September 2024.
Waller-Bridge has received a number of awards including Best Composer at Underwire Film Festival and Best Sound Designer at the Off West End Theatre Awards. She was nominated for her score for Fleabag for the RTS Craft & Design Award. She was nominated for the Discovery of the Year Award at the World Soundtrack Awards in 2022.
Soutra Gilmour
Soutra Gilmour is a British set and costume designer who has made a name for herself in the world of theater and opera. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Gilmour grew up with a love of the arts and went on to study at the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London.
Her operatic credits include Breaking the Waves for Scottish Opera, Jack the Ripper for English National Opera, The Turn of the Screw at Regent’s Park, Quartett at London’s Royal Ballet and Opera, and Iris at Opera Holland Park, as well as Carmen, Saul, Hansel and Gretel, and Anna Bolena for Opera North. Among her theater credits in London’s West End are Romeo and Juliet, Sunset Boulevard, & Juliet, City of Angels, The Commitments, From Here to Eternity, The Lover and The Collection, Apologia, Richard III, The Maids, The Homecoming, Macbeth, Urinetown, Cyrano De Bergerac, Pinter at the Pinter, and Betrayal. On Broadway, Gilmour was a scenic and costume designer for A Doll’s House and Merrily We Roll Along, both in 2023.
Gilmour has been recognized with five Olivier Award nominations and two Tony Award® nominations, including Best Set Design for Betrayal and Best Costume Design for Cyrano de Bergerac.
Jennifer Tipton
Well-known for lighting theater, opera, and dance, 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 Tony Awards® 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. Her recent work includes Pictures from Home and To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway, Samuel Beckett’s First Love for Zoom, and all of Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck plays, a remount of Richard Strauss’s Electra for the Dallas Opera, Amy Hall Garner’s Somewhere in the Middle for the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and Jerome Robbins for the Paris Opera Ballet. She created her own installation, Our Days and Night at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
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 is a Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Design at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and the Yale Repertory Theatre Lighting Design Advisor.
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, Crime and Punishment, Don Quixote (Kitri’s Wedding), Eccentrique, The Elements, Enough Said, Everlast, Field, Chair and Mountain, Gala Performance, A Gathering of Ghosts, Giselle, The Informer, Interludes, Intermezzo, 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.
Sarah Hillmer
Sarah Hillmer has more than 20 years of experience in the professional dance world as a dancer, rehearsal director, assistant to choreographers, stager, educator, creator, and arts administrator.
She has worked with the Atlanta Ballet, staibdance, and as a founding member of glo. Hillmer served as a Rehearsal Director at the Atlanta Ballet from 2013-2019 where she forged artistic relationships with Twyla Tharp and Helen Pickett. Hillmer staged work for Twyla Tharp at Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Atlanta Ballet, and her work as a stager and assistant for Helen Pickett have taken her to Alberta Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, New York Theatre Ballet, Oklahoma City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Scottish Ballet, Smuin Ballet, UArts, and UNCSA.
Hillmer is the Founder and Director of ImmerseATL, a training and mentorship program that serves dancers at pivotal stages in their ever-evolving journey as artists through the Artist Program and the ImmerseATL Collective.
As a choreographer, Hillmer has been commissioned to create work for Atlanta Ballet’s Wabi Sabi, Backside of the Tent Productions, Emory Dance Company, and Admix Project. She has been a co-collaborator with George Staib on two productions; fence in 2019, which was funded by a grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, and Dido & Aeneas in 2023, a collaboration with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra.
As an arts administrator, Hillmer currently serves as staibdance’s Executive Director. During her five-year tenure she has planned and managed six national tours, two world premieres, annual workshops, an annual two-week summer intensive in Sorrento, Italy, (MC)2-Atlanta’s first multi-cultural dance festival, as well as a docuseries based on (MC)2 and a podcast series, Secret Architecture: the process of process.
Additionally, Hillmer serves as Business Operations Manager for Windmill Arts, an organization dedicated to the advancement of new work in the arts.
Caitlin Rain
Caitlin Rain is a New York-based artist and costume designer. A Texas native, she graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in Dramatic Art. Subsequently, she earned her M.F.A. in Stage Design from Southern Methodist University.
Since her arrival in New York, she has designed for theater and opera, and assisted on productions for American Ballet Theatre, The Shakespeare Theatre, Santa Fe Opera, Boston Ballet, and the National Ballet of Latvia, among others.
Rain’s career in design overlaps with her interest in portraiture and character studies. Self-taught in digital media, she is a versatile illustrator with a range of styles.

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 for lighting theater, opera, and dance, 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 Tony Awards® 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. Her recent work includes Pictures from Home and To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway, Samuel Beckett’s First Love for Zoom, and all of Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck plays, a remount of Richard Strauss’s Electra for the Dallas Opera, Amy Hall Garner’s Somewhere in the Middle for the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and Jerome Robbins for the Paris Opera Ballet. She created her own installation, Our Days and Night at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
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 is a Professor Emeritus in the Practice of Design at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University and the Yale Repertory Theatre Lighting Design Advisor.
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, Crime and Punishment, Don Quixote (Kitri’s Wedding), Eccentrique, The Elements, Enough Said, Everlast, Field, Chair and Mountain, Gala Performance, A Gathering of Ghosts, Giselle, The Informer, Interludes, Intermezzo, 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.