Scene from Piano Concerto No. 1. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor.Piano Concerto No. 1
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Synopsis - Piano Concerto No. 1
Dmitri Shostakovich
Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Costumes by Keso Dekker
Lighting by Jennifer Tipton
Scenery by George Tsypin
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.
Keso Dekker
Keso Dekker, Dutch-born visual artist, has designed sets and costumes for over 500 theatre productions, with some 70 directors and choreographers across Europe and the United States. Initially a painter, designer of private and public spaces and museum exhibitions, he also taught, published and wrote for television and organized exhibitions – always on the subjects of design, fashion, dance and the visual arts, plus their histories. Foremost though, are his stage designs for modern dance and ballet, for which he has received the Dutch design award, followed by an overall one, for contribution to the world of dance in general. Among his many collaborators are choreographers Nina Wiener, (Transatlantic Light, at BAM), Renato Zanella (Works for Viennese Opera), Bernd Bienert (Nutcracker, Zürich Opera), Heinz Spoerli (Goldberg Variations, Düsseldorf Opera), Nils Christe, (Before Nightfall, Paris Opera) and, more recently, a creative relationship with Martin Schläpfer in Germany, (Tanzsuite, Forelle).
Pivotal, throughout, has been his close bond with Hans van Manen, whose entire body of work, since 1978, (amounting to 70 creations, many of which have become classics worldwide) was given its look by him. Dekker first met Alexei in early 2012, resulting in Souvenir, part of a two-day, nine premiere ballet marathon, to celebrate 50 years of Dutch national ballet, wholly designed by him. Future projects include creations with Van Manen, Schläpfer and Ratmansky, a Massine-revival for Münich State Ballet, and designs towards a major celebration in the Netherlands of 500 years Hieronimus Bosch.
In 2013, Dekker designed costumes for American Ballet Theatre’s Chamber Symphony, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky.
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.
Herman Cornejo in Jiří Kylián’s Petite Mort. Photo: Marty Sohl.Petite Mort
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Synopsis - Petite Mort
Choreography by Jiří Kylián
Assistant to the Choreographer: Elke Schepers
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Set Design by Jiří Kylián
Costume Design by Joke Visser
Lighting Design by Jiří Kylián
Lighting Design by Joop Caboort
Lighting/Tech Adaptation: Joost Biegelaar
Jiří Kylián
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1947, Jiří Kylián started his dance career at the age of nine, at the School of the National Ballet in Prague. In 1962 he was accepted as a student at the Prague Conservatory. He left Prague when he received a scholarship for the Royal Ballet School in London in 1967. After this, he left to join the Stuttgart Ballet led by John Cranko. Kylián made his debut as a choreographer here with Paradox for the Noverre Gesellschaft. After having made three ballets for Nederlands Dans Theater, Viewers, Stoolgame and La Cathédrale Engloutie, he became artistic director of the company in 1975. In 1978 he put Nederlands Dans Theater on the international map with Sinfonietta. That same year, together with Carel Birnie, he founded Nederlands Dans Theater II, which served as a bridge between school and professional company life and was meant to give young dancers the opportunity to develop their skills and talents and to function as a breeding ground for young talent. He also initiated Nederlands Dans Theater III in 1991, the company for older dancers, above forty years of age. This three dimensional structure was unique in the world of dance. After an extraordinary record of service, Kylián handed over the artistic leadership in 1999, but remained associated to the dance company as house choreographer until December 2009. Jiří Kylián has created nearly 100 works of which many are performed all over the world. Kylián has not only made works for Nederlands Dans Theater, but also for the Stuttgart Ballet, the Paris Opéra Ballet, Bayerisches Staatsoper Münich, Swedish television, and the Tokyo Ballet.
Kylián has worked with many creative personalities of international stature, including composers Arne Nordheim (Ariadne, 1997) and Toru Takemitsu (Dream Time, 1983) and designers Walter Nobbe (Sinfonietta, 1978); Bill Katz (Symphony of Psalms, 1978); John Macfarlane (Forgotten Land, 1980); Michael Simon (Stepping Stones, 1991); Atsushi Kitagawara (One of a Kind, 1998); Susumu Shingu (Toss of a Dice, 2005); and Yoshiki Hishinuma (Zugvögel, 2009).
In the Summer of 2006, together with Film Art Director, Boris Paval Conen, he created the film Car-Men. It was choreographed “on location” on the surface brown coal mines of the Czech Republic. In 2010, Kylián served as Mentor in Dance in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. In 2013, together with NTR, he created the film Between Entrance and Exit which was nominated as one of the contestants for the ‘Gouden Kalf’ award during the Dutch Film Festival 2013 in Utrecht. For the Aichi Trienalle in Nagoya, Japan, he created the full-evening dance/film production, East Shadow which was dedicated to the victims of the Tsunami in Japan in 2011.
Over the course of his career, Kylián received many international awards including Officer of the Orange Order (Netherlands), Honorary Doctorate from The Juilliard School (New York), three Nijinsky Awards for best choreographer, company, and work (Monte Carlo), Benois de la Danse (Moscow and Berlin), Honorary Medal of the President of the Czech Republic, and Commander of the Legion d’honneur (France). In 2008 he was distinguished with one of the highest royal honors, the Medal of the Order of the House of Orange given to him by Her Majesty the Queen Beatrix from the Netherlands. In 2011, Kylián received the Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of dance and theater by the Czech Ministry of Culture in Prague.
Elke Schepers
Born in Amsterdam, Elke Schepers studied ballet at the Scapino Dance Academy and trained with, among others, Anne Marie Tannenbaum, Ivan Kramar, and Benjamin Harkarvy. She started her dance career in 1985 when she joined Nederlands Dans Theater 2, at that time called the Junior Group of the Nederlands Dans Theater. In that same year, she won the “Encouragement Prize” from Dansersfonds, an arts fund established by Alexandra Radius and Han Ebbelaar.
In 1987, Schepers was promoted to Nederlands Dans Theater 1, where she quickly became one of the muses of Jiří Kylián, then the artistic director of the company. She worked with many world-renowned choreographers, including Hans van Manen, William Forsythe, Ohad Naharin, and Mats Ek. In 1997, Schepers was awarded with the Silver Theatre Dance Prize for her leading role in A Sort Of by Mats Ek. In 2000, Schepers left Nederlands Dans Theater after a career of nearly 16 years with the company.
Schepers currently sets a variety of Jiří Kylián’s works all over the world. She also teaches yoga and participates in small dance projects.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria on January 27, 1756. His father, Leopold Mozart, was also a musician, an excellent violinist, court composer, and vice-Kappellmeister to the Archbishop of Salzburg. Mozart revealed his love for music at a very early age and his father instructed him, as well as his precociously talented sister Marianne. From 1762 on, Leopold travelled to various European cities with the children, presenting them in concerts which never failed to impress the nobility. They played in London for the King in 1764, by which year Mozart had already begun composing.
By 1766, Mozart was arranging movements of other composers’ music and composing sonatas, serenades, and symphonies. Visiting Vienna in 1768, he was asked by the Emperor to compose and conduct opera. During that visit, he also composed a Mass, trumpet concerto, and two symphonies.
His father continued to intersperse their travels with periods in Salzburg, and took the responsibility for his son’s further musical education. He made a point of taking Mozart to Italy to expose him to the Italian operatic style.
By the time he was 21, Mozart was a skilled performer on the pianoforte, violin, and viola, and had come to find Salzburg an intolerable place to live. He set out with his mother for Mannheim, where he composed and gave lessons, and fell in love with Aloysia Weber, one of the daughters of the family with which they were staying. His father was strongly opposed to this alliance, and, at his urging, Mozart reluctantly left for Paris in March of 1778. He remained there until January of 1779; his mother died while they were in Paris.
Mozart returned to Salzburg, where he was given the position of Konzertmaster and organist to the court and cathedral. He composed several symphonies, concertos, and divertimentos during this period. The Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364, dates from this time in Salzburg.
The opera Idomeneo, presented in Munich in January, 1781, established Mozart as a composer for the operatic stage. In March, 1781, he was summoned to Vienna, where he was to remain, with brief travels elsewhere, until his death. He met Haydn there at this time, and the two became good friends, respecting and mutually influencing each other’s work.
Mozart was not especially well received by the Viennese aristocracy, and found himself without an appropriate post — a situation which was to continue unrelieved until his death. His opera The Abduction from the Seraglio (Entfuhring auf dem Serail) was presented in July of 1782. Less than a month later, he married Constanze Weber, sister of his former love Aloysia, a match which met with strong disapproval from his father. The couple were poor, and neither of them had a good head for managing what little money they had. With no prospect of a fixed appointment, Mozart continued to earn money by composing and giving music lessons. His concerts were very successful, and the Emperor was frequently an enthusiastic member of the audience. Despite this, he was not able to come up with a position at court for the young composer.
Mozart gave subscription concerts, composing a new pianoforte concerto for each one. Despairing of his lack of success, Mozart from time to time considered going to London or Paris, but his father continuously discouraged him from leaving Vienna. Mozart became a member of a Viennese Masonic Lodge in 1784, and his association with the Masons inspired many compositions, most notably his opera The Magic Flute.
Mozart continued to compose operas: The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), adapted from a play by Beaumarchais, was first performed in 1786. It was a triumph, but led to no improvement in his financial situation. Don Giovanni was presented in 1787 in Prague, where his music was greatly appreciated. The Austrian Emperor ordered a new opera from him in 1790; the result was Cosi Fan Tutte.
By 1790, Mozart’s health had declined, and at times he was reduced to asking friends for loans. His previously prolific output — he had composed his last three symphonies during a six-week period — had fallen off. In his final year, he experienced one last burst of creative energy, composing a string quintet, his final piano concerto, a clarinet concerto, and the opera Le Clemenza di Tito, performed in Prague. His magnificent final opera The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), had its first performance in September, 1791. Coldly received at first, it gradually became extremely popular.
Mozart was desperately trying to finish his Requiem when he died on December 5, 1791. The official cause was malignant typhus fever, but there has been much historical speculation about the exact cause of his death. Due to his poverty, he was not granted an individual burial place, but was buried in a common pauper’s grave.
Source: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie; MacMillan Publishers, Ltd., 1980
Joke Visser
Born in The Hague, Netherlands, Joke Visser studied at the Rotterdam Snijschool. From 1976-1987, she ran a professional costume atelier and her clients included the Dutch National Ballet, the Netherlands Dance Theatre, and the Dutch National Opera.
In 1987, Visser joined the costume department of the Netherlands Dance Theatre, a position which gave her the opportunity to collaborate closely with choreographer and artistic director Jiri Kylian, and the many of the leading guest choreographers of NDT 1, 2, and 3. From 1989, in addition to her designing, she was promoted to the head of the costume department.
Joke Visser’s collaboration with Jiri Kylian includes such works as Falling Angels, Sweet Dreams, Sarabande, Un Ballo, Petite Mort, Stepping Stones, As If Never Been, No Sleeping Till Dawn of Day, Whereabouts Unknown, Tiger Lily, Double You, and Bella Figura.
Visser’s costume designs for Petite Mort are her second to enter American Ballet Theatre’s repertoire after Stepping Stones (1996).
Joop Caboort
Born in The Hague in 1944, Joop Caboort joined the Netherlands Dance Theater in 1965. Starting as a junior electrician, he studied all facets of the technical department and has been the company’s technical director since 1970. That same year he became NDT’s house lighting designer and has lit 200 works for the company, including ballets by Hans van Manen, Jennifer Muller, Louis Falco, Glen Tetley, Nacho Duato, as well as many of Jiří Kylián’s.
Being always closely involved in the production process of new works for NDT, he worked with such set designers as Jean Paul Vroom, William Katz, Walter Nobbe, Nadine Baylis, and John Macfarlane, as well as with various guest lighting designers such as Jennifer Tipton.
As a freelance lighting designer he lit the full-length ballet Krigsdanser for Birgit Cullberg (Stockholm, 1979), many works for Nils Christe (co-artistic director of the Scapino Ballet), and some Dutch stage plays. He has also worked with The Royal Ballet in London, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Paris Opera, The Joffrey Ballet, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, among others.
Caboort teaches the course Lighting Design for the Ballet at the Dutch School for Theatre Technicians (SOTT), and has served as a stage and lighting consultant for NDT’s Dance Theatre on the Spui, The Hague.
In 1995, after 25 years as technical director of the Netherlands Dance Theater, Caboort retired and now does lighting and scenic designs on a freelance basis.
The execution of the lighting for Petite Mort was Caboort’s third work to be added to American Ballet Theatre’s repertoire since his scenery and lighting for Stepping Stones (1996) and the lighting for Sechs Tänze (2003).
Joost Biegelaar
Joost Biegelaar was educated in stage management studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1992, he joined Nederlands Dans Theater 1, then under the direction of Jiří Kylián, where he worked, produced, and toured with NDT’s stage management and technical team worldwide. After 10 years with NDT, he became technical director of the Lucent Dans Theater in The Hague, the Netherlands, where he wored for five years.
Currently, Biegelaar is a freelance lighting designer and often works with Kylián Productions BV to reproduce Kylián’s ballets with companies around the world.
Scene from Études. Photo: Marty Sohl.Études
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Synopsis - Études
Ballet and Choreography by Harald Lander
Music by Carl Czerny
Adapted and Orchestrated by Knudåge Riisager
Staged by Thomas Lund
Artistic Advisor: Lise Lander
Lighting Design by Nananne Porcher
after Harald Lander
Harald Lander
Born in 1905, Harold Lander, was a Danish dancer and choreographer who was primarily responsible for rebuilding the faltering Royal Danish Ballet into a superb performing organization.
Lander studied under the great ballet master and reformer Michel Fokine in 1926-27 and danced in leading roles until 1945. As ballet master of the Royal Danish Ballet he enriched its repertoire with productions of Fokine’s masterpieces such as, Les Sylphides, Petrushka, and Prince Igor and revivals of works by the great 19th-century Danish choreographer August Bournonville. His own compositions include the frequently performed Etudes, a one-act ballet that begins with traditional ballet exercises at a dance studio’s “barre” and ends with spectacular displays by advanced students.
After becoming ballet master of the Paris Opera in 1953, he became a French citizen in 1956 and opened a studio in Paris in 1964. He was decorated by the governments of Denmark, Belgium, and France for his contributions to modern ballet. Lander returned to Copenhagen shortly before his death in 1971.
Carl Czerny
Carl Czerny was born in Vienna in 1791, and died there in 1857. He was a great pianist-pedagogue, the pupil of Beethoven, the teacher of Liszt, and the world’s champion as writer of popular pianoforte studies. Of these he wrote hundreds and they are perhaps the only remaining public relics of a varied production that ran to “Opus 1000.”
His individual contribution to the history of music spreads to the specific areas of pianoforte playing and teaching, improvisation, and composition, especially in the areas of concerto, hexameron, and étude.
Knudåge Riisager
Knudåge Riisager, a Danish composer of strongly modernistic and nationalistic style, was born in Port Kunda, Estonia on March 6, 1897. He took his degree in political economy at Copenhagen University in 1921 but one year later decided to turn to music and composing and began his studies in music theory with Peder Gram and Otto Malling. He also began his study of the violin at that time with Peder Moller.
Riisager traveled to Paris to work with Albert Roussel and Paul Le Flem in 1930 and then to Leipzig to study counterpoint with Hermann Grabner. Critics generally agree that Riisager’s compositions are especially reflective of the teachings of Roussel and indicate the strong influence of the works of Paul Dukas. He was the recipient of several prizes during his career, including the prize from the Danish Ministry of Education in 1942 and the Wilhelm Hansen prize for composition in 1925. In 1937, Riisager became the President of the Danish League of Composers.
Among Riisager’s compositions are four symphonies, two overtures, the Dionysian Suite, Variations on a Theme by Mezangeau, Poem mecanique, Jabiru T-DOZC, the Trumpet Concerto and several ballets, including Benzin (1930), Cocktail Party (1942), Tolo med Posten and The Bird Phoenix (1942), Qarrtsiluni (1942), and works for chamber groups, male chorus, voice, and the piano.
Riisager died in Copenhagen on December 16, 1974.
Thomas Lund
Thomas Lund completed his dance training at The Royal Danish Ballet School and has had his career as a principal dancer in the Royal Danish Ballet, with guest performances around the world. He has performed leads in Bournonville ballets such as La Sylphide, Napoli, The Kermesse in Bruges, Abdallah, Le Conservatoire, The Flower Festival in Genzano and classical and neo-classical ballets such as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Études, Gaité Parisienne, The Lesson, Caroline Mathilde, Symphony in C, Rubies, and Tarantella.
Lund regularly stages Harald Lander’s chief work Études in Denmark and around the world (Opéra de Paris, Boston Ballet, Wiener Staatsoper, The National Ballet of Canada). He stages August Bournonville ballets in Denmark and abroad, is a teacher of the Bournonville style, and has given a number of Bournonville master classes in Denmark and abroad.
From 2012 to 2022, Lund was Director of the Royal Danish Ballet School.
Lund is Commander of the Order of Dannebrog.
Lise Lander
Born Elisabeth Gateau, Lise Lander was Harald Lander’s assistant and, from 1965 until his death in 1971, also his wife. Together with Toni Lander (Harald Lander’s previous wife), she has taught the choreographer’s production Études to the Hungarian National Ballet, the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, the Tokyo Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, the Houston Ballet, Salt Lake City’s Ballet West, and the Royal Danish Ballet.
Since Toni Lander’s death in 1985, Lise Lander has carried on this work alone, leading the teaching sections and serving as an artistic consultant, bringing the work to more and more cities, including Boston, Shanghai, London, and Vienna.
She is the current heir to the rights to Harald Lander’s works.
Nananne Porcher
Nananne Porcher, a graduate of the University of North Carolina, was president of Jean Rosenthal Associates, Inc. She did graduate work at UCLA and holds an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She was assistant to Jean Rosenthal from 1944 to 1956. She designed the lighting for over 100 operas, including two world premieres and numerous American premieres, working on the first opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center as well as the first opera at the opening of the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D. C. She is included in Who’s Who in Opera.
Porcher designed lighting for ballet from 1957, including work with New York City Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theater, and various regional companies. She served as Lighting Designer and technical coordinator for American Ballet Theatre from 1960‑1966, and as Resident Lighting Designer and technical coordinator from 1971‑1978.
Porcher’s television work included the lighting direction for the 1976 Emmy Award “Live From Lincoln Center” production of ABT’s Swan Lake, and the 1977 Emmy Award “Live From Lincoln Center” production of ABT’s Giselle. Her film work included the Stage Lighting Direction for The Turning Point, Herbert Ross’ film with Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Porcher’s professional affiliations included International Association of Lighting Designers, United States Institute of Theater Technology, League of Historic American Theaters, and Theater Historical Society.
Nananne Porcher died in 2001 at the age of 78.
Hee Seo in Giselle. Photo: Gene Schiavone.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.
Hee Seo in Giselle. Photo: Gene Schiavone.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.
The Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker. Photo: Rosalie O'Connor.The Nutcracker
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The Nutcracker - History
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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 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.
