Devon Teuscher in Whipped Cream. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.Whipped Cream
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Synopsis - Whipped Cream
Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Libretto and Score by Richard Strauss
Sets and Costumes by Mark Ryden
Scenery Supervisor: Camellia Koo
Costume Supervisor: Holly Hynes
Lighting by Brad Fields
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.
Mark Ryden
Blending themes of pop culture with techniques reminiscent of the old masters, Mark Ryden has created a singular style that blurs the traditional boundaries between high and low art. His work first garnered attention in the 1990s when he ushered in a new genre of painting, “Pop Surrealism”, dragging a host of followers in his wake. Ryden has trumped the initial surrealist strategies by choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation.
Ryden’s vocabulary ranges from cryptic to cute, treading a fine line between nostalgic cliché and disturbing archetype. Seduced by his infinitely detailed and meticulously glazed surfaces, the viewer is confronted with the juxtaposition of the childhood innocence and the mysterious recesses of the soul. In Ryden’s world cherubic girls rub elbows with strange and mysterious figures. Ornately carved frames lend the paintings as baroque exuberance that adds gravity to their enigmatic themes.
Mark Ryden received a BFA in 1987 from Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena. His paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including a retrospective “Wondertoonel” at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle and Pasadena Museum of California Art, and in the exhibition “The Artist’s Museum” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Camellia Koo
Camellia Koo is a Toronto-based set and costume designer for theater, opera, dance, and site-specific performance installations. Recent designs for opera and ballet include La Bohème (Santa Fe Opera), Turandot (Helikon Opera, Moscow), The Rape of Lucretia (Banff Centre/Against the Grain), Rocking Horse Winner (Tapestry New Opera), Sleeping Beauty (Ballet Jörgen Canada), Macbeth (Minnesota Opera), Carmen and The Tales of Hoffman (Edmonton Opera), Maria Stuarda (Pacific Opera Victoria), The Lighthouse (Boston Lyric Opera), Pélleas et Mélisande, Turn of the Screw, and La Bohéme (Against the Grain). Recent designs for theater include collaborations with The Shaw Festival, The Stratford Festival, and Soulpepper Theatre Company, amongst others across Canada.
Koo has received six Dora Mavor Moor Awards (Toronto), a Sterling Award (Edmonton), a Chalmers Award Grant, shared the 2006 Siminovitch Protégé Prize, was a team prizewinner at the 2011 Opera Europa Directing Prize, and received the 2016 Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award for Costume Design. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize for Excellence in Theatre for Design.
Holly Hynes
Holly Hynes if an accomplished costume designer with over 100 ballets to her credit including more than 45 at New York City Ballet. Hynes’ designs are also on view in companies throughout the world including The Royal Ballet, Koninklijk Ballet van Vlaanderen in Belgium, Royal Danish Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Hamburg Ballet, BalletMet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Ballet Vancouver, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, American Repertory Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Nashville Ballet, Ballet Pacifica, Chamber Dance Project, Ballet NY, Ballet Florida, Washington Ballet and The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago.
Hynes’ theatrical designs include two Broadway productions at Circle in the Square, On Borrowed Time, directed by George C. Scott, and George Bernard Shaw’s Getting Married, as well as a dozen plays and musicals at the off-Broadway York Theater. Jerome Robbins, Peter Martins and The George Balanchine Trust have also entrusted her as an authority, representing all parties, to teach costume reproduction of various established designs. This has involved many companies both here and abroad including the Royal Danish Ballet, Paris Opera, Theatre du Capitol in Tolouse, France, The Bavarian State Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, The Birmingham Royal Ballet, La Scala, Milan and the Kirov Ballet. Hynes has been with New York City Ballet since 1985, first serving as assistant director of the costume shop, dealing with the daily management of drapers and tailors. She was appointed Director of Costumes in 1989. In this position she oversees the entire costume department, including a costume shop of 20 and the staff of dressers and wardrobe supervisors at the New York State Theater. Four of her costume renderings remain as part of the permanent collection of the Theatre Wing of the Museum of the City of New York. She has exhibited her renderings and watercolors in two gallery shows at Avery Fisher Hall and has had six of her costumes featured on covers of the 1994-1995 New York State Theater Playbills. Hynes’ designs for six miniature ballerina dolls were featured in the 1996 Christmas decorations at the White House and will remain the permanent collection of the President William Jefferson Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1997, she was honored with a one-woman show of her costumes, sketches and photographs at the Marvin Cone Galleries in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her designs for Ulysses Dove’s Red Angels at New York City Ballet and George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15 for The Suzanne Farrell Ballet were both featured on covers of Dance Magazine. This spring, she designed Christopher Wheeldon’s American in Paris for New York City Ballet, Stanton Welch’s Firebird for BalletMet, as well as a new production of Balanchine’s Don Quixote for The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Hynes is currently working on a new design for Balanchine’s Who Cares for Alberta Ballet. Hynes lives in New Jersey with her husband, Jim Zulakis, and their two children. Her previous work for American Ballet was the costume designs for Kaleidoscope (2005).
Brad Fields
Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Brad Fields has traveled throughout the world as lighting designer for ballet and modern dance companies. He joined American Ballet Theatre in 1995 where he has served as the lighting designer for more than thirty ballets including Alexei Ratmansky’s The Bright Stream, Firebird, Harlequinade, On the Dnieper, Seven Sonatas, Songs of Bukovina, and Whipped Cream; Christopher Wheeldon’s Thirteen Diversions, Benjamin Millepied’s Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once, Twyla Tharp’s Rabbit and Rogue, and Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre.
Fields frequently works with Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato. For the Mikhailovsky Ballet, he designed the lighting for Duato’s Romeo and Juliet, The Sleeping Beauty, Prelude, and Nunc Dimittis. For Compañia Nacional de Danza, he has lit Duato’s Alas, Arcangelo, Castrati, Cobalto, Diecisiete, Dreams of Ether, Gilded Goldbergs, Herrumbre, Hevel, Jardín Infinito, Multiplicity: Form of Silence and Emptiness, Remanso, and Without Words.
Other credits include George Balanchine’s Don Quixote for National Ballet of Canada and Suzanne Farrell Ballet, Natalia Makarova’s La Bayadère, Nicolo Fonte’s The Possibility Space, and Matt Mozewski’s Semele for The Australian Ballet. He has also designed for Ballet Argentina, Bavarian State Ballet, Boston Ballet, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Houston Ballet, Hubbard Street, Göteborg Opera Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Lewitzky Dance Company, Lyon Opera Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Netherlands Dance Theatre, North Carolina Dance Theater, the Norwegian Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, The Royal Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Royal Swedish Ballet, Vienna Opera Ballet, and Ballet Zurich.
Fields graduated from University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 1987.
SunMi Park and Tristan Brosnan in Jessica Lang's Children's Songs Dance. Photo: Erin Baiano.Children's Songs Dance
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Gillian Murphy as Titania in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.The Dream
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The Dream - Synopsis
Choreography by Frederick Ashton
Music by Felix Mendelssohn
Sets and Costumes by David Walker
Lighting by John B. Read
Frederick Ashton
Frederick Ashton was born in 1904 and spent his childhood in South America. He studied with Leonide Massine and Marie Rambert, who also gave him his first opportunities as a choreographer.
A Tragedy of Fashion, a commission in 1926, was his first ballet to be staged – as part of a revue entitled Riverside Nights. In 1928, he joined Ida Rubinstein’s company in Paris, where he also came under the influence of Bronislava Nijinska from whom, he acknowledged, he learned his craft. He came to England in 1929 to choreograph for Rambert and the Camargo Society. He also danced with the Rambert Company in both the classics and modern works, and partnered Tamara Karsavina, Lydia Lopokova, and Alicia Markova, at the same time pursuing a successful career as a dancer in musicals and revues.
In 1931, he created his first work, Regatta, for Ninette de Valois’ Vic-Wells Ballet, and four years later was invited to become Resident Choreographer. Ashton remained De Valois’ associate until 1948 when his position as Associate Director was publicly recognized. In 1963, he succeeded Dame Ninette as Director of the company (now called The Royal Ballet), a position he held until he retired in 1970. In 1935, Ashton began his association with Margot Fonteyn, creating the Bride in Le Baiser de la Fée for her. Among the ballets he has since made with her in mind are Nocturne, Horoscope, Dante Sonata, Symphonic Variations (his first ballet for the Covent Garden stage), Daphnis and Chloë, Ondine, and Marguerite and Armand (for Fonteyn and Nureyev). Ashton’s choreography has caused an unmistakably lyrical style to emerge in British ballet. In addition to comic and dramatic ballets and those of “pure” dance, his innate sense of theatre is always apparent.
Of nearly 100 ballets, many have been landmarks, including Cinderella, Daphnis and Chloë, The Two Pigeons, and Birthday Offering for the company’s Silver Jubilee. In addition to the inspiration of Fonteyn, he created The Dream for Anotinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell. La Fille Mal Gardée has been a brilliant success throughout the world, often mounted by Ashton himself.
More recent full-scale ballets have been Rhapsody, created for Mikhail Baryshnikov, in honor of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’s 80th birthday; Verdi Capricci, premiered on April 19, 1983, the opening night of The Royal Ballet’s season at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York; and before that, A Month in the Country.
During 1985, Ashton choreographed a solo for Merle Park, La Chatte Metamorphoses en Femme, for a gala in honor of Fanny Elssler in Vienna and supervised London Festival Ballet’s revival of his Romeo and Juliet. Ashton first worked in opera in 1934, when he staged Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts, in the United States. In 1953, he staged Gluck’s Orfeo at Covent Garden, with Kathleen Ferrier singing the title role in her last appearance. Benjamin Britten’s last opera, Death in Venice, also includes dances choreographed by Ashton. In 1981, he created choreography for the Nightingale and the Fisherman (on Natalia Makarova and Anthony Dowell) for Igor Stravinsky’s opera Le Rossignol for the Metropolitan Opera’s triple-bill Stravinsky Centenary evening. In September 1983, this production, with designs by David Hockney, was taken into the repertoire of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden.
Frederick Ashton was made a CBE in 1950, and knighted in 1962. In 1970, he became a Companion of Honour, and in October 1977, he was invited by The Queen to become a member of the Order of Merit. France admitted Ashton to the Legion d’Honneur in 1962 and Denmark made him a Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog in 1963. Recognition of his achievement came in 1959 from the Royal Academy of Dancing, which gave him its Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award; in 1972 from the Carina Aria Foundation in Sweden with its Gold Medal; and with honorary degrees: as Doctor of Letters in the Universities of Durham (1962) and East Anglia (1967), and as Doctor of Music in the Universities of London (1970) and Oxford (1976).
On August 19, 1988, Frederick Ashton died in his sleep at his country home in Eye, Suffolk. He was 83.
Felix Mendelssohn
Born in Hamburg in 1809, Felix Mendelssohn was the grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the son of a successful banker. He was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and domestic comfort and his mother, a pianist, gave him his first piano lessons. His sister, Fanny, was also a pianist and a composer.
Mendelssohn’s remarkable gifts as a composer, conductor, and pianist were encouraged by his teachers including Marie Bigot (in Paris) and Ludwig Berger (piano, in Berlin). At the age of nine, he was performing in public, at age 12 he had written his piano quartet (Op. 1), at 14 he had his own private orchestra, at 16 he had written his octet for strings, and, at 17, the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He championed the cause of J.S. Bach by conducting, in 1929, at the age of 20, the first public performance after Bach’s death of his St. Matthew Passion. Recollections of his visits to both Scotland and Italy resulted in the Hebrides overture, the Scottish symphony, No. 3 in A minor and Major, and the Italian symphony, No. 4 in A Major and minor. He also visited Paris where he met both Liszt and Chopin, and then returned to Germany where he was appointed musical director at the Dusseldorf.
In 1835, he became conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig. In 1837, he married Cecile Jenrenaud, the descendant of French Huguenot family, and, in 1842, he founded, with Schumann and others, the Leipzig Conservatorium. In 1846, he conducted his oratorio Elijah at the Birmingham Festival, one of his greatest triumphs.
Poor health and the death of his sister hastened his death in 1846 at the age of 38.
FROM: The New College Encyclopedia of Music by J. A. Westrup and F. L. Harrison, revised
by Conrad Wilson; W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1976
David Walker
David Walker studied with Jeanetta Cochrane at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. His early costume work includes Lope de Vega’s Sleep Well, produced by Joan Littlefield for the Liverpool Theatre Workshop. He has designed sets and costumes for Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, and La Sylphide for numerous companies, including The Royal Ballet, the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet), the National Ballet of Canada, and Houston Ballet.
His work in theater design includes The Changeling for The Royal Court Theatre in London, London Assurance for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Man and Superman for London’s Royal National Theatre. He has also done design work for The Royal Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, the English National Opera, and the Stockholm Opera.
In 1968, Walker designed Sir Frederick Ashton’s ballet The Dream for The Royal Ballet, a new production of The Nutcracker for the London Festival Ballet, and costumes for the San Francisco Opera’s production of La Traviata. He has collaborated with Houston Ballet on sets and costumes for the world premiere of Romeo and Juliet in 1987, and Cinderella in 1989.
Walker died in 2008 at age 74. His scenery and costume designs for Cinderella (Stevenson), The Dream (Ashton), and Cinderella (Ashton) have all entered American Ballet Theatre’s repertoire.
John B. Read
John B. Read is generally considered to be one of the most outstanding lighting designers working internationally in dance, opera, theater, and music stage. He was born in Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex and trained at the Rose Bruford Training College in Sidcup, Kent.
Before being appointed consultant lighting designer to The Royal Ballet in 1981, Read worked widely as a freelance designer. He has worked with every major choreographer in London. Notable collaborations have been with Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Antony Tudor, Glen Tetley, Jerome Robbins, Rudolf Nureyev, Anthony Dowell, David Bintley, Ronald Hynd, Wayne Eagling, Ulysses Dove, and Ashley Page. Works for Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet/Birmingham Royal Ballet include Papillon, The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Median, The Snow Queen, Allegri diversi, and One by Nine. For The Royal Ballet, his works include Field Figures, Laborintus, Voluntaries, Isadora, Requiem, Valley of Shadows, The Tempest, Varii Capricci, Fleeting Figures, Galanteries, The Nutcracker, Beauty and the Beast, Pursuit, The Prince of the Pagodas, Illuminations, and the televised ballet tribute to H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, Fanfare for Elizabeth.
Abroad, Read has worked with the ballet companies of Munich, Stuttgart, Berlin, Paris, Lyon, Nancy, Copenhagen, Oslo, Gulbenkian in Portugal, Netherlands, two Israeli companies, the National Ballet of Canada, New York City Ballet, Houston, San Francisco, Cincinnati, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Recently, his work for The Royal Ballet has been seen in Korea and Australia.
In the area of contemporary dance, Read works regularly with London Contemporary Dance, and designed the Royal Gala and a new Cohan work in 1985-1986. He worked with Dance Advance in the Summer of 1989.
For other British ballet companies – Rambert Dance Company, London City Ballet, English National Ballet, and the Scottish Ballet in particular – Read’s designs have been seen both in Britain and abroad, as well as at the Sadler’s Wells and the Coliseum and Dominion theatre seasons in London. Much of his work has been televised or is available on video, including Manon, The Nutcracker, Galanteries, Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, Hobson’s Choice, La Bayadère, and The Prince of the Pagodas.
In London’s West End, Read designed the lighting for On Your Toes with Natalia Makarova, The Nerd, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Who Plays Wins. In 1990, he designed the lighting for the second West End and Manchester runs of Song and Dance. In 1991, he did his first lighting assignment, Stephen Berkoff’s adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, for the Royal National Theatre.
His many opera credits include Goetz Freiderich’s Ring of the Niebelungen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Anna Bolena, Tosca, and Die Meistersinger and La Cenerentola for The Royal Opera, Aida for the English National Opera, and many productions for the English Music Theatre and Opera groups.
Other companies who have used Read’s lighting designs include the Prospect Theatre Company, the Greenwich Theatre, the Buxton Opera House, and the Young Vic.
His lighting for Glen Tetley’s Gemini (1975) and Le Sacre du Printemps (1976), Kenneth MacMillan’s Anastasia (1999), and Frederick Ashton’s The Dream (2002) and A Month in the Country have all entered American Ballet Theatre’s repertoire.
Calvin Royal III in Lifted. Photo: Karolina Kuras.Lifted
World Premiere
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Lifted - Synopsis
Choreography by Christopher Rudd
Music by Carlos Simon
Intimacy Direction by Sarah Lozoff
Dramaturgy by Phaedra Scott
Costumes by Carly Cushnie
Costume Design Supervision by Caitlin Rain
Scenic Design by Christopher Rudd
Scenic Design Supervision by Camellia Koo
Scenic Consultant: Alan C. Edwards
Lighting by Alan C. Edwards
Christopher Rudd
Christopher Rudd is a Jamaican born dance-maker and 2019 Guggenheim Choreography Fellow who blends contemporary ballet with contemporary circus to speak to relevant social issues. He began dancing at age nine in Miami, Florida through the Armour Dance Theater’s Scholarship Program, led by Ruth Wiesen. At 11, Rudd became the first Black child to dance the title role in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, an accomplishment for which ABC’s Peter Jennings named him Person of the Week in 1991. He graduated from New World School of the Arts High School and attended Dance Theatre of Harlem Summer Intensive for four summers on full scholarship.
Rudd envisioned creating dance from early on. He was fortunate to have trained and worked with a variety of artists and companies which helped develop him as a multi-faceted choreographer. He has performed with Carolina Ballet where he was a founding member, Les Grands Ballet Canadiens de Montreal, and Alberta Ballet. He was honored to work on the creation and dance for Cirque Du Soleil’s Zaia, their first resident show in Asia.
Rudd has performed in the opening ceremony of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and with The Metropolitan Opera for three seasons, as well as guested with Pennsylvania Ballet. Throughout his career he worked with a wide range of choreographers such as Mats Ek, Shen Wei, Diddy Veldman, Christopher Wheeldon, Mauro Bigonzetti, Margo Sappington, Mark Morris, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, Donald Mahler, Tyler Walters, and Robert Weiss. He also has been featured in works of George Balanchine, Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe, José Limón, Ohad Naharin, and Jean-Christophe Maillot.
Rudd created the groundbreaking Touché for American Ballet Theatre’s virtual Fall Gala in 2020. Touché had its stage debut in 2021 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for American Ballet Theatre and its European debut in Rome, Italy at Auditorium Parco della Musica for Les Etoiles Gala 2022. Rudd has also choreographed for the Alvin Ailey School Summer Intensive, Columbia/Barnard University, Earl Mosley’s Institute of the Arts, Duke University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Dance Now! Miami, Alberta Ballet’s Workshop, Harlem Stage’s E-Moves, Ballet Divertimento in Montreal, and Muiktheater Vorarlberg in Austria. His works have been seen live in New York, Florida, Connecticut, Texas, North Carolina, Utah, Canada, France, Trinidad and Tobago, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, and Italy.
In addition to being the first recipient of The New World School of the Arts Alumni Foundation’s Inspiration Grant, Rudd has been awarded grants from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, New Music USA, American Dance Abroad, Career Transition For Dancers, Harlem Stage’s Fund for New Work, World Learning Global Development and Exchange, U.S. Embassy Burkina Faso, and Arts Envoy, a program supported by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs.
Rudd was honored to be a 2019/20 New Victory Theater LabWorks Artist at the New Victory Theater in New York City and their inaugural LabWorks Launch Artist. He has also been awarded residencies from Tofte Lake Center, Kaatsbaan, STREB Lab for Action Mechanics (twice), Vendetta Mathea La Manufacture in Aurillac, France, Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture through the CUNY Dance Initiative, and received a Works & Process at New Victory Theater Bubble residency at Kaatsbaan.
He founded RudduR Dance in 2015 to create works of high artistic merit and as a platform to better the world through dance. The company blends contemporary ballet with different genres of dance including contemporary circus and theatricality to speak to social issues. RudduR Dance presented works on four continents in four years and made its SummerStage debut by participating in a globally accessible Juneteenth Tribute on June 19, 2020.
Carlos Simon
“My dad, he always gets on me. He wants me to be a preacher, but I always tell him, ‘Music is my pulpit. That’s where I preach,’” Carlos Simon reflected for The Washington Post’s ‘Composers and Performers to Watch in 2022’ list.
Having grown up in Atlanta, with a long lineage of preachers and connections to gospel music to inspire him, Simon proves that a well-composed song can indeed be a sermon. His compositions span genres – jazz, gospel, and contemporary classical music are noticeable influences – and can be found everywhere from film scores to concert music.
Simon is the current Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and frequently writes for the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, with the 2022/23 season seeing premieres with Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Art Song Society, and Minnesota Orchestra – a large-scale tribute to George Floyd and the ongoing movement for racial justice.
These follow recent other commissions from the likes of New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and performances from Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and American Ballet Theatre.
A “young composer on the rise, with an ear for social justice” (NPR), Simon’s latest album, Requiem for the Enslaved, is a multi-genre musical tribute to commemorate the stories of the 272 enslaved men, women, and children sold in 1838 by Georgetown University. Released by Decca in June 2022, this work sees Simon infuse his original compositions with African American spirituals and familiar Catholic liturgical melodies, performed by Hub New Music Ensemble, Marco Pavé, and MK Zulu.
Acting as music director and keyboardist for GRAMMY Award winner Jennifer Holliday, Simon has performed with the Boston Pops Symphony, Jackson Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony. He has also toured internationally with soul GRAMMY-nominated artist Angie Stone and performed throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. He is an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Music Sinfonia Fraternity and a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Society of Composers International, and Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society. He has served as a member of the music faculty at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and now serves as Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. Simon was also a recipient of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization to recognize extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians, and was named a Sundance/Time Warner Composer Fellow for his work for film and moving image.
Sarah Lozoff
Sarah Lozoff (SDC) is the resident intimacy director for RudduR Dance, as well as the first intimacy director to work with American Ballet Theatre. She intimacy coordinated and directed on the groundbreaking commissioned work, Touché, for both the film and stage versions. Lozoff has served as the consulting intimacy director for ABT’s Fall 2021 and Summer 2022 seasons, was the first resident intimacy director for a major regional theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and was named by Broadway Women’s Fund as a “Woman to Watch on Broadway.” She is also a partner with Production on Deck and a certified Gyrotonic trainer.
As a second generation dancer, Lozoff trained at Miami Conservatory (now Armour Dance Theatre) under Thomas Armour, Robert Pike, Ruth Wiesen, and Nancy Raffa. At the nationally renowned New World School of the Arts, she studied with Judith Newman, Gerri Houlihan, Peter London, and many others. Professionally, Lozoff performed soloist and principal roles with Ballet Rosario Suarez, directed by Cuban prima ballerina Rosario “Charin” Suarez.
For more than 20 years, Lozoff taught ballet for professional companies, conservatories, public schools, and outreach programs. Over the last 10 years, she’s choreographed and provided movement direction for theatre productions at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Guthrie Theater, and Mixed Blood Theatre, as well as intimacy direction for Oregon Shakespeare Festival, RudduR Dance, and American Ballet Theatre. Lozoff has been a guest speaker and facilitated workshops on intimacy direction at Stanford University, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Kentucky at Lexington, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Southern Oregon University, and the Society of American Fight Directors. She has intimacy directed for the Barnard/Columbia Dance program, as well as provided workshops on Intimacy Direction specifically for dance to high school students, undergraduates, and faculty at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
In addition to her performing arts background, Lozoff has a rich history with both social justice work and birth work. She’s a second-generation activist who’s well versed in current EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) practices and presently sits on the EDI committee for USITT (United States Institute for Theatre Technology). Lozoff was also a birth doula and childbirth educator for many years, during which time she produced events and moderated panels centered around informed choice and consent. Her work in the above arenas has given Lozoff a unique insight and preparation for intimacy work in performance.
Lozoff is currently intimacy directing and consulting for both American Ballet Theatre and RudduR Dance, intimacy coordinating in film and TV, conducting talent acquisition searches with Production on Deck, teaching the Gyrotonic Method in Los Angeles, and consulting on dance, theatre, and educational projects nationwide.
Phaedra Scott
Phaedra Michelle Scott is a writer and dramaturg based in New York City. She has recently been staffed on an upcoming television show with CBS/Showtime. Her recent playwriting credits include Good Hair (commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant & Ensemble Studio Theater, developed with Pipeline Playlab); Diaspora! (commissioned by SpeakEasy Stage, 2022 Great Plains Theater Commons); and Plantation Black (developed at SPACE on Ryder Farm). Her podcast work included PLEASURE MACHINE, developed with Colt Coer. Other plays include The Puritans (commissioned by Sparkhaven Theater Company) and Unity (commissioned by University of Massachusetts, Amherst). She is a member of Youngblood with Ensemble Studio Theater. She is a member of the Writers Guild of America.
As a dramaturg, she has worked in new play development institutions around the company where she supports writers in developing new work. She is the Resident Dramaturg of New Harmony Project and a freelance producer with Audible Theater in the Emerging Playwrights Fund. Her previous credits include dramaturgy with New Victory Theater (NYC), New Dramatists (NYC), MTC Theater (NYC), and The Playwrights Realm (NYC). Regional credits include Huntington Theater Company (Boston), Cleveland Play House, Utah Shakespeare Festival, and Salt Lake Acting Company. Other credits include Playwrights Center, Great Plains Theater Commons.
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.
Camellia Koo
Camellia Koo is a Toronto-based set and costume designer for theater, opera, dance, and site-specific performance installations. Recent designs for opera and ballet include La Bohème (Santa Fe Opera), Turandot (Helikon Opera, Moscow), The Rape of Lucretia (Banff Centre/Against the Grain), Rocking Horse Winner (Tapestry New Opera), Sleeping Beauty (Ballet Jörgen Canada), Macbeth (Minnesota Opera), Carmen and The Tales of Hoffman (Edmonton Opera), Maria Stuarda (Pacific Opera Victoria), The Lighthouse (Boston Lyric Opera), Pélleas et Mélisande, Turn of the Screw, and La Bohéme (Against the Grain). Recent designs for theater include collaborations with The Shaw Festival, The Stratford Festival, and Soulpepper Theatre Company, amongst others across Canada.
Koo has received six Dora Mavor Moor Awards (Toronto), a Sterling Award (Edmonton), a Chalmers Award Grant, shared the 2006 Siminovitch Protégé Prize, was a team prizewinner at the 2011 Opera Europa Directing Prize, and received the 2016 Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award for Costume Design. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize for Excellence in Theatre for Design.
Alan C. Edwards
Since receiving his M.F.A. from David Geffen School of Drama at Yale in 2011, Alan C. Edwards has had great opportunities to design for a diverse selection of theater companies including The Classical Theatre of Harlem, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Dallas Theatre Center, where in 2015 he designed lighting for the world premiere musical Stagger Lee, written by Will Power and Justin Ellington. The story followed five characters through the African-American experience of the 20th century. For Classical Theatre of Harlem, Edwards has become a regular, designing their Uptown Shakespeare in the Park (The Tempest and Macbeth)and their world premiere Harlem-based Christmas musical The First Noel, in association with The Apollo Theatre. At the National Black Theatre, he has had the pleasure of designing premieres of Nikkole Salters’ Carnaval, and Chisa Hutchinson’s Dead & Breathing, among other projects. A special collaboration between CTH and NBT bred a production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman, which led to Edwards’ nomination for the Audelco Award for Lighting Design in 2014. In dance, he has collaborated with choreographers Jessica Chen and Jeremy McQueen on numerous occasions. Select theater, dance, and opera credits include The Mountaintop (Cleveland Playhouse, Dallas Theatre Center); Constellations, Deathtrap (Berkshire Theatre Group); The Black Iris, Madiba (Jeremy McQueen); Carmen (Tri-Cities Opera); Suor Angelica (Simpson Opera); Acis & Galatea (Madison Opera); A Delicate Balance and The Piano Lesson (Yale Rep). Edwards began teaching at David Geffen School of Drama in 2016, and is also on the faculty for the Yale College undergraduate program.
Luciana Paris and Aran Bell in The Seasons. Photo: Marty Sohl.The Seasons
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The Seasons - Synopsis
Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Music by Alexander Glazunov
Costumes by Robert Perdziola
Lighting by Mark Stanley
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.
Alexander Glazunov
When Tchaikovsky died in 1893, Marius Petipa began to search for composers for his ballets. One of those to whom he turned was Alexander Glazunov, who was not yet thirty, but who had been one of the most gifted protégés of Rimsky-Korsakov and who already enjoyed a considerable international reputation. The results of their collaborations were three ballets: the three-act Raymonda in 1898, Glazunov’s first work for the theater, and Les Ruses d’amour and The Seasons, composed in 1898 and 1898, respectively, and produced in 1890, after which Glazunov composed nothing else for the theater.
Glazunov was born in 1865 in St. Petersburg into a cultivated family. His talent was evident early, and he began to study the piano at age nine and to compose at age 11. In 1879, he met the composer Mily Balakirev who recommended studies with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom his formal lessons advanced rapidly. At age 16, Glazunov completed his First Symphony, which received its premiere in 1882 led by Balakirev, followed by a performance of his First String Quartet. His talent gained the attention of the arts patron and amateur musician Mitrofan Belyayev, who championed Glazunov’s music, along with that of Rimsky-Korsakov, Anatoly Lyadov, among others, and took Glazunov on a tour of western Europe, during which he met Franz Liszt in Weimar. In 1889, Glazunov led a performance of his Second Symphony in Paris at the World Exhibition.
Glazunov’s ballets were commissioned by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the Imperial Theatres, for Petipa, his ballet master. Petipa and Vsevolozhsky’s original intentions were to commission the score for Les Millions d’Arléquin, or Harlequinade, from Glazunov and for Riccardo Drigo to compose the score for The Seasons.
The composers were close friends and soon developed an affinity for each other’s assigned ballet. Glazunov expressed to Petipa and Vsevolozhsky that the subject of Harlequinade was ideally suited to the Italian composer’s talents. In the end, Glazunov was commissioned to compose the scores for the two one-act ballets The Seasons and Les Ruses d’amour, while Drigo wrote the music for the two-act Harlequinade.
In 1899, Glazunov was appointed professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and at the end of 1905, became its director, a position he kept until 1930. During this period and notwithstanding heavy teaching and administrative responsibilities, Glazunov completed his Violin Concerto, Eighth Symphony, First Piano Concerto, and his Sixth String Quartet, some of his most acclaimed orchestral and instrumental works. Glazunov possessed an exceptional ear and musical memory. After Alexander Borodin’s sudden death in 1887, he, along with Rimsky-Korsakov, completed and revised various unfinished works, including parts of Prince Igor. The younger composer also orchestrated two movements of Borodin’s Third Symphony.
Glazunov masterful sense of color is also evident in the orchestral arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher (1878), originally a work for violin and piano. Glazunov’s orchestration was published in 1896 by P. Jurgenson. Alexei Ratmansky set two of the three movements of the orchestrated version as a ballet in 2012. American Ballet Theatre gave the American premiere in 2017.
In 1832, Glazunov moved to Paris, where he settled with his wife and adopted daughter. His Saxophone Concerto, written in 1934, was one of his last large-scale works. He died on March 21, 1836. His remains were transferred in 1972 to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and reinterred in Tikhvin Cemetery, where Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Petipa are buried.
Robert Perdziola
Robert Perdziola has designed sets and costumes for American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Saito Kinen Festival, San Francisco Opera, Opéra Monte Carlo, Garsington Opera, Opera Australia, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Cincinnati Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Opera Boston, and Glimmerglass Opera. Among these designs are those for Capriccio and Il Pirata for the Met, La Grande Duchesse for Opera Boston, and Falstaff for the Saito Kinen Festival. In 2017 he designed two productions of Le Nozze di Figaro, one for Garsington Opera in Wormsley, England, and the other for Hyogo Performing Arts Center, Japan. In fall 2016, Perdziola created sets and costumes for the Finnish National Ballet’s Alice In Wonderland. His productions of The Nutcracker (2012) and Swan Lake (2014) are regularly seen at Boston Ballet.
For American Ballet Theatre, Perdziola has designed costumes and scenery for the revival of Antony Tudor’s Pillar of Fire (2003), for Alexei Ratmansky’s Harlequinade (2018), and for Ratmansky’s The Seasons (2019).
Perdziola was nominated for a 2019 Benois de la Danse award.
Mark Stanley
Mark Stanley, Resident Lighting Designer for New York City Ballet, has designed more than 200 premieres for their repertoire, including Paul McCartney’s Ocean’s Kingdom. He has worked with choreographers around the world including Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck, Susan Stroman, William Forsythe, Benjamin Millepied, Kevin O’Day and Susan Marshall. His designs are in the repertoire of nearly every major ballet company in North America and Europe including The Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Het Nationale Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, La Scala Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, Boston Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pilobolus, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Joffrey Ballet.
Stanley previously served as Resident Lighting Designer for New York City Opera, lighting over 20 new productions for the resident and touring companies. Additional opera credits include Boston Lyric Opera, Wolf Trap Opera and Portland Opera, among others. His work for theater includes lighting design for The Kennedy Center, Long Wharf Theater, Goodspeed Opera House, Ordway Music Theater, Paper Mill Playhouse, Maurice Sendak’s Night Kitchen and off-Broadway. His designs for New York City Opera, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker and others have been seen nationally on PBS, including “Live from Lincoln Center” and “Great Performances.”
Stanley is currently Head of the Lighting Design Program at Boston University, School of Theatre and has conducted Master Classes at universities across the United States and in Europe. He is on the board of the Hemsley Lighting Programs and is the author of the Color of Light Workbook.
Scene from Sinfonietta. Photo: MIRA.Sinfonietta
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Synopsis - Sinfonietta
Choreography by Jiří Kylián
Music by Leoš Janáček
Scenery and Costumes by Walter Nobbe
Lighting by Kees Tjebbes
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.
Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janáček was born in Hukvaldy, Moravia on July 3, 1854. He studied with Frantisek Skuhersky in Prague, Leo Grill at the Leipzig Conservatory, and Franz Krenn at the Vienna Conservatory. He founded the organ school in Brno, and taught at the Teachers Institute there, while composing choral, instrumental, and orchestral works as well as operas, the first of which, Sarka (1887), was not performed until 1925. In 1888, he began to collect and edit folk melodies, which form the musical basis of his next opera, the one-act Beginning of a Romance (1891). In composing Jenufa (1904), he integrated folk material into his style. Fate (1905, revised 1907) was not performed until 1934, and it was only after Jenufa’s belated success in Prague (1916) and internationally, that Janáček completed The Excursions of Mr. Broucek (1920).
Now assured performances, in his final decade he composed four more operas. In part, inspired by his one-sided passion for a young woman, Kamila Stosslova, three of them focus on a central female character: Katya Kabanova (1921), The Cunning Little Vixen (1924), and The Makropoulos Affair (1926). From the House of the Dead (1930) is a harrowing ensemble work based on Dostoyevsky’s prison diaries. Dramatically terse, musically economical, with frequently angular and awkward vocal lines based on Janáček’s own principles of stylized “speech-melody” and only sparingly blossoming into lyricism, these operas were too original for quick public acceptance. Since World War II, they have come to be valued for their directness, theatrical effectiveness, and moving assertion of the centrality of death and regeneration to human existence.
Leoš Janáček composed no ballet music, but his music was used for many ballets by many different choreographers. Among them, Lachian Dances (as part of the folk-song play Rakocz Rakoczy, Augustin Berger, 1891); Taras Bulba, (Lubos Ogoun, 1963); First String Quartet, (Erich Walter, 1966 and Antony Tudor, 1971); Intimate Letters, (Pavel Smok and Gise Furtwangler, both 1968, Harold King, 1975, Lynn Seymour, 1978, and Jirí Kylián, 1980); Glagolitic Mass, (Pavel Smok, 1969, Jiří Kylián, 1979); Concertino, In the Mists, and No. 7 from From an Overgrown Path for piano (Ashley Killar’s Arriving Bellevue Sunday, 1971); and various piano pieces for Jiří Kylián’s Return to a Strange Land, 1975. In addition to the ballet by Jiří Kylián, Sinfonietta has also been used for a ballet by Pavel Smok in 1971.
Janáček died in Moravska Ostrava on August 12, 1928.
Sources: Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia; The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet, Second Edition, edited by Horst Koegler; Oxford University Press, London, New York, Melbourne, 1982
Walter Nobbe
Walter Nobbe was born in 1941 in Malang, Indonesia. In 1950, his family moved to the Netherlands. He studied art at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague from where he graduated in 1963 as a professor of art. He began his career combining teaching and painting, but later concentrated on painting. Nobbe’s work is represented in museums and galleries in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, as well as in private collections.
In 1972, Nobbe started to design for dance with the Netherlands Dance Theater, for which he has designed ballets for Cliff Keuter, Jiří Kylián, and Nacho Duato. Productions he designed for Jiří Kylián included Sinfonietta, Dream Dances, Torso, and Overgrown Path. For Nacho Duato, he designed Danza, Bolero, and Arenal, among others.
Outside the Netherlands, Nobbe worked frequently with Christopher Bruce for dance companies throughout the world, including Ballet Rambert, English National Ballet (London Festival Ballet), Cullberg Ballet, Gulbenkian, and Houston Ballet.
Nobbe died in 2005 at the age of 64.
Kees Tjebbes
After his studies at the Brussels Academy of the Arts, Kees Tjebbes worked with several Dutch theatre and dance groups, including Toneelgroep Theater, Introdans, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, and Nederlands Dans Theater. For Introdans and Scapino Ballet Rotterdam he began to create light designs for new works by choreographers such as Ed Wubbe, Nils Christe, and Itzik Galili.
In 2000, Jiří Kylián asked him to create the lighting for Click-Pause-Silence, and since that time he has collaborated with Kylián on almost all of his dance productions: 27’52” (NDT II/ 2002), Claude Pascal (NDT I/ 2002), When Time Takes Time (NDT III/ 2002), Far too close (NDT III/ 2003), Last Touch (NDT I/ 2003), Sleepless (NDT II/ 2004), Toss of a Dice (NDT I/ 2005), Chapeau (NDT II/2006), Tar and Feathers (NDT I/ 2006), Vanishing Twin (NDT I/ 2008), Gods and Dogs (NDT II/2008), Mémoires d’Oubliettes (NDT I/2009), and his lighting for Il Faut qu’une Porte for the Paris Opera Ballet (2004).
Kees has supervised, adapted, or re-created the light designs for many Kylián productions being staged or re-staged all over the world.