Onstage This Week: The Washington Ballet Welcomes Guest Stars, World Premieres in Sacramento and Phoenix, and More!
Wonder what’s going on in ballet this week? We’ve pulled together some highlights.
The Washington Ballet Brings in Guest Stars Including Marcelo Gomes and Stella Abrera
The Washington Ballet’s 2018/19 season opens September 26-30 at the Kennedy Center with a mixed bill titled TWB Welcomes, designed to show a range of classical ballet from the last century. TWB presents two programs: The first features George Balanchine’s Serenade and Alexei Ratmansky’s Bolero, and the second includes Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Sombrerisimo and Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides. Both include three iconic pas de deux: Marius Petipa’s Black Swan, Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas and Balanchine’s Tarantella. For this run, artistic director Julie Kent invited four guest artists to join the company: Former American Ballet Theatre principal Marcelo Gomes, ABT principal Stella Abrera, Ballet Manila principal Katherine Barkman and Houston Ballet principal Connor Walsh. Above, check out a clip of Barkman preparing for her Tarantella debut.
Sacramento Ballet’s Season Opener Includes World Premiere by Penny Saunders
Sacramento Ballet opens its first season under the leadership of new artistic director Amy Seiwert September 27-30 at The Sofia Tsakopoulos Center for the Arts. Titled Telling Stories, the program includes former director Ron Cunningham’s Incident at Blackbriar, Adam Hougland’s Cigarettes, Seiwert’s Instructions and a world premiere by Penny Saunders to the music of Nick Drake. Above, Saunders explains how she’s using Drake’s melancholy and evocative music to do just what the program’s title suggests: Tell stories.
Ballet Arizona Presents World Premiere by Company Dancer Nayon Iovino
Ballet Arizona’s New Moves program asks audiences to “expect the unexpected.” Running September 27-30 at the Orpheum Theatre in Phoenix, the program includes artistic director Ib Andersen’s Rio, the Arizona premiere of Justin Peck’s In Creases and a world premiere by Ballet Arizona‘s Nayon Iovino’s Inherent. Iovino was just accepted into the New York Choreographic Institute for spring of 2019; see excerpts from his new ballet above.
The Queen of the Nile Comes to Life in Texas
Texas Ballet Theater artistic director Ben Stevenson‘s full-length ballet Cleopatra runs September 28-30 at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. With music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov performed live by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, this tale of love and trickery is sure to enthrall audiences. Leading up to the performance, TBT is releasing a series of fun facts about Cleopatra on Instagram (did you know she spoke nine languages?)
