Pennsylvania Ballet kicks off its 45th Anniversary Season October 29 – November 2 at the Academy of Music (Broad and Locust Streets) with Balanchine & Beyond, a repertory program that includes George Balanchine’s Ballo della Regina, and two company premieres: Kazimir’s Colours and Push Comes to Shove.
Set to ballet music from Verdi’s opera Don Carlos, Ballo della Regina is a virtuoso set of variations that demands both technical prowess and emotional buoyancy of the female lead. This study in allegro dancing, with its intricate construction of lines, demonstrates that when movement and music intersect, moments of great dance can happen. Pennsylvania Ballet added this famed Balanchine work to its repertoire in November 2004. Also on the program is the Company premiere of Kazimir’s Colours.
Inspired by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich and set to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Orchestra, Italian choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti’s Kazimir’s Colours uses asymmetrical partnering, unusual angularities, and the interlacing colors in the costumes to represent the “pure sensation” of joy and light. Kazimir Malevich established the abstract style of Suprematism, which relies heavily on geometric forms, primary colors and sensory emotions. At the heart of the piece is a moving pas de deux which demands intense physical and emotional commitment from the leading dancers. Bigonzetti’s prominence with American audiences continues to grow, having recently created a work for New York City Ballet and an upcoming world premiere for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
The evening is capped off with the Company premiere of one of the most widely recognized “cross-over” ballets, Push Comes to Shove. This cornerstone piece in the Twyla Tharp canon was created for Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1976. The one-act ballet begins with a ragtime prelude that presses into the four successive movements of Haydn’s Symphony No. 82 in C, in a dizzying display of technique that pushes through barriers of ballet and shoves modern dance to center stage.
The acquisition and presentation of Kazimir’s Colours is made possible in part by a grant from Dance Advance, an artistic initiative of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts.
Performances of Balanchine & Beyond are as follows:
Wednesday, October 29 at 8 p.m.
Thursday, October 30 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, November 1 at 2 & 8 p.m.
Sunday, November 2 at 2 p.m. -- www.paballet.org
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