Tag Archives: Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center

BALANCHINE’S JEWELS AT THE MUSIC CENTER

JEWELS (1967) is the three-part dance George Balanchine made in tribute to his early years at the Mariinsky Theater’s ballet school, where he learned techniques in mime and character and absorbed the school’s academic style. JEWELSEmeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds—is also, according to Arlene Croce, “unsurpassed as a Balanchine primer, incorporating in a single evening every important article of faith to which this choreographer subscribed and a burst of heresy, too, to remind us that he willingly reversed himself on occasion.”*

The heresy was the creation—on Edward Villella, for Rubies—of a major role for a male dancer equal to his female partners. Balanchine was famously preoccupied with his ballerinas, and his danseurs were there as support—in his words, “very important as princes and attendants to the queen, but woman is the queen.”* So Rubies—set to music by Igor Stravinsky—is the anomaly, falling between the choreographer’s great showcases for his primas: Emeralds (music by Gabriel Fauré) and Diamonds (Tchaikovsky).

As the opening engagement of the 2019–2020 season of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center, the Mariinsky Ballet—accompanied by the Mariinsky Orchestra—will dance five performances of Balanchine’s JEWELS, which is titled for its gem-encrusted costumes as well as the necklace strands and diamond shapes of its choreography, an aspect best seen from the upper balcony. See link below for casting.

MARIINSKY BALLET—GEORGE BALANCHINE’S JEWELS

Thursday through Saturday, October 24, 25, and 26, at 7:30 pm.

Saturday and Sunday, October 26 and 27, at 2 pm.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

*Arlene Croce, “A Balanchine Triptych,” in Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), 449–456.

George Balanchine, Jewels, performed by the Mariinsky Ballet. Photographs, except above, by Natasha Razina. Above photograph by Svetlana Avvakum. Images courtesy and © the photographers, the dancers, and State Academic Mariinsky Theatre.

ADÈS, MCGREGOR, AND DEAN — WORLD PREMIERES

This weekend at the Music Center, choreographer Wayne McGregor, composer and conductor Thomas Adès, artist Tacita Dean, the Royal Ballet, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic present two world premieres, preceded by a work—OUTLIER—new to West Coast audiences.

LIVING ARCHIVE: AN AI PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENT—danced by Company Wayne McGregor—is a first look at the results of McGregor’s collaboration with Google’s Arts and Culture Lab to develop a choreographic tool that generates new outcomes for works in McGregor’s repertoire. This iteration of LIVING ARCHIVE will be danced to Adès’ In Seven Days, performed by the LA Phil.

The evening will close with the dance world premiere of Part One of McGregor’s full-evening work THE DANTE PROJECT. Set to Adès’ new eponymous composition, INFERNO will be performed by the Royal Ballet, and features a set designed by Tacita Dean—her first work for dancers and the stage—and lighting design by Lucy Carter and Simon Bennison.

ADÈS AND MCGREGOR—A DANCE COLLABORATION

OUTLIER, LIVING ARCHIVE: AN AI PERFORMANCE EXPERIMENT, and THE DANTE PROJECT PART 1 (INFERNO)

Friday and Saturday, July 12 and 13, at 7:30 pm.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

From top: Wayne McGregor, The Dante Project (Inferno), featuring Royal Ballet dancers Fumi Kaneko and Edward Watson; Watson and company; Calvin Richardson; artists of the Royal Ballet. Wayne McGregor, Living Archive, featuring Company Wayne McGregor dancers Izzac Carroll, Maria Daniela Gonzalez, and Jordan James Bridge; Chien-Shun Liao; Carroll; Rebecca Bassett-Graham and Carroll. Wayne McGregor, Outlier, artists of Company Wayne McGregor; Lauren Cuthbertson, Jacob O’Connell, and Joshua Barwick; Gonzalez, O’Connell, and Bassett-Graham. Photographs by Cheryl Mann, July 12, 2019, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. Images courtesy and © Wayne McGregor, Tacita Dean, the Royal Ballet, the Music Center, the photographer, and the performers.

THE ROYAL BALLET — MAYERLING

Forty years after its American premiere at the Shrine Auditorium, Kenneth MacMillan’s MAYERLING—a tour de force of choreographic virtuosity and innovation, and the first full-length ballet constructed around a male lead—returns to Los Angeles for a three-performance engagement by the Royal Ballet at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

MAYERLING tells the story of Crown Prince Rudolf (1858–1859)—heir apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary—his mistress Mary Vetsera, and the events leading up to their murder-suicide at Mayerling, the prince’s hunting lodge outside Vienna.

“Most of MacMillan’s ballets, descriptive or abstract, tackle themes of crisis and violence… The dramatic momentum of MAYERLING springs from a chilly dissection of both… The fast-moving scenario is exactly matched by the ferocious pace and energy of MacMillan’s choreography. The action revolves around the startling progression of duets for the two principal dancers: abrasive, threatening, erotic and geared almost without respite to destruction.

“MacMillan projects the dark underside of romanticism: the ballet has domestic interludes of great charm but they’re brief, the dominant mood is acrid, sour, and glitteringly dark.” — Bryan Robertson, The Spectator, February 25, 1978

As Robertson points out, MAYERLING is famous for its numerous pas de deux and requirements of great stamina and artistry by its male leads. On opening night, Royal Ballet principal Ryoichi Hirano will dance the role of Rudolf. On Saturday night principal Matthew Ball takes over, and for the Sunday matinee, principal Thiago Soares is the Crown Prince. Principal Sarah Lamb dances the role of Marie Larisch on opening night and Mary Vetsera on Saturday night.

MacMillan—a former dancer who was the Royal Ballet’s artistic director throughout most of the 1970s and its principal choreographer from 1977 onward—died in 1992 at age 62, backstage at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, during a performance of a revival of MAYERLING.

THE ROYAL BALLET—MAYERLING

Friday and Saturday, July 5 and 6, at 7:30 pm.

Sunday, July 7, at 2 pm.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

MAYERLING program

From top: Ryoichi Hirano as Crown Prince Rudolf and Sarah Lamb as Marie Larisch in Mayerling, photograph by Helen Maybanks; Francesca Hayward as Princess Stephanie and Hirano, photograph by Maybanks; Lamb as Mary Vetsera, photograph by Alice Pennefather; Alexander Campbell as Bratfisch, the prince’s confident, photograph by Maybanks; Lauren Cuthbertson as Mary and Thiago Soares as Rudolf (3), photographs by Maybanks. Images courtesy and © the photographers, the performers, and the Royal Ballet.

COMPANY WAYNE MCGREGOR — AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The opening engagement of the 2018–2019 season of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center is here with COMPANY WAYNE MCGREGOR—AUTOBIOGRAPHY, at the Ahmanson for two nights and a matinee.

Three discrete presentations, three distinct experiences—McGregor’s dance abstract of his life in twenty-three scenes is rearranged for each performance, selected by a computer algorithm based on the sequencing of McGregor’s genome.

In its Los Angeles premiere this weekend, the dancers of AUTOBIOGRAPHY will be joined onstage by Jlin in a live performance of her commissioned score.

COMPANY WAYNE MCGREGOR—AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Friday and Saturday, October 5 and 6, at 7:30 pm.

Sunday, October 7, at 2 pm.

Ahmanson Theatre, 135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

Company Wayne McGregor, Autobiography in performance. Photographs by Ben Cullen Williams, Richard Davies, and Andrej Uspenski. Image credit: Wayne McGregor.

AKRAM KHAN’S UNTIL THE LIONS

“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” — African proverb

The great dancer and choreographer Akram Khan will pay a rare visit to Los Angeles this week for a four-night run of his full-length piece UNTIL THE LIONS.

Based on a section of the Mahabharata, UNTIL THE LIONS tells the tale of Princess Amba (Ching-Ying Chien): her thwarted marriage, her revenge against Prince Bheeshma (Khan), and her transformation into the warrior Shikhandi (Joy Alpuerto Ritter).

The original music score is by Vincenzo Lamagna, in collaboration with singer Sohini Alam, David Azurza, percussionist Yaron Engler, Ritter, and Khan. This Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at The Music Center event takes place, in the round, at The Culver Studios.

 

UNTIL THE LIONS, Wednesday through Saturday, October 18–21, at 8 pm.

THE CULVER STUDIOS, 9336 Washington Boulevard, Culver City.

musiccenter.org/lions

akramkhancompany.net/productions/until-the-lions/

From top:

Ching-Ying Chien and Akram Khan in rehearsal, Until the Lions.

Musicians for Until the Lions include Yaron Engler (left), and Sohini Alam, Joseph Ashwin, and David Azurza.

Bottom three: Ching-Ying Chien. All photographs © Jean-Louis Fernandez.

© Jean-Louis Fernandez

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© Jean-Louis Fernandez

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© Jean-Louis Fernandez

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© Jean-Louis Fernandez

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© Jean-Louis Fernandez

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