Tag Archives: Lauren Cuthbertson

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.

TILER PECK’S BALLET NOW

In the local dance world, there are few things rarer or more anticipated than a West Coast visit by the New York City Ballet. This weekend, principal Tiler Peck is bringing out ten of her City Ballet colleagues for her three BalletNOW programs at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.*

Joining Peck and company are four of their Lincoln Center neighbors, American Ballet Theatre principals Isabella Boylston, Marcelo Gomes, Cory Stearns, and James Whiteside. From Florida, Jeanette Delgado and Kleber Rebello are repping Miami City Ballet, and from Europe, Peck is importing Lauren Cuthbertson and Reece Clarke from the Royal Ballet, and Marc Moreau from the Paris Opera Ballet.

It’s not all ballet, either. From the world of tap, Michelle Dorrance will be joined by her dancer Byron Tittle in Friday night’s opening number 1-2-3-4-5-6Virgil “Lil O” Gadson (So You Think You Can Dance) also performs in the Dorrance piece, and the one-and-only Bill Irwin will dance with Peck on Saturday night.

Works by George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan, and Justin Peck will be danced in all three performances, and Jerome Robbins Fancy Free will close out the show on opening night and the Sunday matinee. A live orchestra will perform from the pit, conducted by Grant Gershon.

BALLET NOW, Friday and Saturday night, July 28 and 29, at 7:30 pm. Sunday afternoon, July 30, at 2 pm.

DOROTHY CHANDLER PAVILION, Music Center, downtown Los Angeles.

musiccenter.org/balletnow

musiccenter.org/globalassets/2017pac/docs/balletnow2017/index.html#9

*New York City Ballet dancers include principals Taylor Stanley and Daniel Ulbricht, soloists Lauren King, Indiana Woodward, and Zachary Catazaro, and corps de ballet members Preston Chamblee, Harrison Coll, Rachel Hutsell, Claire Kretzschmar, and Lars Nelson.

From top: Marc Moreau, photograph by Julien Benhamou. Byron Tittle, image credit Dorrance Dance. Tiler Peck, image credit Dance at the Music Center.

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