27/9/2002
New York City Ballet
Mass MoCA, North Adams
To Perform Fund-Raiser at MASS MoCA. Principal dancers from one of the foremost dance companies in the world, the New York City Ballet, will perform highlights of the company's repertoire in The Best of Ballet at MASS MoCA in two performances.
to Perform Fund-Raiser at MASS MoCA
September 28 at 8:15 P.M.
(North Adams, Mass.) Principal dancers from one of the foremost dance
companies in the world, the New York City Ballet, will perform highlights of
the company's repertoire in The Best of Ballet at MASS MoCA in two
performances. A special benefit performance followed by an extraordinary
opportunity to meet the dancers at a champagne and dessert celebration and
dance party with DJ will take place on Saturday, September 28 at 8:15 P.M.
A limited number of tickets for an elegant dinner in the MASS MoCA galleries
preceding the Saturday performance are also available. On Sunday, September
29 a 2 P.M. matinee features special reduced pricing for seniors, students,
and children. The matinee is designed to offer those who are new to dance
the opportunity to experience ballet through some of the art form's greatest
moments.
The performances will spotlight a number of brilliant composers and
choreographers including Pulitzer Prize-winner Samuel Barber; New York City
Ballet director Peter Martins; George Gershwin; Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky;
George Balanchine; Sergei Prokeofiev; and Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The
selected works will display ballet bravura and the virtuosic technique for
which the NYCB is famous.
The dances highlight the ways that New York City Ballet co-founder and
choreographer George Balanchine expanded the traditional vocabulary of
classical dance. The evening will include a mixed and matched pas de deux
for two couples: one classical in pointe shoes and ballet slippers, and the
other modern and barefoot. The performance begins with a sensuously melodic
juxtaposition of classical forms and modern sensibility, but ends with a
rousing comedic chase that brings the show to spirited conclusion.
The program includes: the Violin Concerto by Pulitzer Prize winner Samuel
Barber, choreographed by New York City Ballet director Peter Martins; the
romantic balcony pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet with music by leading
Soviet composer Prokofiev and choreography by Sean Lavery; and Tarantella
performed to music by Gottschalk, one of the first American composers to be
recognized in Europe. Gottschalk studied in Paris playing at Salle Pleyel
while only 15 where he was praised by Chopin. A pas de deux with music by
Tchaikovsky and Who Cares? to the music of George Gershwin will also be
performed. Tarantella, the Tchaikovsky pas de deux, and Who Cares? were all
choreographed by George Balanchine.
The son of a composer who began studying piano at age five, George
Balanchine gained a knowledge of music early in life. His trained in the
tradition of the great Russian ballet entering the Imperial School of Ballet
in St. Petersburg at age ten and graduating at seventeen. For the next
three years he studied piano and composition at the Petrograd Conservatory
of Music. At 20 with his schooling behind him Balanchine left the
newly-created Soviet Union for the West. Serge Diaghilev invited the young
choreographer to join his Monte Carlo-based Ballets Russes in 1924. In 1933
he accepted Lincoln Kirstein's invitation to come to the United States to
start a school designed to serve as the incubator of an American ballet
company which would eventually become the world-renowned New York City
Ballet. When Balanchine died in 1983 he was considered the world's foremost
choreographer in contemporary ballet.
Danish-born Peter Martins has been working with the New York City Ballet
since 1967 when he was invited to dance the title role in Balanchine's
Apollo. He continued to perform with the company as a guest artist for the
next three years before joining the company in 1970 as a principal dancer.
In 1981 he joined George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and John Taras as one of
the company's ballet masters. From 1983 to 1989 he and Robbins shared
responsibility for overseeing operation of the New York City Ballet. In
1990 Martins became sole director of the company. He has created more than
60 ballets in his career, a number of which have been taped and broadcast by
PBS. His choreography for Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Song and Dance
opened on Broadway in 1985. He conceived and planned a three-week
celebration of American music, art and dance for the New York City Ballet's
40th anniversary. Martins has published an autobiography and was made a
Knight of The Order of Danneborg by Queen Margreth II of Denmark.
The New York City Ballet is an organization unique in the artistic history
of the United States. Solely responsible for training its own artists and
creating its own works, the New York City Ballet was the first ballet
institution in the world with two permanent homes, the New York State
Theater at Lincoln Center and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in
Saratoga Springs, New York.
The benefit committee is chaired by Bob and Martha Lipp. Committee members
include: Robert and Barbara Bashevkin; Joan Benjamin and Larry Cherkis;
Duncan and Susan Brown; Bob and Shari Collins; Nancy Fitzpatrick and Lincoln
Russell; Allan and Judy Fulkerson; Paul and Carmela Haklisch; Joan and Jim
Hunter; Dr. Don Quinn Kelley and Sandra L. Burton; Teddi and Fran Laurin;
Holly Taylor and Dick Lamb; and Tom and Barbara Vallone.
The Best of Ballet is sponsored by Classical Tents and Party Goods.
Tickets for The Best of Ballet are $75 for the Saturday benefit performance
and party. Tickets for Saturday's dinner in the galleries, performance and
after party are $200. Tables for the dinner are available for $1600. For
benefit tickets call Paulette at 413 664 4481 x8100 or e-mail
paulette@massmoca.org. For the Sunday family matinee tickets are $39 for
orchestra seats, $32 for mezzanine, $24 for seniors and students, and $14
for children 16 and under. MASS MoCA members receive a 10% discount.
Matinee tickets are available through the MASS MoCA Box Office located off
Marshall Street in North Adams from 10 A.M. until 6 P.M. daily. Tickets can
also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours or
purchased on line.
MASS MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in
the United States, is located off Marshall Street in North Adams on a
13-acre campus of renovated 19th-century factory buildings.
MASS MoCA 1040 MASS MoCA Way North Adams, MA 01247 413.MOCA.111