Choreographer

Program Seven begins with Tony Award winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s The American. Created to Dvořák’s wondrous string quartet, both score and choreography bring to life the tranquility and open sky of America’s Great Plains. Continuing on the creative relationship between acclaimed choreographer Jessica Lang and The Sarasota Ballet, the Company Premiere of Lyric Pieces presents an engaging and visually dynamic creation that wonderfully and artfully animates its dancers. Closing the 2023 – 2024 Season will be Sir Frederick Ashton’s Sinfonietta, an exciting and fiendishly difficult abstract work. A ballet in three parts, describing its second movement, dance critic Alastair Macaulay wrote for The New York Times that it was “remote, lunar, a brilliantly formal ceremony in white picked out against surrounding darkness.”

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Inspirations

Sarasota Opera House

Experience this fairytale like never before.
“chock full of inventive choreography, atmospheric sets, opulent costumes, and fabulous dancing…” –The Boston Globe

Cinderella

Citizens Bank Opera House

The Company premiere of The Art of War leads Program Two. Created in 2015 by BalletMet’s Artistic Director Edwaard Liang, to be driving, pulsing, and powerful, he describes it as, “…about controlling chaos.” Choreographed during the opening stages of the Second World War, Ashton’s Dante Sonata continues the theme of conflict in Program Two. A synthesis of wartime symbolism and his reflections upon experiencing Franz Liszt’s score, the work enraptured Sarasota audiences during it’s Company Premiere. The triple bill closes with Paul Taylor’s Company B, framing the turbulent era of World War II through the songs of the Andrews Sisters. Combining moments of joy and hilarity with the heavy reality of war, Taylor creates a remarkable piece that perfectly exemplifies the duality of America in the 1940s.

Conflicted Beauty

There is, perhaps, no happier ode to the illusory nature of love than Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Frederick Ashton’s beguiling retelling of this comedy of errors is set in the magical woods of Victorian England to a spellbinding score by Felix Mendelssohn.

The Dream

Lincoln Center

Program One opens with Ashton’s whimsical Varii Capricci, revived from the brink of loss by The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 and described by esteemed dance critic and writer Anna Kisselgoff as “that rare ballet bird – a self-parody and an honorable parody of The Royal Ballet’s own traditions.”  Continuing the program is Panoramic Score (World Premiere) by Gemma Bond, who enthralled Sarasota audiences last Season with her world premiere of Excursions. Dance critic, Marina Harss, has described Bond’s choreography as “expansive, lyrical, handsomely coordinated, with a focus on the beauty of the line of the body.”  Kobborg’s Salute then tells a loose story of soldiers going off to war and the girls they leave behind. About The Sarasota Ballet’s 2011 performance of Salute, dance critic Carrie Seidman wrote that the work was “fresh, funny, and styled after his Bournonville roots without being dated or derivative.”

Frederick Ashton

Choreographer

Events

26 - 27 Apr, 2024

Inspirations · The Sarasota Ballet

14 - 24 Mar, 2024

Cinderella · Boston Opera House

17 - 18 Nov, 2023

Conflicted Beauty · The Sarasota Ballet

21 - 26 Oct, 2023

The Dream · American Ballet Theatre

20 - 22 Oct, 2023

Progression in Rep · The Sarasota Ballet

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