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

Program Six opens with George Balanchine’s Emeralds, the opening ballet in the choreographer’s renowned three-act ballet Jewels, the ballet whispers French perfume with its graceful clouds of tulle
in Romantic-length tutus. Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s tense psychological drama Las Hermanas* takes
a 180 degree turn from the splendor of the previous work. Profoundly musical, structurally complex,
yet exquisitely refined, the ballet is based on Federico García Lorca’s, The House of Bernarda Alba.
Las Hermanas is a remarkable dramatic ballet about sensuality under harsh repression as well as the emotional and violent consequences that follow. What better combination to bring audiences back from the weight of Las Hermanas than the brilliance of George Balanchine and George Gershwin? Closing Program Six, Who Cares? brings audiences through a wonderful series of solos, duets, quartets, and ensemble pieces all set to remarkable jazzy classics of Gershwin.

Portraits of Expression

Ballet Hispánico is the largest Latinx/Latine/Hispanic cultural organization in the United States and one of America’s Cultural Treasures. Ballet Hispánico’s three main programs, the Company, School of Dance, and Community Arts Partnerships bring communities together to celebrate the multifaceted Hispanic diasporas. Ballet Hispánico’s New York City headquarters provide the physical home and cultural heart for Latinx dance in the United States. It is a space that initiates new inclusive cultural conversations and explores the intersectionality of Latine cultures. No matter their background or identity – Latine, Latinx, Hispanic – Ballet Hispánico welcomes and serves all, breaking stereotypes and celebrating the beauty and diversity of Hispanic cultures through dance.

Ballet Hispanico

FSU Center for the Performing Arts

Celebrating 10 years as Resident Choreographer, Program Four features a trio of works by Ricardo Graziano. Choreographed for the Company’s return to the stage after the 2020 – 2021 Digital Season, Sonatina is one of Graziano’s most classical works. Following Sonatina will be the choreographer’s most critically acclaimed work, In a State of Weightlessness. Premiered during The Sarasota Ballet’s week-long residency at the renowned Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, audiences and critics were captivated by its power. Finally closing Program Four will be Graziano’s 11th One-Act World Premiere for The Sarasota Ballet.

Graziano Celebrated

These performances capture holiday magic and feature The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company, students from The Sarasota Ballet School, The Sarasota Ballet’s Margaret Barbieri Conservatory, plus dancers interested in performing in The Sarasota Ballet School’s The Nutcracker.

The Nutcracker In Sarasota

A return to regality and beauty, George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations opens Program Three.
This masterful work transports audiences to the height of the Russian Imperial Ballet with its glittering costumes, masterful choreography, and Tchaikovsky’s evocative score. Twyla Tharp’s, In the Upper Room, closes the December program with a “transcendent experience for both audience and performers”. Created in 1986, the work features a commissioned score by Philip Glass and showcases Tharp’s choreography, which blends a diverse range of movements, including boxing, tap dance, yoga, ballet, and full-speed sprinting.

Moments of Meaning

Join us for four performances of The Nutcracker, two at the Venice Performing Arts Center on December 8th and 9th accompanied with live music by The Venice Symphony and two at the Sarasota Opera House on December 17th and 18th.

The Nutcracker In Venice

Venice High School

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

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.”

The Sarasota Ballet

26 - 27 Apr, 2024

Inspirations

5 - 6 Apr, 2024

Portraits of Expression

8 - 11 Mar, 2024

Ballet Hispanico

26 - 29 Jan, 2024

Graziano Celebrated

17 - 18 Dec, 2023

The Nutcracker In Sarasota

The Sarasota Ballet

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