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7/15/2010 - Ballet Chicago Springs Into Summer

Artistic and Critical Triumph "Classical Twist"

Precedes Record-setting Summer Course

What a glorious success we had at the Athenaeum Theatre May 21 - 23! One of the strongest programs we've ever presented garnered wonderful critical praise from Zac Whittenburg of "TimeOut Chicago", who favorably compared our performance of Balanchine's challenging Divertimento # 15 with that of one of America's major professional companies, Pacific Northwest Ballet. He also praised our performance of Balanchine's Who Cares? as "sparkling with raw energy."

Our dancers' performances of Divertimento # 15 brought classical technical execution to the fore. Difficult steps were delivered with lightness, delicacy, precision, and control, allowing viewers to experience the sublime musicality and witty invention of Balanchine's choreography. For many, this was their favorite work.

Our program closer, Who Cares? put serious technical challenges into the framework of playful romance and jazzy high spirits. Our dancers took off and ran with this one, bringing down the house.

These two masterpieces surrounded newer work that further extended the dancers' interpretive range and provided audiences great variety:

Ted Seymour's stunningly beautiful world premiere, A Pulse Stolen, delivered a series of short vignettes that develop into a compelling narrative of contemporary movement themes. Ted has a wonderful capacity to change the classical canon in inventive and surprising ways, and audiences were deeply moved by the group of five performers dancing individual and shared journeys to Ted's selections of affecting, exquisite music. Chicago lighting designer Margaret Nelson used her superb lighting skills as a full partner in this endeavor, resulting in a noteworthy collaboration. A Pulse Stolen strongly marks Ted's continued emergence as a choreographer with a truly original voice.

Conceived to evoke the power of cultural rituals, my Mono No Aware delivered martial-arts flavor and high athleticism for five men and one woman in a test of stamina, technique, and artistic style. Frequent guest artist Hamilton Nieh delivered the central role with power, abandon, and deep commitment. And again, Margaret Nelson's wonderful lighting contributed rich atmosphere to the work.

As has been so for many years, audience members expecting to see a student-level recital were astonished at the professional-level troupe they saw, performing demanding ballets with powerful technique and interpretive skill. Indeed, our talented young artists deliver performances that transcend their age. And our increasing roster of alumni guest artists from professional companies around the nation (and Chicago!) adds depth and power to our talent line-up, making Ballet Chicago's Spring Repertory an exciting, fulfilling audience experience each and every time.

Now we are in the midst of our biggest summer course yet, populated with over one hundred young dancers hungry for the forward-looking American classical training that only we offer in this region. Coming from around the area, the nation, and from other countries, these dancers will be brought to a new level over the next few weeks by our diverse, intensive training. Those whom we ask back are eligible to join our annual program, beginning once again the process that culminates each year in our beautiful "Nutcracker" and our annual Spring Repertory.

A Chicago-born organization, Ballet Chicago continues to foster American classicism in this deeply American city.

"Save the date" --- We are excited to announce our Fall fundraiser to be held in our new studios on Thursday, September 30, 2010. This very special event will showcase the Philip and Marsha Dowd Merit Scholarship Program. It will include a silent auction, live performance by Ballet Chicago artists, and dedication of our main studio. Most importantly, all funds raised will benefit the Dowd Merit Scholarship Fund! Watch your email for more details and an invitation later this summer.

Sincerely,

Dan Duell
Artistic Director

5/11/2010 - Ballet Chicago's "Classical Twist" Serving a Vision of Dance

As we continue preparing the glittering program of works the Ballet Chicago Studio Company will perform this May 21 - 23 at Chicago's Athenaeum Theatre, I am reminded daily of the vision of dance the program represents and serves.

It is a vision of beauty, vitality, musicality, sophistication, and diversity. It is a vision that brings large-scale amplitude and energy to movement, yet a vision that also heightens and refines all the "little moments", the quick transitions, the simple steps, the in-betweens, so that they are polished and made visible as little miracles in their own right. It is a vision that guides dancers toward explicitly clear articulation of arms, hands, head, neck, shoulders, legs, knees, and feet while developing strength of attack, clarity of rhythm, purity of positions, clear turns and balances, pliant jumps, and joyous confidence. It is a vision that trusts movement in space and time to deliver deeply moving messages to artists and audiences alike. And above all, it is a vision that calls on dance and dancers to serve the medium without which dance would not exist, music.

Incorporating the late twentieth-century classicism developed over five decades by George Balanchine at his School of American Ballet and his company, the New York City Ballet, each day at Ballet Chicago Associate Director Patricia and I work to unlock the individual potential of our dancers by honing their technique, cultivating their musicality, and developing their natural stage persona.

After all, dancing choreography onstage in performance for audiences is the culmination of, the raison d'être for, training. At Ballet Chicago, performance of choreography onstage is also the guideline for our training, for it is choreography that is the catalyst for schools of training, not vice versa. Analogous to serious schools of music that bring up young musicians on identified masterpiece repertory, re-visiting it over the years at increasing skill levels, Ballet Chicago brings up its dancers on the masterpieces of George Balanchine, along with selected new choreography, to prepare them for future careers.

Is focusing primarily on one choreographer limiting? Quite the contrary, as rarely if ever has there been a choreographer possessed of a vision at once so vast in breadth and specific in detail. Drawing on his Russian roots, Mr. Balanchine, who considered Marius Petipa his spiritual forefather, re-visited lovingly and in depth the full movement vocabulary and technique he had grown up with, and built from it. He re-fashioned body placement, extended the length of body lines, clarified directions, made positions more exact. He found a way to make clear rhythm an integral part of the dancer's technique, and for dancers to be liberated from having to look where they are going in order to know where they are going. As the great ballerina Violette Verdy said during a lecture at Chicago's Alliance Française, "He amplified, he clarified, he sophisticated, and he enhanced...all that had gone before."

Come see our dancers May 21 - 23, performing works that range from exquisite classicism in Balanchine's "Divertimento #15", to jazzy neo-classicism in Balanchine's "Who Cares?". And in keeping with Mr. B's dictum for young choreographers, "Whatever you do, dear, it has to be your own!" Come experience very different stylistic explorations in Ted Seymour's "A Pulse Stolen" (Ted's own distinctly unique contemporary movement), and my "Mono No Aware" (martial-arts based movement motifs inspired by the 20th-Century samurai, poet, and author Yukio Mishima).

Of note too, are our guest artists, featuring School of Ballet Chicago alumni Nicole Stout, Parker Brasser-Vos, and William Miglino along with alumnus Ted Seymour (all now in professional careers), and Hamilton Nieh, who is in his 4th year performing with us. We also warmly welcome Abigail Simon of the Joffrey Ballet, Matthew Renko, New York City Ballet and Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and well-known Chicago artist J.P. Tenuta of Momenta and Luna Negra, performing with us for the first time.

See you May 21 - 23 at the Athenaeum Theatre!

Sincerely,

Dan Duell
Artistic Director

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