CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: The Chicago Sinfonietta and Music Director Mei-Ann Chen opened the 2013-14 season with “eMotion,” featuring the Chicago-based hip-hop dance troupes Kuumba Lynx and FootworKINGz. Dancers from RIOULT Dance NY and the chamber orchestra Camerata New York, performing the world premiere of Michael Torke’s Iphigenia at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan, June 2013. A performer from the Calidanza dance company in the San Francisco Symphony’s annual Día de los Muertos celebration. The New York Philharmonic’s 2012-13 season-ending program, “A Dancer’s Dream,” featured New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns in Stravinsky’s Baiser de la Fée and Petrushka.
by Eesha Patkar
Beyond Chris Lee
If
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Nutcracker
you look at the wonderful ballet repertoire of the 20th century like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, or Stravinsky’s Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring—scores that have also turned out to be great orchestral masterpieces—I would say dance is a very popular choice for symphonic presentation,” says Mei-Ann Chen, music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta and Memphis Symphony Orchestra. But in September 2013, rather than opting to perform a well-known masterpiece with traditional choreography, Chen and the Sinfonietta undertook a more unusual
program called “eMotion,” featuring Chicago hip-hop troupes FootworKINGz and Kuumba Lynx dancing to a mash-up of music by Tchaikovsky, Khachaturian, and Rachmaninoff, among others. The Sinfonietta is just one of many organizations looking for newer and more imaginative ways to present their orchestras. That’s in addition to the more expected examples of dance-orchestra collaborations, such as the Dayton (Ohio) Performing Arts Alliance’s successful eight-performance run of The Nutcracker in December 2012 co-presented by its three component members: Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Dayton Opera, and symphony
winter 2014