The Sarasota Ballet's 2022 – 2023 Season Program Book

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IAIN WEBB DIRECTOR

On behalf of the entire Sarasota Ballet family, I welcome you to join us for our 2022 – 2023 Season. This year, we celebrate new beginnings through the presentation of five World Premieres, while simultaneously acknowledging the rich history of ballet and honoring the legacies of twentieth-century choreographic icons. Ballet fans who were fortunate enough to find themselves in New York this August were treated to the Company’s return to the renowned Joyce Theater. The week-long residency served audiences two works by Sir Frederick Ashton—the scintillating Birthday Offering and the recently-revived, humorous Varii Capricci—alongside a brand-new ballet by acclaimed choreographer, Jessica Lang. This World Premiere, titled Shades of Spring, marks the first collaboration between The Sarasota Ballet and Lang; for those unable to attend the ballet’s unveiling, Shades of Spring makes its Sarasota premiere in January’s Program 4 – In Rep.

Over the course of this Season, we also acknowledge the anniversaries of the passing of two choreographic titans. First, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who passed away thirty years ago this October; his choreographic oeuvre molded the landscape of late twentieth-century British ballet, and we pay tribute to his impact with the Company Premiere of his Danses Concertantes in November. Second, George Balanchine, styled as the father of American ballet; a three-ballet tribute program at the close of our Season coincides with the fortieth anniversary of Balanchine’s death on April 30th, 1983. Both men were enormously influential in their respective domains, and the world of ballet today owes much to their boldness and ingenuity.

As I enter into my sixteenth year as Director, we look to the future of The Sarasota Ballet organization as a whole. As the professional company continues to grow in its artistic achievements, the other arms of our Company likewise have gone from strength to strength. The Sarasota Ballet School and The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory continue to kindle the artistry of so many young dancers and aspiring pre-professionals. Meanwhile, the many facets of our newly launched Dance for All initiative nurture multitudes who might otherwise lack access to dance, providing stimulating enrichment and critical resources to those most in need. These programs, and so much more, thrive as a direct result of your support, as well as that of the institutions and foundations of the greater Sarasota area. For all you enable us to achieve, both in the ballet world and in our Sarasota home, you have my deepest gratitude.

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JOSEPH VOLPE

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Welcome to The Sarasota Ballet’s 2022 – 2023 Season. First and foremost, I would like to voice my pride in the resiliency and boundless determination of our Company’s staff, faculty, and dancers. Enduring the COVID-19 pandemic these past couple years has instilled an exceptional agility within the organization, positioning staff to maneuver an ever-shifting operational landscape. With bolstered confidence after last year’s successful return to live performance, our 2022 – 2023 Season finds The Sarasota Ballet poised to flourish on unprecedented levels.

This Season, we find our administrative staff growing in both fortitude and number; in particular, we welcome the addition of Melissa McCoy in the expanded role of Chief Strategy and Advancement Officer. As the newest member of our executive leadership team, Melissa will directly supervise our administrative departments and coordinate with our team, as well as the Board of Trustees and Advisory Council, to develop long-term strategic efforts. Her finely-honed talents in the fields of fundraising and marketing, along with her deep commitment to service, will certainly prove instrumental in The Sarasota Ballet’s continuing mission to enrich lives, captivate emotions, and strengthen our community through the art of dance.

On the subject of community, one of the myriad principles reinforced by the pandemic was the strength to be found in the appreciation of ballet around the world. This August, we demonstrated our dedication to this through our week-long return tour to New York’s Joyce Theater, in a thrilling amalgamation of British humor and pizzazz through the ballets of Sir Frederick Ashton, American radiance in Jessica Lang’s Shades of Spring, and, of course, the artistic excellence of our Sarasota dancers. This opportunity to share The Sarasota Ballet’s talents with New York audiences would not have been possible without the support of several institutions – the Jean Allenby Goldstein Touring Fund, the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and the Philip & Janice Levin Foundation, William A. Farber, Trustee; I wish to personally thank them for their generosity and enthusiasm for The Sarasota Ballet’s endeavors to bring dance to all.

“We can’t change the world, but we can change little pieces of it and hope for a ripple effect.”

- Margie Barancik

MARGARET BARBIERI

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

The creative process behind a World Premiere is a manyfaceted endeavor, with multiple rapidly moving parts to coordinate. In a more apparent fashion, a choreographer’s vision manifests through the tangible elements of a ballet: the sets, whether decadently lavish or strikingly sparse; the costumes, carefully sewn to emphasize the movement of each dancer; the score, weaving an aural backdrop with which the ballet’s steps can resonate, adding layers of complexity to the choreography. Less obvious, however, is the fashion in which roles might be sculpted around the individual dancers to highlight their distinct talents. Sir Frederick Ashton made great employ of this in his works such as Rhapsody; echoes of the bravura male lead, crafted specifically for the legendary Mikhail Baryshnikov, carry through in subsequent performances. George Balanchine’s Western Symphony, meanwhile, features extensions in the Rondo movement so idiosyncratic of Tanaquil Le Clercq’s talents, still identifiable in the role decades after her passing.

I reflect on all this with our 2022 – 2023 Season in mind, as several of our dancers bring their own creations to the stage this year. Ricardo Graziano, Richard House, and Arcadian Broad each channel their inspiration through a choreographic lens, further focused through their familiarity with their fellow dancers. As Assistant Director, I am immensely proud of my role in the journeys of our dancers – to not only expand their horizons and hone their craft through coaching our repertory, but to serve as mentor for all our dancers, making a small contribution in assisting these young artists with staging their latest works and progressing in their choreographic careers. It is a true honor to work with our dancers and to preserve the lineage of British dance while simultaneously instilling an appreciation for ballet history within the next generation of artists and shaping the nuanced beauty of ballet for decades to come.

RICHARD JOHNSON BOARD CHAIR

As Chair of The Sarasota Ballet’s Board of Trustees, I want to thank our loyal and appreciative patrons for your unprecedented benevolence, support, and encouragement in the face of the truly unprecedented challenges we have overcome in the past two years. We begin our 2022 – 2023 Season with an optimism that we are, once again, on the path to meet our and your high expectations for the Company and with the artistic resources and financial stability that will allow us to do so.

I should hasten to add that the optimism we have for the Season was confirmed by the Company’s performance at the Joyce Theater in New York this past August. We were enthusiastically received by the New York audiences and several patrons and Trustees from Sarasota who joined us.

The Sarasota Ballet Company continues its development as the world-class ballet company it has become. The Company is, of course, so much more to our greater Sarasota community. The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory and The Sarasota Ballet School bring the beauty and art of ballet to both dedicated dancers and younger students who are discovering dance for the first time. Our new Dance for All effort combines our Dance – The Next Generation program with an expanding range of community engagement programs to broad, diverse audiences within the region.

The unstinting efforts of Director Iain Webb, Executive Director Joseph Volpe, and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri have combined to bring us to where we are today. They continue to set aggressive, committed, focused efforts to continue our world-class achievements while being outstanding citizens of Sarasota and providing an environment for our dancers to grow and thrive locally and globally.

The Board of Trustees, our Advisory Council, and The Friends of The Sarasota Ballet serve to support the Company’s leadership’s mission and to enact policies and initiatives that enhance our ability to achieve that mission. Iain’s directorship has brought The Sarasota Ballet both critical acclaim and financial security. I continue to take pride in chairing this Board to help see his vision carried out. I know I speak for my fellow Trustees, Council members, and Friends committing ourselves to working alongside Iain to help The Sarasota Ballet grow ever stronger for years to come.

In InFuSIng our CommunIty wIth thE hIghESt qualIty and dIvErSIty oF danCE In amErIC a

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JEAN WEIDNER GOLDSTEIN

FOUNDER & CHAIR EMERITA

There is always a distinct joy about the launch of a ballet season – the glee of rediscovering your favorite dances, then setting fresh eyes to the choreography and perceiving it anew; the anticipation of a World Premiere as it takes form, with measured bursts of excitement as more is revealed on the nascent work; the satisfaction of witnessing the revival of a long-lost ballet by a treasured choreographer, and gaining a deeper and more comprehensive appreciation for the creator’s oeuvre with a feeling akin to discovering a missing puzzle piece. The Sarasota Ballet has established a reputation for all this and more over the past three decades, and the 2022 – 2023 Season is certain to further cement this Company as a source of top-caliber ballet. This past Season also saw marvelous progress in The Sarasota Ballet’s Education Department! The 2022 Summer Intensive reached record attendance levels, with even more robust student interest for next summer’s five-week program. Significant credit for this phenomenal turnout goes to Education Director, Christopher Hird, as well as to Assistant Education Directors, Dierdre Miles Burger and Lindsay Fischer; their steadfast devotion to the development and well-being of pre-professional ballet students shined through in the quality of the end-of-program InMotion performances in late July. The Sarasota Ballet School, with Principal Sarah Krazit at the helm, has also experienced increased registration thanks to its glowing reputation, and the Trainees of The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory, as a result of expanded community collaboration, look forward to more performance opportunities than ever. When I founded The Sarasota Ballet, I never could have anticipated that the many branches of the organization would flourish as they do today, as The Sarasota Ballet leaves an incalculable impression on the world of ballet, both present and future.

The Sarasota Ballet’s

SIR FREDERICK ASHTON

Repertoire

CHRISTOPHER BRUCE

Apparitions, Birthday Offering, La Chatte métamorphosée en femme, Dante Sonata, The Dream, Enigma Variations, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Illuminations, Jazz Calendar, Marguerite and Armand, Meditation from Thaïs, Monotones I, Monotones II, Les Patineurs, Les Rendezvous, Rhapsody, Romeo & Juliet Balcony Pas de Deux, Scènes de ballet, Sinfonietta, The Sleeping Beauty Awakening Pas de Deux and Vision Solo, Symphonic Variations, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Two Pigeons, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci, Voices of Spring Pas de Deux, The Walk to the Paradise Garden, A Wedding Bouquet

GEORGE BALANCHINE

Allegro Brillante, Apollo, Bugaku, Divertimento No. 15, Donizetti Variations, The Four Temperaments, Jewels (Emeralds, Rubies, & Diamonds), Prodigal Son, Serenade, Stars and Stripes, Tarantella, Theme and Variations, ValseFantaisie, Western Symphony, Who Cares?

RICKI BERTONI

Hip 2 Be Square, Ragtop

SIR DAVID BINTLEY

A Comedy of Errors, Four Scottish Dances, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café

GEORGE BIRKADZE Farandole

GEMMA BOND Excursions

SIR MATTHEW BOURNE Boutique, The Infernal Galop

AUGUST BOURNONVILLE

Flower Festival in Genzano Pas de Deux, The Jockey Dance, The Kermesse in Bruges Act I Pas de Deux, William Tell Pas de Deux

ARCADIAN BROAD

Frequency Hurtz, Passing By

Sergeant Early’s Dream

JAMES BUCKLEY Anne Frank

ASIA BUI Song on the Beach

JAMIE CARTER À Deux Mains, Addio ad un Sogno, Concordium, Five Duets (Between Longing and Yearning), Holiday Overture, The Tarot

JOHN CRANKO Pineapple Poll

PETER DARRELL Othello

AGNES DE MILLE Rodeo

DAME NINETTE DE VALOIS Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress

ROBERT DE WARREN

The Nutcracker [production]

MEG EGINGTON Cézanne’s Doubt

FLEMMING FLINDT The Lesson

MICHEL FOKINE Les Sylphides, Petrushka

PAVEL FOMIN Hommage à Chopin, Paquita [production]

MARCELO GOMES Dear Life...

MARTHA GRAHAM Appalachian Spring

RICARDO GRAZIANO

Amorosa, Before Night Falls, En Las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness, The Jolly Overture, The Pilgrimage, Pomp and Circumstance, Shostakovich Suite, Somewhere Pas de Deux, Sonata in Four Movements, Sonatina, Symphony of Sorrows, Valsinhas

ALEX HARRISON

The Blue Hour

MATTHEW

HART

Cry Baby Kreisler, John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s Ballet Fantasy

KATE HONEA

Baroque and Blues, Gitana Galop, Headlines, Percolator

RICHARD HOUSE

Living Ghosts

JOHAN KOBBORG

La Sylphide [production], Napoli Act III [production], Salute

JESSICA LANG

Shades of Spring

JOE LAYTON

The Grand Tour

LOGAN

LEARNED

Nebulous, Scene de Ballet

SIR KENNETH

MACMILLAN

Concerto, Danses Concertantes, Elite Syncopations, Las Hermanas, Summer Pas de Deux

OCTAVIO MARTIN

On The Outside, Orpheus and Eurydice

MARK MORRIS

The Letter V

VASLAV NIJINSKY

L’Après-midi d’un Faune (The Afternoon of a Faun)

ROBERT

Troy Game

NORTH

RUDOLF NUREYEV

Raymonda Act III

RENATO PARONI

Rococo Variations

ANNA PAVLOVA

The Dragonfly Solo

EMELIA

PERKINS

Washington Square

MARIUS PETIPA

La Bayadère Bronze Idol, Pas de Trois, and Pas de Deux, The Black Swan Pas de Deux, Le Corsaire Pas de Trois, Diana and Actaeon Pas de Deux, Don Quixote Pas de Deux, Harlequinade Solo

YURI POSSOKHOV

Firebird

ANDRÉ PROKOVSKY

Anna Karenina, Vespri

JEROME ROBBINS

The Concert, Fancy Free, In the Night

GALINA SAMSOVA

Paquita [production]

PETER SCHAUFUSS

La Sylphide pas de deux [production]

PAUL TAYLOR

Airs, Brandenburgs, Company B

TWYLA THARP

In The Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs

DAVID TLAIYE Xibalba

WILL TUCKETT

Changing Light, Lux Aeterna, The Secret Garden, Spielende Kinder

ANTONY TUDOR

Continuo, Gala Performance, The Leaves are Fading, Lilac Garden

VASILY VAINONEN

Flames of Paris Pas de Deux

HANS VAN MANEN

Grosse Fuge

MACYN

Exurgency

VOGT

DOMINIC WALSH

Bello, Camille Claudel La Valse Pas de Deux, Clair de Lune, Dying Swan, I Napoletani, Time Out of Line, The Trilogy: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang for Webb

CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON

The American, Prokofiev Pas de Deux, There Where She Loved

SIR PETER WRIGHT

Giselle [production], The Mirror Walkers, Summertide

KELLY YANKLE

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Board of Trustees

RICHARD S.

DEFEO

FRANK MARTUCCI

Peggy Abt

Isabel Anchin Becker

Paul Cantor

Ginger Cannon Bailey

Hillary Steele Chair Emerita

Dr. Bart Price Honorary Trustee

Julie A. Harris

Patricia A. Golemme

Phil Lombardo

Bill Farber

JoAnn Heffernan Heisen

Peter B. Miller

Audrey Robbins

Sydney Goldstein Chair Emerita

Rosemary Oberndorf

Mercedita OConnor

Jean Weidner Goldstein Founder & Chair Emerita

Jan Sirota

Mark Famiglio Honorary Trustee

Jean Weiller

David Welle

Charles Wilson

Lynda Doery

Advisory Council

Marilynn Petrillo

Maryann ArmourGinger Cannon Bailey Advisory Committee Chair

Frances D. Fergusson Marnie Grossman

Mary Kay Henson

Charles Huisking

Robin KleinStrauss

Peter E. Kretzmer

Karen Lichtig

Tina Lieberman

Richard March

Gini Peltz

Donna Maytham

Laura A. Feder

Dr. Amy L. Harding

Kimberley Anne Pelyk

Lois Stulberg

Lisa Binkley

Rose Marie Proietti

William Chapman

Dr. Joel Morganroth

Joan Mathews

Jan Farber

Linda Mitchell

Marcia Jean Taub

Clara Reynardus de Villanueva

Richard Segall

Melliss Kenworthy Swenson

Micki Sellman

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History of The Sarasota Ballet

1987 2007 2016

The Sarasota Ballet was founded in 1987 by Jean Weidner Goldstein as a presenting organization with the goal of becoming a full resident ballet company, which was achieved in 1990 with the appointment of the Company’s first Director, Montreal-based choreographer Eddy Toussaint. Toussaint launched The Sarasota Ballet with much of his own choreographic work. Following a Season under the leadership of Jean Weidner Goldstein as Interim Director, Robert de Warren, former Director of Ballet at Teatro alla Scala Milan and Northern Ballet, took the mantle of Artistic Director. During his thirteen years with the Company, de Warren likewise focused on bringing his own choreographic creations to stage.

In January 2007, The Sarasota Ballet announced de Warren’s retirement and the appointment of Iain Webb, who would take the helm as Director. That first Season would revolutionize The Sarasota Ballet and set the Company on a path to both national and international recognition. Heavily inspired by his career with The Royal Ballet and combined with his close personal relationships with some of the biggest names in the dance world, Webb brought extraordinary ballets to the Sarasota stage by some of the great choreographers of the 20th century.

In 2016, the renowned Joseph Volpe, former General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, took on the role of Executive Director of The Sarasota Ballet. His mission has been to bring the organization’s administrative staff and financial foundation to a level that matches the Company’s artistic excellence. Over the past five years, Volpe has expanded the organizational structure of The Sarasota Ballet and strengthened the Company’s future.

Present

Alongside his wife Margaret Barbieri, Assistant Director and former principal of The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Webb has introduced 173 ballets and divertissements through the 20222023 Season. This new repertoire has included works by some of the greatest choreographers in the dance world, such as Sir Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Paul Taylor, Sir David Bintley, Sir Matthew Bourne, and Christopher Wheeldon, to name only a few. Several of these ballets have received their American premieres with The Sarasota Ballet, and the Company has been integral in bringing rarely seen ballets to today’s audiences. The Sarasota Ballet’s expansive repertoire, coupled with the athleticism and artistry of the Company’s dancers, has brought the Company national and international acclaim. In addition, The Sarasota Ballet has continued to push the art form forward through commissioning new works, from both budding choreographers within the Company and established choreographers around the globe.

Together, Iain Webb, Joseph Volpe, and Margaret Barbieri continue to grow The Sarasota Ballet in its achievement, acclaim, and reputation.

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Bal

The 2022 Joyce Tour

The Sarasota Ballet returned to the Joyce Theater for a residency of seven remarkable performances running August 16 th through August 21 st. The triple bill performance featured Sir Frederick Ashton’s Birthday Offering , a World Premiere by internationally acclaimed Choreographer Jessica Lang, entitled of Shades of Spring , and Ashton’s Varii Capricci . This comeback to the Joyce delighted audiences and showcased the talent that our Company has in spades.

The Joyce Theater tour was made possible thanks to funding from the Jean Allenby Goldstein Touring Fund, the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and the Philip & Janice Levin Foundation; William A. Farber, Trustee.

Ashton’s Varii Capricci

Ashton’s Birthday Offering

Lang’s Shades of Spring

Patron Events on the Tour

Patrons who joined The Sarasota Ballet on tour had the opportunity to enhance their New York experience with three events held throughout the week. Events included a traditional Spanish Tapas Dinner held at Salinas Restaurant, a pre-performance Champagne Toast graciously hosted at the townhome of Bill & Jan Farber, and a Post-Performance Cocktail Reception at CATCH NYC. These exciting gatherings allowed patrons to mingle with directors, special guest artists, dancers, and staff in celebration of The Sarasota Ballet’s residency at the Joyce Theater.

Top: (Left) Iain Webb, Patricia Golemme, & Laura Feder

(Right) Jan Farber, Sara LeFloch, & Linda Fiorelli

Left: JoAnn Heisen & Donna Malin

Right: Iain Webb, Margaret Barbieri, & Company Dancers

Bottom:

(Left) Joseph Volpe, Dominique Jenkins, Margaret Barbieri, Yuki Nonaka, Emelia Perkins, & Iain Webb (Right) Audrey Robbins & Deborah Kalb

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The Pilgrimage

World Premiere

Per the term’s definition, a pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or sacred foreign place, where a person goes in search of a new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life.

The Pilgrimage transpires in a deserted land, where a group of nomadic people wander in search of their next home or experience while facing the difficulties and pleasantries of the journey. As a community, they count on each other and their beliefs to get through the hard times and find the strength to move on.

Choreographer Ricardo Graziano remarks: “Throughout life’s journey we encounter multiple obstacles, are presented with pleasant situations, and are gifted with relationships that help us grow stronger and wiser so we can move forward and be better prepared for the future that lies ahead, whatever it may be.”

Dmitri Shostakovich

COMPOSER

Dmitri Shostakovich was the first major composer to come to maturity in the Soviet Union. Born in 1906 in St. Petersburg, his First Symphony, composed as his graduation piece from the conservatory there, soon became an international success. Two more symphonies, two operas, and three ballets followed before the denunciation in 1936 of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsenk District and his ballet The Limpid Stream as Soviet control of the arts sharply increased and only the success of his Fifth Symphony saved his career. After that he concentrated mainly on orchestral and chamber works and music for films. Despite a second denunciation in 1948 he continued to compose until his death in 1975 at age 68. His fifteen symphonies, two piano concertos and two for violin, fifteen string quartets, and twenty-four preludes and fugues for piano, among other works, make him one of the most important composers of the twentieth century, leaving what his biographer Laurel E. Fay has called a “broad legacy of inspired, arresting, and often anguished musical scores.“

Ricardo Graziano CHOREOGRAPHER

Graziano

Ricardo Graziano started dancing when he was 8 years old in his hometown of Mogi das Cruzes, Brazil. At the age of 16 he won a scholarship to study at the Academie des Tanzes in Mannheim, Germany, and in 2005 joined Tulsa Ballet. In 2010 Graziano joined The Sarasota Ballet as a Soloist, the following year was promoted to Principal. It was at the start of the 2011 - 2012 Season that Graziano was given the opportunity by Iain Webb to choreograph his first ballet, Shostakovich Suite , which premiered in October 2011. Following this ballet, Graziano choreographed four new ballets before being appointed Resident Choreographer by Iain Webb in 2014 after a performance of Symphony of Sorrows . Since then, he has choreographed several more works for the Company, including In a State of Weightlessness , which premiered 12 August 2015, as a part of The Sarasota Ballet’s first week-long residency at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

His other choreographic works for The Sarasota Ballet include: Pomp and Circumstance for The Sarasota Ballet’s March 2013 Gala; Valsinhas in May 2013; Before Night Falls in February 2014; En las Calles de Murcia in March 2015; Sonata in Four Movements in August 2016 at the 1932 Criterion Theatre in Bar Harbor, Maine; The Jolly Overture and Somewhere for The Sarasota Ballet’s April 2018 Gala; Amorosa in January 2019, and Sonatina in October 2021.

In total, Graziano will have choreographed ten one-act ballets and three divertissements by the end of the 2022 - 2023 Season.

Jerry Wolf COSTUME DESIGNER

Native to Portland, Oregon, Jerry Wolf earned his B.A. in Theater Arts at Redlands, California, and his MFA at University of Texas in Houston. Fresh out of college, he launched a career in Broadway Touring as Wardrobe Supervisor for 25 years. Thirteen tours included Evita , Cats , Les Misérables, and Phantom of the Opera Wolf returned to Texas in 2003 and began a seven-season run with Houston Ballet as the First Assistant to the Wardrobe Head. He then moved in 2011 to Tulsa Ballet for five seasons as Director of Wardrobe and, while visiting in Sarasota, was eventually asked to become Head of Wardrobe for The Sarasota Ballet, where he is now in his seventh season.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet October 21, 2022

Choreography by Ricardo

Music by Dmitri Shostakovich Costume Designs by Jerry Wolf Lighting Designs by Ethan Vail

Living Ghosts

World Premiere

After visiting the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition

The Picasso Century, House was struck by aspects of the philosophical outlook of some of the Surrealist artists. Curatorial notes commented on how Surrealist imagery could amplify truths about the human condition; how the hallucinatory tone relates to “the moment before the mind rests: memories of life…bleeding into dreams”. This intoxicating image became the departure point for Living Ghosts

At a similar time, House began listening to Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi’s Seven Days Walking , an auditory chronicle of a week-long journey along the Alps. The exciting contrasts between sections of ambitious drama and moments of contemplative solitude in Einaudi’s score were a stimulating canvas for a dance work that meditates on the cycles in a person’s life and the reflections we have as the journey progresses. Though there is no physical reference to a journey, Living Ghosts explores the shifting tones of relationships across a person’s life, relationships with loved ones, with community, and ultimately with oneself. Though we spend our lifetimes reaching out to others, the interior world of our mind and the images that frequent that space are resolutely ours alone. Living Ghosts is an evocation of the memories that greet us at the moment before our minds rest.

Ludovico Einaudi COMPOSER

Born in Turin, Italy on November 23 rd, 1955, Ludovico Einaudi trained at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan and, upon graduation in 1982 and studying with experimental composer Luciano Berio, began his career as a classical composer and pianist, later exploring genres such as rock, pop, folk, and world music. He followed his compositions for dance and multimedia in the mid-1980s with a pivot to film scores the next decade; his score for Michele Sordillo’s 1996 Acquario won the Grolla d’oro for best soundtrack. In a curious intersection of film and ballet, Einaudi wrote the music for the trailer of Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film, Black Swan . More recently, in 2019 he initiated Seven Days Walking , a seven-volume series of music released over the course of seven months. As a concert pianist, Einaudi has performed at venues such as the famous La Scala opera house in Milan and collaborated with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.

Richard House CHOREOGRAPHER

by Ethan Vail

First Performed by

21, 2022

Richard House trained at the Victorian College of the Arts, Dance School of Scotland, and The Australian Ballet School. Whilst with The Australian Ballet School, Richard discovered a passion for choreography and was awarded the Graeme Murphy Award for Excellence in Contemporary Dance. Joing The Australian Ballet in 2011 House choreographed six works over his eight years with the company, which were performed at the Sydney Opera House, State Theatre Melbourne, and many other theatres around Australia. In addition to creations for the stage, Richard has choreographed for film. His credits include The Australian Ballet’s 2017 season campaign, the music video for Australian artist Fiction Writer from The Preatures single No Rumor, and a duet for Australian Broadcasting Company’s (ABC) classical music campaign which received over 70,000 views when launched in 2018. Integral to his development as a choreographer, Richard benefitted from the Khitercs scholarship whilst at The Australian Ballet which facilitated a range of shadowing and observational opportunities with choreographers including Akram Khan, Wayne McGregor and companies like The Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, and National Ballet of Canada. Richard joined The Sarasota Ballet as a Soloist for the 2018 - 2019 season, choreographing Sketch Tones for The Sarasota Ballet’s Studio Company and Tomorrow’s Dust for a collaboration between The Sarasota Ballet’s Studio Company, the trainees of The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory and Key Chorale in 2021. Richard has continued close ties with arts organisations in Australia, having choreographed ballets for Victorian College of The Arts Secondary School and The Australian Ballet School in 2019.

Kat Chan COSTUME DESIGNER

Originally trained as an architect, Chan has worked in architectural offices in Adelaide and Tokyo. She was recently a participant of the Women in Theatre Program at Melbourne Theatre Company (2018) and graduated from the VCA with a Masters in Production Design (2008) and Postgraduate Diploma in Production Design (2006) receiving the Trina Parker Scholarship (08) and Sir George Tallis Design Award (06). Working across theatre, ballet and video art, recent design credits includes Melbourne Theatre Company, Belvoir St/If Productions, The Australian Ballet, and Red Stitch Theatre. (Costume), “The Sleeping Beauty” The Australian Ballet (Design Associate to Gabriela Tylesova).

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet

The Sarasota Ballet October

Choreography by Richard House Music by Ludovico Einaudi Costume Designs by Kat Chan Lighting Designs

Excursions

World Premiere

Bond’s new work takes its inspiration from the words and music of Samuel Barber’s Excursions , paired with three of the four movements from his Piano Sonata Op 26. Though extremely difficult to execute, the sonata is much more than a virtuosic showpiece; Barber integrated many 20 th-century musical ideas into the sonata.

Barber stated regarding the music: “These are ‘excursions’ in small classical forms into regional American idioms. Their rhythmic characteristics, as well as their source in folk material and their scoring, reminiscent of local instruments are easily recognized.”

The ballet ends with the fourth movement, a classic fugue of ferocious virtuosity that makes strenuous technical demands of the performers and the pianist. The main theme of the fugue, a three-bar chromatic syncopated melody, is developed over multiple variations and modulations, moving between hands and, midway through the piece, yielding to a brief E-major interlude with allusions to American Western folk music as well as Barber’s earlier Excursions

Samuel Barber COMPOSER

One of the most widely celebrated composers of the 20th Century, Samuel Barber was born in 1910 and discovered a profound interest in music at a precocious age, beginning study of the piano at six and composing his first work at seven. He followed studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in composition, voice, and piano with a flurry of composition successes, most famously his 1936 Adagio for Strings still heard frequently around the world. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II while simultaneously fielding commissions for the Boston Symphony Orchestra; upon his return to ‘Capricorn’, his house north of Manhattan purchased in 1943, he composed the ballet suite Medea for Martha Graham, launching his most productive years as a composer.

In 1958 Barber won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Vanessa, his first opera premiered at the Metropolitan Opera that January. Four years later, he won a second Pulitzer for Piano Concerto, one of three works by him commissioned for the opening of New York’s Lincoln Center. He later adapted Adagio for Strings into a choral work, 1967’s Agnus Dei, which has since become widely performed by choirs internationally. After several years of prolonged health difficulties, Barber died of cancer in 1981.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet October 21, 2022

Gemma Bond CHOREOGRAPHER

Gemma Bond got her first taste of choreography at 13 when she competed in The Royal Ballet School’s Sir Kenneth MacMillan Choreographic Competition. From 2010 to the present she has created works for American Ballet Theater and Studio Company, Atlanta Ballet,  Ballet Nacional de Cuba, The Washington Ballet, New York Theater Ballet, Intermezzo Ballet Company, the Hartt School, Ballet Sun Valley, Kaatsbaan Summer Festival, and City Center’s Fall for Dance. Her choreography has been performed at the prestigious Erik Bruhn Competition, The Royal Opera House, The Joyce, Jacob’s Pillow, New York City Center, and the Metropolitan Opera House.

In 2014 she was awarded the fellowship grant from the New York Choreographic Institute (an affiliate of New York City Ballet) and she has also received grants from the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Ms. Bond is a 2017-2018 New York City Center Choreography Fellow, the recipient of a 2017 Princess Grace award, 2018 winner of the Clive Barnes Foundation Award for her choreography, and a 2020 Bessie for outstanding breakout choreographer.

Lauren Starobin COSTUME DESIGNER

Lauren studied art and design at RISD as well as in Paris at Studio Berçot. She received her BFA in fashion design from FIT in 2021 where she was the recipient of several scholarly awards including two Critics’ Awards as well as the 1st prize in the Underfashion Club’s Student Design Scholarship Competition. Since graduating she has sought to combine her knowledge and love of fashion and dance. She apprenticed with celebrated dance costume designers Reid & Harriet and honed her skills at various prominent Broadway costume shops. Lauren has designed original costumes for Alexei Ratmansky, James Whiteside, Dana Genshaft, The Washington Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Buglisi Dance Theater, Al Blackstone and others. This is her fist work with The Sarasota Ballet.

Choreography by Gemma Bond

Music by Samuel Barber Costume Designs by Lauren Starobin Lighting Designs by Ethan Vail

Danses Concertantes

Company Premiere

Danses Concertantes was the first ballet commissioned from the young Scottish choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan by the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, the junior company of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (soon to become The Royal Ballet). Only his fourth ballet, following two workshop programs and a third made for children’s television, it showed remarkable assurance for a near-beginner.

Although written in the form of a ballet suite—March, Pas d’Action, Theme and Variations, Pas de Deux, and March— Stravinsky’s score was originally written as a concert piece for a chamber orchestra of twenty-four musicians, his first important piece conceived after settling in the United States in 1940. Of course the ever-practical composer may have hoped for it to serve more than one purpose, but it had its premiere at a concert in Los Angeles in February 1942, two years before Balanchine choreographed it for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

MacMillan captured Stravinsky’s witty score through his jagged and restless choreography, while firmly basing the movement on classical ballet technique. Like Ashton’s Scenes de Ballet , whose score has much in common with Danses Concertantes and in which MacMillan had danced, it is plotless, a rarity in MacMillan’s work, which is usually strongly dramatic, and also of the company, where plot filled ballets were the norm.

In search of a designer who could match his vision, MacMillan turned to the Slade School of Art, where he found Nicholas Georgiadas, a young Greek artist, starting the designer on his distinguished career as one of the leading scenic artists of his generation and beginning a partnership that would last to the end of MacMillan’s life.

The success of the premiere, both with critics and audiences, established the twenty-five year old MacMillan as a choreographer to be watched, and the ballet was soon taken into the repertory of the main company, while he took the opportunity to retire as a dancer and was named a resident choreographer.

Sir Kenneth MacMillan CHOREOGRAPHER

Sir Kenneth MacMillan was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1929. He won a scholarship to the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School and in 1946 became a founding member of Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, a new company formed by Dame Ninette de Valois. He gained his first dance experience at the Wells and then moved to Covent Garden. In 1952 he returned to the Wells and there found his true vocation as a choreographer. Gifted young dancers formed a Choreographic Group to present new works, and the hit of their first performance in 1953 was MacMillan’s first ballet, Somnambulism, to music by Stan Kenton.

In 1954 he staged a story ballet, Laiderette, and de Valois commissioned Danses Concertantes, which immediately established MacMillan as a choreographer of note. In the 1960s MacMillan would continue to prove his mastery through choreographing works such as the controversial The Invitation (1960), as well as a series of full-length ballets such as Romeo and Juliet (1965), The Sleeping Beauty (1967), and Swan Lake (1969). He became Director of Ballet at Deutsche Oper Berlin (1966-1969), and then Director of The Royal Ballet (1970-1977) and Resident Choreographer (1977-1982). In 1974 he created Manon and Elite Syncopations, and for the Stuttgart Ballet he created Requiem (1976) and My Brother, My Sisters (1978). Mayerling was first produced at Covent Garden in 1978 and had a triumphal American premiere in Los Angeles that same year. Other later works were La Fin du Jour, which draws inspiration from the fashionable way of life shattered by World War II, and Gloria, a lament and thanksgiving for the generation that perished in World War I. MacMillan created his fifth full-length ballet, Isadora, which received its world premiere at Covent Garden in 1981.

He received his Knighthood in 1983 and was Artistic Associate of American Ballet Theatre from 1984-1989. MacMillan died in London in October 1992 at the age of 62. At the time of his death he was choreographing a revival of the musical Carousel.

First Performed by Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet January 18, 1955

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet November 18, 2022

Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan Music by Igor Stravinsky Design by Nicholas Georgiadis Staged by Grant Coyle

Igor Stravinsky COMPOSER

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, born in 1882, was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who is widely acknowledged as one of the most important composers of 20 th century music. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1946 and died in the United States in 1971. Stravinsky’s diverse compositional career encompassed three stylistic periods. He studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, and his early works show the influence of that master. However, he also inclined toward the music of the French impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, while retaining his nationalist outlook. This resulted in such pieces as Fireworks , The Faun and the Shepherdess , and the major ballet Firebird . Firebird ’s success led to two more ballets for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: Petrushka and The Rite of Spring , both landmarks of 20 th century music. By The Rite of Spring , the “infernal” element of Firebird had erupted into a previously-unheard, epic “barbarism” so much so that some of the audience rioted at the Paris premiere.

After World War I, Stravinsky introduced a pared-down aesthetic and an element of “objectification,” like a Cubist collage with everyday objects in L’Histoire du Soldat , Tango , and Ragtime . He also became interested in classical procedures and updated them for an expanded harmonic language. The new style, termed Neoclassicism, influenced many of his contemporaries.

Nicholas Georgiadis DESIGNER

In 1955, while looking for a designer for Danses Concertantes , his first ballet for a major company, Sir Kenneth MacMillan chose the work of an unknown Greek student, Nicholas Georgiadis. Born in Athens in 1923, Georgiadis had already studied in his native Athens and New York before enrolling in London’s Slade School of Art, where MacMillan discovered him. This became the first of fifteen collaborations with MacMillan, mostly for the Royal Ballet, including Romeo and Juliet , Manon , Mayerling , and The Prince of the Pagodas . Georgiadis also went on to design for many companies including American Ballet Theatre, the National Ballet of Canada, London Festival Ballet, La Scala, and the Paris Opéra Ballet under Rudolf Nureyev. He also worked in opera, theatre, and film as well as teaching design at the Slade School, helped found the Society of British Theatre Designers, and in his later years returned to painting before his death in 2001.

Dante Sonata

Company Premiere

“When the poet paints hell, he paints his life,” wrote Victor Hugo in ‘After a reading of Dante,’ the poem that inspired Franz Liszt to compose his Après une lecture du Dante, Fantasia quasi sonata, the remarkable piano work that became the score for Frederick Ashton’s Dante Sonata. In January 1940, less than four months after the brutal German invasion of Poland started World War II, Ashton’s response was this astonishing work depicting the struggle between the forces of good and evil as exemplified by the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, a ballet that raises questions without providing answers.

The inspiration for Hugo’s poem, Liszt’s score, and Ashton’s ballet was The Inferno , the first book of The Divine Comedy , depicting Dante’s epic through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Early in The Inferno , the poet hears “strange tongues, horrible outcries, words of pain, voices deep and dark.” It is this world that Ashton evokes as the forces of Light and Darkness struggle as if tossed by a great wind. To create this dark world, Ashton used movements more akin to modern dance than classic ballet, with the dancers barefoot, supported by the costumes and backdrop of Sophie Fedorovitch, his favorite designer, and the powerful arrangement of Liszt’s score for piano and orchestra by Constant Lambert, the Sadler’s Wells’ music director and Ashton’s close collaborator in this and many other works.

To discourage a literal reading of the ballet a program note stated that the score was intended to represent in musical form Liszt’s reactions after reading Dante’s poem, adding that “The ballet is therefore a freely symbolic reading of the moods and form of the music and, though it represents the warring attitudes of two different groups of equally tortured spirits, it tells no set story.”

Although the ballet became a repertory standard throughout the war, afterward the national mood changed and it was dropped in 1950 and considered lost. Fifty years later, Dante Sonata finally reemerged, reconstructed by dedicated members of the original cast and Choreographer and Director David Bintley, for the Birmingham Royal Ballet and enabling us to see it now.

Choreography

Sir Frederick Ashton CHOREOGRAPHER

Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904 and determined to become a dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London, he studied with Léonide Massine and later with Dame Marie Rambert (who encouraged his first ventures in choreography) as well as dancing briefly in Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928-1929).

A Tragedy of Fashion (in which he danced alongside Marie Rambert) was followed by further choreographies ( Capriol Suite , Façade ) until in 1935, when he accepted Dame Ninette de Valois’ invitation to join her Vic-Wells Ballet as Dancer and Choreographer, his principal loyalty remaining with what would become the Sadler’s Wells and ultimately The Royal Ballet. Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s Wells (which demonstrated an increasing authority, with larger resources), Ashton choreographed for revues and musicals. His career would also embrace opera, film, and international commissions, creating ballets in New York, Monte Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan. During the War, he served in the RAF (1941-1945) before creating Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s 1946 season in its new home at Covent Garden, affirming a new spirit of classicism and modernity in English postwar ballet.

During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often created around the talents of particular dancers, included: Scènes de ballet , Cinderella (1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann famously played the Ugly Sisters, Daphnis and Chloe (1951), Romeo and Juliet (1955), and Ondine (1958). He created La Fille mal gardée (1960) for Nadia Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961) for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, Marguerite and Armand (1963) for Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev and The Dream (1964) for Dame Antoinette Sibley and Sir Anthony Dowell.

Appointed Associate Director of The Royal Ballet in 1952, Ashton succeeded Dame Ninette de Valois as Director from 1963 to 1970. Under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar , Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. TiggyWinkle. He was knighted in 1962.

Named Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in the international repertoire undiminished, show a remarkable versatility, a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality. He had an equal facility for recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.

by Sir Frederick Ashton Music by Franz Liszt Orchestration by Constant Lambert Original Designs by Sophie Fedorovitch Staged by Patricia Tierney

Franz Liszt COMPOSER

Born in 1811, Franz Liszt became the most celebrated piano virtuoso of his day, as well as a much admired teacher, conductor, and composer. He also encouraged the careers of such other composers as Wagner, Berlioz, Grieg, Saint-Säens, and Borodin.

Inspired by hearing Paganini play, Liszt launched himself as a virtuoso concert pianist, and for 20 years toured Europe to triumphant acclaim, giving much of his fees to charities. From 1833 to 1839, he lived with the married Countess Marie d’Agoult. Two of their children died, in 1859 and 1862, and the third, Cosima, later married Richard Wagner. In 1847, at the age of 35, he met the married Princess Carolyne zu SaynWittgenstein, who persuaded him to retire from concert work, settle in Weimar, and concentrate on composing. In later life, unable to marry Princess Carolyne, Liszt took minor orders of the priesthood and, known as the Abbé Liszt, divided his time between Rome, Weimar, and Budapest.

Sophie Fedorovitch DESIGNER

Anglo-Russian designer Sophie Fedorovitch (1883-1953) was a key figure in British ballet. She is best remembered for her collaborations with Sir Frederick Ashton, including his first ballet A Tragedy of Fashion in 1926, and subsequently Les Masques , Nocturne , Symphonic Variations , and Orpheus and Eurydice , among others. In addition, she created designs for La Traviata and Madama Butterfly for the Covent Garden Opera Company (later The Royal Opera). Born in Minsk to Polish parents, she studied art in Kraków before returning to Russia before emigrating to the West in 1920. Her collaborations with Ashton played a crucial part in the development of British ballet. Ashton dedicated A Month in the Country to her memory, and wrote “Her method of designing seemed to be a process of elimination, clearing the stage of all unnecessary and irrelevant details.”

First Performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet January 23,1940

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet November 18, 2022

Rhapsody

Ashton had been retired for 10 years when, as he related, “Princess Margaret came to me and said ‘you must do something for Mummy’s 80th birthday,’ (‘Mummy’ being his old friend Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) which also happened to coincide with Baryshnikov insisting that he would only dance with the company on condition that I did a ballet for him. So with a gun held at my head… I pulled out all the plugs.”

“The plugs” Ashton pulled out created a flamboyant piece d’occasion featuring Baryshnikov at his bravura Kirov starriest. Rhapsody presents an ensemble of six men and six women, dancing firmly in the “English” Royal Ballet style Ashton exemplified. His leading man delivers Russian-style virtuoso steps, joined at a relatively late stage in the ballet by his female partner (originally Lesley Collier).

This was not what Baryshnikov had hoped for, or had defected to the West to do. “I was a bit disappointed: I wanted English ballet and he wanted Russian ballet. I was trying to escape from all those steps.” It was the last time he would guest with The Royal Ballet. In essence, Ashton’s Rhapsody creates a dazzling dialectic between Russian virtuosity and English elegance. Despite being “pea green with anxiety” at the Royal premiere, Ashton was thanked for giving the Queen and Queen Mother “one of the greatest and happiest evenings they could remember.”

Sir Frederick Ashton CHOREOGRAPHER

Coyle

Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904 and determined to become a dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London, he studied with Léonide Massine and later with Dame Marie Rambert (who encouraged his first ventures in choreography) as well as dancing briefly in Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928-1929).

A Tragedy of Fashion (in which he danced alongside Marie Rambert) was followed by further choreographies ( Capriol Suite , Façade ) until in 1935, when he accepted Dame Ninette de Valois’ invitation to join her Vic-Wells Ballet as Dancer and Choreographer, his principal loyalty remaining with what would become the Sadler’s Wells and ultimately The Royal Ballet. Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s Wells (which demonstrated an increasing authority, with larger resources), Ashton choreographed for revues and musicals. His career would also embrace opera, film, and international commissions, creating ballets in New York, Monte Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan. During the War, he served in the RAF (1941-1945) before creating Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s 1946 season in its new home at Covent Garden, affirming a new spirit of classicism and modernity in English postwar ballet.

During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often created around the talents of particular dancers, included: Scènes de ballet , Cinderella (1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann famously played the Ugly Sisters, Daphnis and Chloe (1951), Romeo and Juliet (1955), and Ondine (1958). He created La Fille mal gardée (1960) for Nadia Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961) for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, Marguerite and Armand (1963) for Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev and The Dream (1964) for Dame Antoinette Sibley and Sir Anthony Dowell.

Appointed Associate Director of The Royal Ballet in 1952, Ashton succeeded Dame Ninette de Valois as Director from 1963 to 1970. Under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar , Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. TiggyWinkle. He was knighted in 1962.

Named Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in the international repertoire undiminished, show a remarkable versatility, a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality. He had an equal facility for recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.

Choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton Music by Sergei Rachmaninov Set Design by Sir Frederick Ashton Costume Design by William Chappell Staged by Grant

Sergei Rachmaninov COMPOSER

Rachmaninov was born in 1873 in Novgorod, the fourth of six children of wealthy parents with military and musical backgrounds, he studied piano and composition at the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatoires. Initial success with his opera Aleko was followed by writer’s block after the 1897 failure of his First Symphony , and he turned to conducting until 1901 when his Second Piano Concerto ’s success restored his confidence and also brought him conducting engagements at the Bolshoi Theatre, Dresden, and the United States.

In 1902, Rachmaninov married his cousin Natalia Satina and they had two daughters. His career as composer and conductor prospered until unhappy with the way things were going, Rachmaninov left Russia with his family in late1917, touring as a concert pianist and guest conductor before settling in New York. His successful touring career hampered his composing: between 1918 and 1943 Rachmaninov composed only six new works, including the Fourth Piano Concerto , the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini , the Third Symphony , and Symphonic Dances . As he later admitted, by leaving Russia “I left behind my desire to compose: losing my country, I lost myself also.” Deteriorating health caused a move to California, where he and his wife became naturalized American citizens one month before the composer’s death in March 1943.

William Chappell DESIGNER

A gifted and versatile artist who succeeded as both dancer and theatre designer, William (“Billy”) Chappell was born 27 September 1908 in Wolverhampton. He studied painting at Chelsea Art School where he met lifelong friend Edward Burra, but through his friendship with Sir Frederick Ashton, Chappell soon committed himself to dance. He studied with Marie Rambert before dancing with Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928), Ballet Rambert (1929-1934), and the Vic-Wells Ballet (1934-1940).

During the 1930s, Chappell created roles in de Valois’ Job , The Haunted Ballroom , Checkmate and The Rake’s Progress as well as creating designs for Ashton’s ballets Capriol Suite , Les Rendezvous , and Les Patineurs ; Tudor’s Lysistrata ; de Valois’ Cephalus and Procris , La Bar aux Folies-Bergère and The Wise and Foolish Virgins; for Vic-Wells ( Giselle and Coppélia ); and René Blum’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo ( The Nutcracker ).

The war interrupted his career with army service entertaining the troops, but he returned to ballet design in 1946 when the Sadler’s Wells Ballet moved to Covent Garden. He also extended his career to embrace writing and directing in the West End theatre. Chappell continued to work prolifically throughout his life before his death in Rye on 1 January 1994.

First Performed by The Royal Ballet August 4, 1980

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet November 16, 2018

Les Patineurs

It was Constant Lambert, the troubled but inspirational Musical Director of the Vic-Wells Ballet and lover of the young Margot Fonteyn, who suggested that the ballet music from two of the French composer Meyerbeer’s operas, L’Étoile du Nord and the 1849 La Prophète , might furnish the ideal score for a skating ballet in development in 1937. These operas had famously featured a corps de ballet on roller skates, well over a century before Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express !

Ninette de Valois, the young company’s founding director, found herself unable to make headway with the Meyerbeer project, and handed it over to her rising young choreographer, Frederick Ashton, who reciprocated by delivering to her The Rake’s Progress which was proving equally challenging for him. This proved a happy exchange, resulting in a significant landmark work for each dance-maker.

Ashton knew precisely nothing of skating and had never visited an ice-rink in his life, but the delightful ice-skating divertissement he concocted premiered at Sadler’s Wells to great public acclaim, spectacularly demonstrating just how far the nascent British ballet had come in six short years from its inception by de Valois.

The ballet’s premiere benefited from an illustrious cast, with Margot Fonteyn (Ashton’s muse in the late 1930’s) and Robert Helpmann as the pas de deux couple and Harold Turner as the Blue Skater (a role not unrelated, perhaps, to the Blue Bird of the classical The Sleeping Beauty ). It was in this popular success that the dancer Michael Somes first made his mark, attracting notice with his spectacularly impressive elevation, as the leading dancer and Ashton inspiration he was to become.

Sir Frederick Ashton CHOREOGRAPHER

Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904 and determined to become a dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London, he studied with Léonide Massine and later with Dame Marie Rambert (who encouraged his first ventures in choreography) as well as dancing briefly in Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928-1929).

A Tragedy of Fashion (in which he danced alongside Marie Rambert) was followed by further choreographies ( Capriol Suite , Façade ) until in 1935, when he accepted Dame Ninette de Valois’ invitation to join her Vic-Wells Ballet as Dancer and Choreographer, his principal loyalty remaining with what would become the Sadler’s Wells and ultimately The Royal Ballet. Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s Wells (which demonstrated an increasing authority, with larger resources), Ashton choreographed for revues and musicals. His career would also embrace opera, film, and international commissions, creating ballets in New York, Monte Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan. During the War, he served in the RAF (1941-1945) before creating Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s 1946 season in its new home at Covent Garden, affirming a new spirit of classicism and modernity in English postwar ballet.

During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often created around the talents of particular dancers, included: Scènes de ballet , Cinderella (1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann famously played the Ugly Sisters, Daphnis and Chloe (1951), Romeo and Juliet (1955), and Ondine (1958). He created La Fille mal gardée (1960) for Nadia Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961) for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, Marguerite and Armand (1963) for Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev and The Dream (1964) for Dame Antoinette Sibley and Sir Anthony Dowell.

Appointed Associate Director of The Royal Ballet in 1952, Ashton succeeded Dame Ninette de Valois as Director from 1963 to 1970. Under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar , Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. TiggyWinkle. He was knighted in 1962.

Named Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in the international repertoire undiminished, show a remarkable versatility, a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality. He had an equal facility for recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.

Choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton Music by Giacomo Meyerbeer Music Arranged by Constant Lambert Design by William Chappell Staged by Margaret Barbieri & Iain Webb

Giacomo Meyerbeer COMPOSER

Meyerbeer was German-Jewish, born Jacob Liebmann Beer (1791) near Berlin. Both his parents came from wealthy backgrounds and two of his brothers became well-known astronomers and poets. Like Mozart, his precocious talent led to an early musical debut, performing at the age of 9, he studied with the Abbé Vogler, who also taught Carl Maria von Weber. Moving from virtuosic performance to composition and for family reasons taking the name Meyerbeer, he went to Italy, where he came under Rossini’s influence and renamed himself Giacomo. Of his 17 operas (1812-1865), the best-known are probably Les Huguenots and L’Africaine , while his first major success Il Crociatto in Egitto was the last opera to feature a castrato. Meyerbeer’s first big hit, Robert le Diable is often (and inaccurately) considered the first “grand opera,” but his melodramatic, historical plots, sumptuous scores, huge casts, and staging demands ensured the success of his operas, until the sustained personal attacks of Wagner (whose 1842 opera Rienzi was maliciously dubbed “Meyerbeer’s greatest work”!) and growing anti-Semitism in Germany, and changes in taste elsewhere, reduced his popularity. Only recently have his operas been restaged, with varying success.

William Chappell DESIGNER

A gifted and versatile artist who succeeded as both dancer and theatre designer, William (“Billy”) Chappell was born 27 September 1908 in Wolverhampton. He studied painting at Chelsea Art School where he met lifelong friend Edward Burra, but through his friendship with Sir Frederick Ashton, Chappell soon committed himself to dance. He studied with Marie Rambert before dancing with Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928), Ballet Rambert (1929-1934), and the Vic-Wells Ballet (1934-1940).

During the 1930s, Chappell created roles in de Valois’ Job , The Haunted Ballroom , Checkmate and The Rake’s Progress as well as creating designs for Ashton’s ballets Capriol Suite , Les Rendezvous , and Les Patineurs ; Tudor’s Lysistrata ; de Valois’ Cephalus and Procris , La Bar aux Folies-Bergère and The Wise and Foolish Virgins; for Vic-Wells ( Giselle and Coppélia ); and René Blum’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo ( The Nutcracker ).

The war interrupted his career with army service entertaining the troops, but he returned to ballet design in 1946 when the Sadler’s Wells Ballet moved to Covent Garden. He also extended his career to embrace writing and directing in the West End theatre. Chappell continued to work prolifically throughout his life before his death in Rye on 1 January 1994.

First Performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet March 16, 1937

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet December 19, 2008

Company Premiere

Astarry evening in a park or a terrace off a ballroom. A piano plays a Chopin nocturne as a couple enters, dances, and slowly leaves. Another couple enters and dances to another nocturne, then a third couple to a third nocturne. Finally, the three couples stroll in, exchange brief greetings and leave. This is all that happens in Jerome Robbins’ In the Night , but just as each nocturne presents a small world in itself, so the dances of the three couples encompass a surprising range of relationships. In this way while little occurs, much is suggested in this third of Robbins’ five ballets to the music of Chopin. Choreographed in 1970 for New York City Ballet, it followed by a year his groundbreaking Dances at a Gathering , a ballet that marked Robbins’ definitive return to NYCB after years spent working in musical theatre and with his own company. In the Night reflects a more sophisticated milieu, both more formal and more personal, but what Robbins, who was famously reticent about explaining his ballets, said about Dances at a Gathering , that “it’s about relationships,” is equally true of In the Night How different from his first ballet to Chopin, the sly and often broad comedy of The Concert, while his last two, each a pas de deux, retain the formality of In the Night without its deeper implications. In the Night is also notable in using only nocturnes, a form that Chopin borrowed from the composer John Field and reworked in particularly personal ways, slowly developing an intimate atmosphere, often with an element of surprise before a return to the mood of the beginning. As Chopin’s 21 nocturnes, many of them technically demanding, extended both the expressive powers of the genre and of the piano, so did Robbins with dance in this emotionally suggestive ballet supported only by the piano.

Jerome Robbins CHOREOGRAPHER

Jerome Robbins (1918-1998) was first known for his skillful use of contemporary American themes in ballets, and in Broadway and Hollywood musicals. He won acclaim for highly innovative ballets structured within the traditional framework of classical dance movements.

He studied a wide array of dance traditions and in 1940 he joined Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre), where he soon began dancing such important roles as Petrushka. In 1944 Robbins choreographed his first spectacularly successful ballet, Fancy Free, and later that year, in collaboration with the lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, expanded Fancy Free into a successful Broadway musical, On the Town .

For the next phase of his career Robbins divided his time between musicals and ballet. In 1948 Robbins joined the newly founded New York City Ballet (NYCB) as both dancer and choreographer, and the following year he became its associate artistic director under George Balanchine. Robbins created many important ballets for NYCB, some of the earliest being The Cage (1951), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), and The Concert (1956). These innovative works displayed his gift for capturing the essence of a particular era through his mastery of vernacular dance styles and his understanding of gesture.

His Broadway career is well represented by West Side Story (1957), a musical that transplants the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet to the gritty milieu of rival street gangs in New York City. Robbins conceived, directed, and choreographed this work, which featured a musical score by Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and set designs by Robbins’ longtime collaborator Oliver Smith. He also directed the 1961 film (with Robert Wise), which won 10 Oscars including Best Picture. In addition he directed and choreographed the popular musicals Gypsy in 1959 and Fiddler on the Roof in 1964.

In 1969 he returned to NYCB as a Resident Choreographer and a ballet master until 1983, when he and Peter Martins became ballet masters in chief of the company shortly before Balanchine’s death. Robbins resigned as Co-Director of NYCB in 1990, though he continued to choreograph for the company. His last work, Brandenburg , premiered there in 1997, a year before his death on 29 July 1998.

First Performed by New York City Ballet January 29, 1970

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet December 16, 2022

Choreography by Jerome Robbins Music by Frédéric Chopin

Costume Design by Sir Anthony Dowell

Staged by Ben Huys Lighting Design by Jennifer Tipton

Frédéric Chopin COMPOSER

Born on 1 March 1810, in Zelazowa Wola, Poland, Frédéric Chopin grew up in a middle-class family. His father’s employment as a tutor for aristocratic families in Warsaw exposed young Chopin to cultured Warsaw society, while his mother introduced him to music at an early age. By age 6, young Chopin was playing the piano and composing tunes. Recognizing his talent, his family arranged for lessons, and soon pupil surpassed teacher in both technique and imagination. He published his first composition at age 7 and began performing one year later. By 1818, Chopin was performing in elegant salons and writing his own compositions, including the Polonaise in G Minor . In 1826, his parents enrolled him in the Warsaw Conservatory of Music, where he studied for three years under the Polish composer Josef Elsner. In 1829 he went to Vienna, where audiences were enthralled with his highly technical yet poetically expressive performances. After a successful concert in Warsaw in 1830 he was on a tour of Western Europe when the Russians invaded Poland and he was never to return to his homeland.

In 1831 he settled in Paris, where he quickly established relationships with other young composers, among them Franz Liszt, Vincenzo Bellini, and Felix Mendelssohn. At the same time he was writing works that expanded the possibilities of the piano in his Nocturnes, Etudes, Scherzos, Ballades, and Preludes, while remembering his beloved Poland in the remarkable Mazurkas and Polonaises. He died of tuberculosis on 17 October 1849, in Paris.

Sir Anthony Dowell COSTUME DESIGNER

Born in London, Anthony Dowell attended The Royal Ballet School from the age of ten and in 1961 joined The Royal Ballet. Dowell’s poised, elegant style was first revealed in 1964 when he and Antoinette Sibley created the roles of Titania and Oberon in Frederick Ashton’s The Dream . They went on to be paired by Ashton in several short works, including the Meditation from Thaïs , and Dowell took part in the creation of many of Ashton’s ballets, including Monotones and the late masterworks Enigma Variations (1968) and A Month in the Country (1976).

Throughout his career, Dowell appeared in several ballets by Jerome Robbins – Afternoon of a Faun , Dances at a Gathering , Other Dances, and In the Night . Robbins asked Dowell to redesign the last of these when it entered The Royal Ballet repertory in 1973. Dowell also designed the costumes for Thaïs and The Royal Ballet’s staging of George Balanchine’s Symphony in C .

In 1986 Dowell became the The Royal Ballet’s fifth Director. Dowell was made a CBE in 1973 and was awarded a knighthood in 1995. Since stepping down as Director in 2001 he has staged several productions, including The Dream for The Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and The Sarasota Ballet.

The American ‘30s and ‘40s produced a dynamic, creative dance synergy between Broadway, Hollywood and the emergent American ballet and modern dance movements. As witnessed in the careers of George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille and especially Jerome Robbins, who moved smoothly between them, they developed an articulate, distinctive and entirely American style in all three genres.

Fancy Free proposes a trio of boisterous sailors on leave in wartime Manhattan, out for a good time and romance: a tale of flirtation, bars and bragging, as three men compete for two girls, each sailor offering a dance variation (galop, waltz and danzon). Eventually, the girls abandon the men to fight it out, leaving them to have another convivial drink and chase after a new girl. It’s a bonhomous episode of liberty, in a world at war, with the sailors’ rivalry and revelry defined by their comradeship.

Robbins’ original inspiration came from Paul Cadmus’ 1934 painting The Fleet’s In! although he admitted his ballet takes a more lighthearted view. It was Robbins who commissioned designs from Oliver Smith and music from the then littleknown Bernstein. Robbins danced in the triumphant premiere, and then developed Fancy Free into a hit Broadway musical On The Town (1945) with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who was rooming with Bernstein at the time.

The show became an iconic 1949 MGM film musical starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller and Vera-Ellen, although only four of Bernstein’s original songs were used. What Jerome Robbins and such American dancemaking contemporaries as Eugene Loring and Agnes de Mille created was a distinctively all-American ballet style that brought together recognizable plots and characters, dynamic music, folk or social dance and classical technique.

Choreography by Jerome Robbins Music by Leonard Bernstein Costume Design by Kermit Love Set Design by Oliver Smith Lighting Design after

Jerome Robbins CHOREOGRAPHER

Jerome Robbins (1918-1998) was first known for his skillful use of contemporary American themes in ballets, and in Broadway and Hollywood musicals. He won acclaim for highly innovative ballets structured within the traditional framework of classical dance movements.

He studied a wide array of dance traditions and in 1940 he joined Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre), where he soon began dancing such important roles as Petrushka. In 1944 Robbins choreographed his first spectacularly successful ballet, Fancy Free, and later that year, in collaboration with the lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green, expanded Fancy Free into a successful Broadway musical, On the Town .

For the next phase of his career Robbins divided his time between musicals and ballet. In 1948 Robbins joined the newly founded New York City Ballet (NYCB) as both dancer and choreographer, and the following year he became its associate artistic director under George Balanchine. Robbins created many important ballets for NYCB, some of the earliest being The Cage (1951), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), and The Concert (1956). These innovative works displayed his gift for capturing the essence of a particular era through his mastery of vernacular dance styles and his understanding of gesture.

His Broadway career is well represented by West Side Story (1957), a musical that transplants the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet to the gritty milieu of rival street gangs in New York City. Robbins conceived, directed, and choreographed this work, which featured a musical score by Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and set designs by Robbins’ longtime collaborator Oliver Smith. He also directed the 1961 film (with Robert Wise), which won 10 Oscars including Best Picture. In addition he directed and choreographed the popular musicals Gypsy in 1959 and Fiddler on the Roof in 1964.

In 1969 he returned to NYCB as a Resident Choreographer and a ballet master until 1983, when he and Peter Martins became ballet masters in chief of the company shortly before Balanchine’s death. Robbins resigned as Co-Director of NYCB in 1990, though he continued to choreograph for the company. His last work, Brandenburg , premiered there in 1997, a year before his death on 29 July 1998.

First Performed by Ballet Theatre April 18, 1944

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet April 28, 2017

Ronald Bates Staged by Philip Neal

Leonard Bernstein COMPOSER

Few would dispute critic Donal Henahan’s description of Bernstein as “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.” Pianist, conductor, author, lecturer, and composer, he was born August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to a Ukrainian-Jewish family, studied piano and music from an early age and graduated from Harvard University, changing his name at the age of 15 from Louis to Leonard.

In 1943, he stepped in to replace an indisposed Bruno Walter conducting, without rehearsal, a broadcast concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, later becoming its music director from 1957 to 1969.

In 1945 Bernstein wrote the Broadway musical On The Town (based on the idea behind Fancy Free ), to be followed by Wonderful Town , Peter Pan , Candide and – most triumphantly - West Side Story . He acquired TV fame through a series of NBC’s Young People’s Concerts.

In the 1960s, Bernstein championed the work of Sibelius, Mahler and Nielsen, developing his international conducting career. His compositions include three symphonies, an opera, the ballet Dybbuk , chamber and solo works. He collaborated with Dave Brubeck, Glenn Gould and other international musical stars and orchestras, his career encompassing TV broadcasts, guest appearances, conducting, composing, lecturing, theatre and recording. Leonard Bernstein died in Manhattan on 14 October 1990.

Kermit Love COSTUME DESIGNER

Born August 7, 1918, the American designer, actor, and puppeteer is probably best known for his TV work with Sesame Street and The Muppets, sharing his name with the world’s best-loved frog.

Love worked closely with major figures on Broadway and in ballet, designing costumes for Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo , Merce Cunningham’s The Wind Remains and Kurt Weill’s Broadway musical One Touch of Venus , all in 1943, before designing Fancy Free ’s costumes in 1944. A notable creation was the 8.5 meter marionette he designed for Balanchine’s Don Quixote (1965). In the 1990s, he created giant puppets for Joffrey Ballet’s The Nutcracker

From the 1960s onwards, Love collaborated with Jim Henson and others, to develop a number of hugely successful TV puppet characters and programs. Kermit Love died on June 21, 2008, survived by Christopher Lyall, his partner of 50 years.

Oliver Smith SET DESIGNER

Born in Waupun, Wisconsin. Smith went on to attend Penn State, and afterwards began to form friendships that blossomed into working relationships with such talents as Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Carson McCullers, and Agnes de Mille. His career was launched with his designs for Léonide Massine’s ballet Saratoga in 1941 and de Mille’s Rodeo in 1942. Smith designed dozens of Broadway musicals, films ( Guys and Dolls , The Band Wagon , Oklahoma! ), and operas. His association with the American Ballet Theatre began in 1944, when he collaborated with Robbins and Bernstein on Fancy Free . The following year, he became Co-Director of ABT with Lucia Chase, a position he held until 1980.

In Rep

Frequency Hurtz

World Premiere

Frequency Hurtz is an exploration of the fact that an individual’s brain perceives audio and visual frequencies differently due to factors like age, genetics, and environment. The experiment inquires: how does this concept translate to an artform like dance, which is largely enjoyed based on the viewer’s opinion?

With a newly composed musical score centered around the Solfeggio frequencies co-written by Jeremy Studinski and Arcadian Broad, the journey begins at the bottom of the audio and visual spectrum. As the piece progresses, we pass through frequencies that are said to stimulate the transformation of guilt to joy, to create a sense of community with your neighbor, to feel love, and even to promote self-healing and physically repair your DNA. We climb all the way to the highest tone called “Brilliance”, which eventually fades into silence from our ears’ limitations.

In theory, every individual will have an entirely unique experience from the person next to them. They will hear the frequencies start and finish at different times based on the factors mentioned above.

“We all vibrate at our own frequency, so it only felt fitting to me that this piece would need to be experienced individually. I hope that the audience enjoys witnessing the isolated ingredients that make up our everyday lives and how they live in harmony. Contrary to the play on words for the title, you’ll find that these frequencies are soothing, profound, and exciting!” - Arcadian Broad

Arcadian Broad CHOREOGRAPHER & COMPOSER

Arcadian Broad, originally from Titusville, FL, started his relationship with the arts when he was two years old via the vehicle of music— more specifically, piano, before transitioning into dance almost a decade later. He has amassed a current choreographic portfolio of 33 premiered works thus far, spanning all genres of dance including ballet, contemporary, tap, musical theatre, and more, for organizations such as Orlando Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, New York Fashion Week, DanceWorks Chicago, Olympic Ballet Theatre, Key Chorale, Opera Orlando, and The Sarasota Ballet.

Arcadian’s spark for choreography and production ignited when he was a student at Juilliard School. Though brief, it was there that his mind was exposed to the most enlightening theories and techniques to help unlock the human body’s full potential for movement. At 16, he had the opportunity to perform at the International Ballet Festival in Miami. He premiered his first work—a contemporary solo that he danced himself— Time , set to Hans Zimmer’s piece of the same name, which garnered rave reviews for Arcadian’s dancing and choreography. Shortly after, he won the Outstanding Choreographer Award at the YAGP Finals in NYC.

Dunnett

Orlando Ballet’s Artistic Director, Robert Hill, saw Arcadian’s potential and commissioned his first work on a professional company. After that premiere’s success, he continued to be commissioned for choreography. At 18, he tackled his first fulllength production, Beauty & the Beast. Upon encountering sequential dead ends to find an accompanying score, he teamed up with orchestrater/arranger Julian Bond to give the ballet its voice. After two years of work, Beauty & the Beast premiered in 2016 to a sold-out four-performance run at the 2,700-seat Walt Disney Theater at the Dr. Phillips Center.

In 2018, Arcadian founded the position of Artist in Residence for the Orlando Ballet and premiered his next Full-length production the following year, WonderLand: Mad Tales of the Hatter, for which he composed an original score as well as an original story based on the beloved Lewis Carroll characters. WonderLand had its sold-out premiere in the Walt Disney Theater. It has become his signature to compose original scores with his choreography.

Arcadian pulls from his eclectic dance background—from hiphop and tapper, to jazz competition kid, to professional ballet dancer—to create his style. In his quest to make ballet for the masses, Arcadian truly believes that whether you’re 8 or 80, a balletomane or a dance novice, there is something for everyone in Broad’s choreographic works.

Jeremy Studinski

COMPOSER

Jeremy Studinski was born in Denver, Colorado with a deep appreciation for music. At age 15, he began playing blues guitar. Inspired by his grandfather, he branched out into classical guitar, jazz, and composition. After the frustration of creating without means of recording, he built himself a home recording studio where he has been composing, producing, mixing, and mastering original works since 2018. Jeremy also had the pleasure of joining the Claim Jumpers on stage at the Evergreen Jazz Festival in 2017. In April of 2022, he premiered his first original choreography and composition, “Summertime”, in Colorado Ballet’s production of Fancy Footwork

John Dunnett

COSTUME DESIGNER

John Dunnett is a Toronto-based designer for film, television, and live performance. Recent credits include Eli Roth’s “Trick VR Treat” for Meta, “Jump, Darling” starring Academy Award winner Cloris Leachman, & the Off-Broadway run of “50 Shades: The Musical’’. ACD: “Kinky Boots’’ (Broadway, Canada), “The Boys’’ (Prime), “Star Trek: Discovery” (CBS). Upcoming: Untitled Borje Salming miniseries. Thanks to Arc + team, www.johndunnett.com

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet January 27, 2023

Choreography by Arcadian Broad Music by Jeremy Studinski and Arcadian Broad Costume Design by John

Shades of Spring

Shades of Spring is a World Premiere by internationally renowned choreographer Jessica Lang. The ballet is a collaborative endeavor, which is often an entry point for Lang’s creative ventures. Fusing striking visual art by Roxane Revon and costume design by Jillian Lewis, Lang’s remarkable vision creates an extraordinary stage environment for her choreography to exist within and become transformed by The Sarasota Ballet’s dancers.

Lang, Revon, and Lewis have found their inspiration from plant roots and the natural world. Plants gain strength from being connected to each other as their roots intertwine into a connectedness that allows them to nourish and support each other. Translating this idea into ballet brings forward a classical system that is rooted in custom, foundational movement vocabulary with reverence to the past and it is necessary to use the roots of this system to nourish the growth of this art form into new territories of expression.

Performed to the Composer Joseph Haydn’s selected piano trios, audiences will be intrigued by the visual experience bringing consideration of how human energy and movement a ffects the plant life we coexist with. One of Lang’s favorite moments in creation is to observe her dancers in their most natural, human state of self in practice. Lewis’ costumes are a combination of their everyday attire while paying homage to iconic classical ballet costuming.

This is Lang’s first creation on The Sarasota Ballet. On her experience with the company, Lang remarks “Working with Iain Webb and The Sarasota Ballet, and having the privilege of discovering and uncovering the beauty of this company with my artistic vision has been truly special. Having the opportunity to delve into this artistic exploration with artists I respect and admire is valuable and together we hope our audiences will be inspired.”

Set Design by Jessica Lang & Roxane Revon

Visual Art & Projection Design

Jessica Lang CHOREOGRAPHER

Jessica Lang is an American director and choreographer based in NYC. Since 1999, Lang has created more than 100 original works on companies worldwide including American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey, American Dance Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, the National Ballet of Japan, The Joffrey Ballet, and her eponymous company Jessica Lang Dance.

For over two decades, Lang has worked extensively for American Ballet Theatre. Her creations on the main company include Her Notes , Garden Blue , and ZigZag with the legendary Tony Bennett, as well as Let Me Sing Forevermore which was featured on the ABT Across America nationwide tour and Celebrity Cruise entertainment programs. Lang has created seven ballets on ABT Studio Company, was part of the founding faculty of the JKO School, and a teaching artist and mentor for the company’s educational programs.

For opera, Lang directed and choreographed Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater at Glimmerglass Opera Festival that was presented at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival in 2017. She choreographed San Francisco Opera’s 2016 production of Aida that was presented at Washington National Opera, Seattle Opera, and LA Opera. Additional commissions include creations for the Kennedy Center with the NSO, The Harris Theater and Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. For fashion, Lang was the movement advisor for Carolina Herrera’s Pre-Fall 2022 collection.

Lang was Artistic Director of Jessica Lang Dance from 20112019. The company toured to over 85 cities presented by major venues including Lincoln Center, LA Music Center, The Harris Theater, NY City Center, Tel Aviv Opera House, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, BAM Fisher, and Helikon Opera.

Lang, a graduate of The Juilliard School under the direction of Benjamin Harkarvy, is a former member of Twyla Tharp’s company, THARP!. She is the recipient of a 2018 Martha Hill MidCareer Award, 2017 Arison Award and 2014 Bessie Award. She has been a fellow of NY City Center and NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, and named 2019 Caroline Hearst Choreographerin-Residence at Princeton University.

Choreography by Jessica Lang Music by Joseph Haydn

by Roxane Revon Costume Design by Jillian Lewis Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

Joseph Haydn

COMPOSER

An instrumental figure in the development of chamber music and widely regarded as the “Father of the Symphony,” Franz Joseph Haydn was born 31 March 1732 in Rohrau, Austria. Haydn was discovered to be musically gifted by his parents, who sent him at age six to live with a schoolmaster relative in Hainburg to begin training as a musician; not long after, he would move to Vienna to serve as a chorister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. By 1749, Haydn had matured out of the vocal range of his youth, leaving the choir and exploring the career possibilities of freelance musicianship. After some time of honing his skills through various jobs, Haydn would finally see full-time employment in 1757 as Kapellmeister (music director) under Count Morzin. The next few decades would prove massively fruitful for Haydn, and after a contract renegotiation in 1779 expanded Haydn’s reach, his international popularity soared.

Towards the end of the 1700s Haydn journeyed twice to England, where he composed some of his most famous work, such as the Surprise, Military, Drumroll, and London symphonies. He returned to Vienna in 1795, where he would create works for public performance. By 1803 Haydn’s health began to decline; musical ideas would still come to him, but he could no longer focus effectively enough to manifest them into fully structured compositions. He died peacefully on 31 May 1809, having left behind a vast and diverse body of composition, along with an enormous impact on the world of classical music.

Roxane Revon DESIGNER Jillian Lewis COSTUME DESIGNER

Roxane Revon is a multimedia artist, scenographer, and stage director. She grew up in France and studied at La Sorbonne University in Paris (MA) before moving to New York a decade ago where she started her artistic career and continued her education at Yale School of Drama. Her artwork interrogates our relations to “non human beings”, and especially plants. She was an artist in residence at the LMCC Art Center on Governors Island in the Fall 2021 and exhibited her work in Hong Kong, Milan, Venice (Biennale 2022), and New York (Art on Paper 2022). In 2022, she was part of The Flag Project RC at the Rockefeller center and received a LMCC Creative Engagement grant to develop her installations at the UNFIX NY Festival and the French Institute Gallery (solo show). As a scenographer and set designer, she recently worked on Cosi Fan Tutte by Mozart at the Kimball Theater and she is thrilled to be working with choreographer Jessica Lang on her new ballet, Shades of Spring , for The Sarasota Ballet.

Jillian Lewis is a high-end fashion and costume designer based in New York City.

Born and raised in New York, Jillian graduated from Parsons School of Design. She has been working in the fashion industry for almost two decades, most notably as Design Director at Ralph Lauren and Senior Design Contributor at Anthropologie. Jillian was cast on the 4th season of Bravo’s reality show series, Project Runway. Her collection made it to the final three and walked the runway in Bryant Park.

She now owns and operates Jillian Lewis Inc. creating fashion collections, high-end uniforms, as well as costumes for the ballet world.

She has costumed ballets for American Ballet Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Washington Ballet, The Sarasota Ballet, The Guggenheim Museum, and The Baryshnikov Arts Center, as well as Holland America Line.

Façade is that very rarest of English creatures, an enduringly popular success and at the same time a definitively modern work of art. It began in the Chelsea home of the aristocratic and artistic Sitwell siblings, where the young Sir William Walton was lodging. Walton (who had just been humiliatingly turned down by Diaghilev for a Ballets Russes commission, despite the Sitwells’ enthusiastic promotion) composed a scintillating score of pastiche musical numbers to accompany Edith Sitwell’s avant-garde poems, recited through a megaphone from behind a surrealist front curtain.

Its Aeolian Hall premiere in 1923 was greeted with contemptuous derision, reinforced by Noel Coward’s skit “The Swiss Family Whittlebot” in his popular revue London Calling . But in Frederick Ashton’s choice of Walton’s music for a ballet divertissement created for the Camargo Society in 1931, Façade attained genuine popularity and has never looked back.

In that 1931 premiere, Alicia Markova danced the Polka, Lydia Lopokova doubled as the Milkmaid and the Tango dancer, whilst Ashton himself played her Tango partner. Façade’s sophisticated wit caught the mood of the twenties; its instant popularity brought it into the repertoires of Rambert’s Ballet Club, the Vic-Wells Ballet (1935, with Fonteyn’s Polka and Ashton’s Tango leading the cast), and The Royal Ballet.

Ashton made various revisions over the years. A “Country Dance” was added in 1935 (and later dropped). The “Foxtrot” dates from 1940, when John Armstrong created new designs after the original sets and costumes were lost in the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s dramatic flight from the Nazi invasion of Holland. Following the adoption of Walton’s “Popular Song” as the theme tune for the long-running British TV show “Face the Music,” Façade was performed in 1972 at The Snape Maltings and Sadler’s Wells with Peter Pears reciting the Sitwell poems. But the ballet remains, intact and much-loved. Ashton’s tonguein-cheek tribute to the Bloomsbury Movement, Walton’s knowing take on the popular songs and dances of the twenties, and a generous dash of genteel camp created a very English marriage of high art and sheer enjoyment.

Sir Frederick Ashton CHOREOGRAPHER

Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904 and determined to become a dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London, he studied with Léonide Massine and later with Dame Marie Rambert (who encouraged his first ventures in choreography) as well as dancing briefly in Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928-1929).

A Tragedy of Fashion (in which he danced alongside Marie Rambert) was followed by further choreographies ( Capriol Suite , Façade ) until in 1935, when he accepted Dame Ninette de Valois’ invitation to join her Vic-Wells Ballet as Dancer and Choreographer, his principal loyalty remaining with what would become the Sadler’s Wells and ultimately The Royal Ballet. Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s Wells (which demonstrated an increasing authority, with larger resources), Ashton choreographed for revues and musicals. His career would also embrace opera, film, and international commissions, creating ballets in New York, Monte Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan. During the War, he served in the RAF (1941-1945) before creating Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s 1946 season in its new home at Covent Garden, affirming a new spirit of classicism and modernity in English postwar ballet.

During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often created around the talents of particular dancers, included: Scènes de ballet , Cinderella (1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann famously played the Ugly Sisters, Daphnis and Chloe (1951), Romeo and Juliet (1955), and Ondine (1958). He created La Fille mal gardée (1960) for Nadia Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961) for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, Marguerite and Armand (1963) for Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev and The Dream (1964) for Dame Antoinette Sibley and Sir Anthony Dowell.

Appointed Associate Director of The Royal Ballet in 1952, Ashton succeeded Dame Ninette de Valois as Director from 1963 to 1970. Under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar , Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. TiggyWinkle. He was knighted in 1962.

Named Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in the international repertoire undiminished, show a remarkable versatility, a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality. He had an equal facility for recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.

Choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton Music by Sir William Walton Design by John Armstrong Staged by Margaret Barbieri

Sir William Walton COMPOSER

The English composer, Sir William Walton (1902–1983), knighted in 1951 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1967, made his mark in the late 1920s as a modernist with early successes like Façade. But it is on his more substantial orchestral, symphonic, and choral works, from the 1931 oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast onwards, that his reputation rests. Influenced by Stravinsky, Sibelius, and jazz, Walton’s work embraced film scores, chamber and ceremonial music, choral, and orchestral works.

Born into a musical family in Oldham Lancashire and largely self-taught, Walton studied the works of Stravinsky, Delius, and Sibelius, and soon began composing. Leaving Oxford after failing his exams in 1920, he lived with the Sitwell brothers and sister in London, which soon led to the creation of Façade in 1923, with poems by Edith Sitwell and Walton’s score, from which he arranged the two delightful suites for orchestra. Wider success followed with the Viola Concerto (1929), Belshazzar’s Feast (1931), the First Symphony (1935), and the Violin Concerto (1939). He also began writing film scores, most notably for Olivier’s Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III. After the War, Walton dedicated many years to his opera Troilus & Cressida (1954), which was not a major success, and so subsequently turned his attention to orchestral works. In 1949, with his Argentine wife Susana, he settled on the Italian island of Ischia, where he died in 1983, shortly after finishing the orchestration for Ashton’s upcoming ballet Varii Capricci

John Armstrong

DESIGNER

Noted especially for his surrealist paintings created as part of the World War II artistic effort by the Ministry of Information, John Armstrong was born on 14 November 1893 in Hastings, Sussex. Though first pursuing an education in law at St. John’s College, Oxford, he would switch to art studies after service with the Royal Field Artillery during World War One. After several commissions including a ballroom frieze at 1 Kensington Palace Gardens, Armstrong would hold his first solo exhibition in 1928 in London. Armstrong’s work in the 1930s was prolific; alongside a series of semi-abstract paintings with Modernist group Unit One as well as posters for Shell and the General Post Office, he also designed the sets and costumes for Sir Frederick Ashton’s ballet Façade , along with several of Sir Alexander Korda’s film productions. With the onset of the second World War, Armstrong served as an official war artist for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, recording bomb damage to buildings with paintings such as A Farm in Wales and The Elms , showing cottages and churches with exposed infrastructure and broken walls through a surreal lens. After the war, Armstrong focused on a more symbolic approach through his art, and in 1966 was elected an associate member of the Royal Academy in 1966. He would continue to paint until his death on 19 May 1973.

Program 5 | February 24 - 27, 2023

Alexandra Hutchinson and Derek Brockington | Photography by Rachel Neville

Dance Theatre of Harlem

Dance Theatre of Harlem is a leading dance institution of unparalleled global acclaim, encompassing a professional touring company, a leading studio school, and a national and international education and community outreach program. Each component of Dance Theatre of Harlem carries a solid commitment towards enriching the lives of young people and adults around the world through the arts. Founded in 1969 by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook, Dance Theatre of Harlem is considered “one of ballet’s most exciting undertakings” (The New York Times). Shortly after the assassination of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mitchell was inspired to start a school that would offer children—especially those in Harlem, the community in which he was born—the opportunity to learn about dance and the allied arts. Now in its sixth decade, Dance Theatre of Harlem has grown into a multi-cultural dance institution with an extraordinary legacy of providing opportunities for creative expression and artistic excellence that continues to set standards in the performing arts. Dance Theatre of Harlem has achieved unprecedented success, bringing innovative and bold new forms of artistic expression to audiences in New York City, across the country and around the world.

Arthur Mitchell ARTISTIC DIRECTOR EMERITUS

Arthur Mitchell was known around the world as an accomplished artistic director, astute educator, talented choreographer, and extraordinary dancer. He began his dance training at New York City’s High School of the Performing Arts, where he was the first male student to win the coveted Annual Dance Award. In 1955, he was the first African-American male to become a permanent member of a major ballet company when he joined the New York City Ballet. During his 15-year career with the New York City Ballet, Mitchell rose quickly to the rank of principal dancer and electrified audiences. In 1966, Mitchell was asked to organize the American Negro Dance Company, which represented the United States at the first World Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal, Africa. In 1967, at the request of the US International Association, he founded the National Ballet Company of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. Upon learning of the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mitchell was inspired to provide children - especially those living in Harlem - with the opportunity to study dance. During the summer of 1968, he began teaching classes in a remodeled garage. In 1969, with financial assistance from Mrs. Alva B. Gimbel, the Ford Foundation and his own savings, Mitchell founded Dance Theatre of Harlem with his mentor and ballet instructor Karel Shook. As a professional dance company and a school of the allied arts, the continued expansion of Dance Theatre of Harlem into a multicultural institution has attracted thousands of professional dancers and students from around the world. Mitchell died on September 19, 2018.

Virginia Johnson ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Virginia Johnson, a founding member and former principal dancer of Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) is now the artistic director. Born in Washington, DC, she graduated from the Academy of the Washington School of Ballet and briefly attended the School of the Arts at New York University as a University Scholar before joining DTH in 1969. During her 28 years with the Company, she performed most of the repertoire, with principal roles in Concerto Barocco, Allegro Brillante, Agon, A Streetcar Named Desire, Fall River Legend, Swan Lake, Giselle, Voluntaries, and Les Biches, among others. Her choreographic credits include the television film Ancient Voices of Children, and works for Goucher College, Dancers Responding to AIDS, the Second Annual Harlem Festival of the Arts, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, and Marymount Manhattan College, where she was an adjunct professor. While still performing, her interest in journalism led her to Fordham University. After she left the stage, she was given the opportunity to create POINTE magazine. She was editor-in-chief from 2000-2009. Her honors include a Young Achiever Award from the National Council of Women, Outstanding Young Woman of America, and the Dance Magazine Award, a Pen and Brush Achievement Award, the Washington Performing Arts Society’s 2008-2009 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2009 Martha Hill Fund MidCareer Award, and an honorary doctorate from Cornish College of the Arts. Johnson is a proud Trustee of Dance/USA and on the Advisory Board of Dance/NYC. Johnson plans to retire in June of 2023.

– Arthur Mitchell

“The arts ignite the mind, they give you the possibility to dream and to hope.“

Passage | Photograph courtesy of Kutztown University

La Sylphide

La Sylphide

La Sylphide has the distinction of being the oldest ballet in the active repertory, with a performance history dating back to 1836, when August Bournonville choreographed it for The Royal Danish Ballet while also dancing the role of James. It was based on Filippo Taglioni’s La Sylphide , which he had choreographed in 1832 for the Paris Opéra Ballet with his daughter Marie Taglioni in the title role. The ballet helped popularize the supernatural as a favorite theme of the Romantic Ballet, as well as an “exotic” setting, here the Scottish Highlands, known from the novels of Sir Walter Scott. It also featured the newly-perfected skill of dancing en pointe. Unable to afford the expensive Paris score, Bournonville commissioned a new one from a young Danish composer, Herman Løvenskjold, while developing the role of James and Scottish folk dance, including some Scottish tunes. In a Scottish farmhouse, James, a young farmer and also a dreamer, is asleep. This is the day he is to marry his cousin Effie. But James awakens to find a beautiful Sylphide hovering around him, although Gurn, a young farmworker also in love with Effie, has seen nothing. Anna, James’ mother, comes in with the bride to welcome her friends, followed by Madge, a fortuneteller, who is reluctantly allowed to tell the girls’ fortunes, but is thrown out by James when she predicts that Gurn will marry Effie. When James is alone the Sylphide reappears, confessing her love for him, but disappears as guests begin to arrive. After the wedding guests arrive, however, she returns as everyone dances a vigorous reel and even steals the wedding ring, luring James to follow her to the Highlands to the dismay of Effie and the guests.

In a forest Madge meets with other witches to prepare a bewitched and irresistible scarf for her revenge on James. As the fog disappears James is seen following the Sylphide, who shows him her realm. But he grows restless as she evades his embraces, so she introduces her sister sylphides, who dance for him, but then vanish and he follows.

Now Gurn appears and discovers James’ hat, but Madge convinces him to hide it and make his own appeal to Effie, who has followed. Madge, however, waits for James to show him the magic scarf, which she says will allow him to finally possess the Sylphide. James begs her forgiveness and when the Sylphide returns tempts her with the scarf before wrapping her arms in its folds. But taking her freedom he takes her life and she dies. As the other sylphides carry her away, Madge returns to show him Effie and Gurn’s wedding procession and James collapses.

La Sylphide was one of the ballets maintained with few changes in the Danish repertory after Bournonville’s death in 1879. After the Royal Danish Ballet began touring in the 1950s and audiences outside Denmark discovered these treasures, the ballet began to be restaged by Danish dancers on companies throughout the world.

Production by Johan Kobborg Choreography after August Bournonville Set Design by Soren Frandsen Costume Design by Henrik Bloch Music by Herman Severin Løvenskiold

La Sylphide

Company Premiere

Johan

Kobborg CHOREOGRAPHER

Renowned today for both his distinguished career as a dancer and for his artistic accomplishments as a choreographer, Johan Kobborg was born 5 June 1972 into an artistic family. Kobborg commenced his professional ballet training at sixteen with the Royal Danish Ballet School, joining the corps de ballet of the Royal Danish Ballet a year later. He received a promotion to Principal in 1994 after a performance of the role of James in Bournonville’s La Sylphide , and would go on to dance major roles in the works of Bournonville, Ashton, Balanchine, and more, as well as create roles including the titular lead in Peter Schaufuss’ Hamlet and Flemming Flindt’s Legs on Fire

The next phase of Kobborg’s career would commence in 1999, when he accepted a contract as Principal Dancer with The Royal Ballet that would span his next fourteen years. In addition to performing a vast repertoire including a significant portion of the oeuvre of Ashton and MacMillan, among many others, Kobborg would also make guest appearances with American Ballet Theatre, The Mariinsky Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Bayerische Staatsballett, Tokyo Ballet, La Scala Ballet, and dozens of other major dance companies around the world. Another career –and personal – highlight has been Kobborg’s partnership with Alina Cojocaru; first dancing together in a 2001 performance of Romeo and Juliet in which Cojocaru filled in to cover an injury, the two would go on to receive enormous international acclaim in their subsequent partnerships onstage. After several years dancing together, they also confirmed a romantic relationship, leading to an engagement in 2011, and two children since.

During his tenure with The Royal Ballet, Kobborg began his choreographic journey, utilizing his intimate familiarity with Bournonville’s style to create a production of La Sylphide for The Royal Ballet in 2005. His adaptation received glowing praise and multiple awards, and has since been staged for the Bolshoi Ballet, Zurich Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, Atlanta Ballet, and others. He also found massive success with 2009’s Les Lutins , also for The Royal Ballet and staged for several major companies since. After his departure from The Royal Ballet at the end of the 2012 – 2013 Season, he assumed the role of Artistic Director of the Romanian National Ballet in Bucharest for several years. In recent years, Kobborg served as lead choreographer for the 2018 Nureyev-focused film The White Crow , directed by Ralph Fiennes; he also premiered his production of Romeo & Juliet at the Arena di Verona, Italy, on 26 August 2019 to an audience of over ten thousand. Today, Kobborg continues to choreograph and stage works for ballet companies all around the world.

August Bournonville

CHOREOGRAPHER

August Bournonville was born in Copenhagen 21 August 1805 into a ballet family. His dancer/ choreographer father Antoine had trained under the great French ballet master Noverre, and his aunt Julie danced in the Royal Swedish Ballet. Alone among his five siblings, August trained for the stage, which he graced from the early age of eight, first at the Royal Danish Ballet, then briefly on scholarship in Paris, coming under the influence of the great Auguste Vestris. The gifted youngster had studied French, singing, and violin at home, as well as ballet. After his ballet scholarship in Paris, his return to dancing in the atrophied Royal Danish Ballet of the period was a severe disappointment, and he soon returned to the Paris Opera Ballet, where he danced from 1820 to 1828.

Returning to Copenhagen in 1830, Bournonville applied his Paris experience, hard work, and driving talent to regenerate the Royal Danish Ballet. He created over fifty ballets (many of them since lost), establishing a unique Danish style characterized by exuberance, lightness, energy, their varied international settings, and a freedom from the prevailing Romantic Ballet style of moonlit, ethereal tragedy, glorifying the ballerina and largely sidelining the male dancer.

In a famous 1841 incident, Bournonville fell from favor after confronting King Christian IX in the royal theater box over ballet politics, and found it prudent to travel abroad, for research and inspiration, before a triumphant 1842 return to Denmark. His dancing career flourished for many years, and he continued creating ballets and teaching until nearly the end of his life, which came after a sudden illness on 30 November 1879. Among his best-known ballets are La Sylphide (1836), Napoli (1842), Le Conservatoire (1849), The Kermesse in Bruges (1851), and A Folk Tale (1854). Bournonville’s work was not widely known outside Denmark until the 1950s, when the Royal Danish Ballet introduced his ballets and style with triumphant success internationally. It is now appreciated as a crucial part of the ballet heritage.

First Performed by Royal Danish Ballet November 28, 1836

Production First Performed by The Royal Ballet October 6, 2005

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet March 24, 2023

Herman Severin Løvenskiold COMPOSER

Herman Severin Løvenskiold (1815-1870) was born into a Norwegian aristocratic family that while valuing music did not consider it a suitable profession for one born a baron. He was already composing piano pieces when he was fifteen and the family moved to Copenhagen, where he studied music. He had some success with dances written for the royal court and was only twenty when Bournonville chose him to compose the score for La Sylphide . It remains a remarkable work for an inexperienced composer. But given his social position there were limited possibilities in Copenhagen and he went to Germany for further study. He wrote several more works for the theatre, including The New Penelope (1847), a second ballet for Bournonville. In 1851 he returned to Copenhagen and was appointed organist at Christiansborg Castle Church, often attended by the royal family. His later compositions include an opera, Turandot , orchestral works, and chamber music.

Søren Frandsen SET DESIGNER

He was born in 1918 to parents who were keen theatre-goers, and his father built several toy theatres based on the Danish Royal Theatre. He trained at art school in Copenhagen and, while still a student, worked there as a scenic artist at The People’s and The New theatres. In 1941 he created his first set design, Les Misérables for The School Stage. From 1949 to 1988 he was a scenic artist at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, becoming Head of Department in 1966. During this time he created numerous designs, including costumes, for ballet, opera and drama, as well as designing for other theatres. He created the set designs for La Sylphide in 1967, while other career highlights include designing the sets for Flemming Flindt’s production of Die Fledermaus for the centenary of its first performance in Vienna (1973). He died in 1996.

Henrik Bloch COSTUME DESIGNER

Born in Copenhagen, he studied there at the Royal Academy. His first exhibition of paintings was in 1950, while a student. From 1956 to 1968 he exhibited jointly with a colleague and ever since has had regular solo exhibitions. His work is also represented in Copenhagen’s Theatre Museum. He has created designs for nearly one hundred productions, including, for the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, such ballets as La Sylphide , Far From Denmark , La Ventana , Flower Festival in Genzano , and Petrushka and the operas Maskarade , La serva padrona, and Der Wildschütz . He has also designed for various plays, including, in Odense, Hamlet , Mary Stuart, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and for the Tivoli Pantomime Theatre.

GEORGE BALANCHINE Choreographer

Probably the most important and influential ballet figure in America, he was born Georgi Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg in 1904. More than three decades after his death in New York in 1983 we can appreciate more fully the huge impact of a choreographer whose creative life spanned 60 years, carrying the grand Russian classical style triumphantly into the modernist era, establishing one of the world’s leading companies—New York City Ballet—and giving America its own classical ballet tradition.

Graduating from the Petrograd Imperial School of Ballet in 1921 at age 17, Balanchine also studied piano and composition, and joined what is now the Mariinsky Ballet, where his first choreographies shocked the company’s traditionally-minded establishment. In 1924 he toured Germany with his own group of Soviet State Dancers until an audition for Diaghilev led to the Ballets Russes acquiring the talents of Balanchine, Tamara Geva (the first of his four ballerina wives), and Alexandra Danilova. Within a year, he was appointed Chief Choreographer, creating 10 ballets for the company, notably Apollo (1928), which Balanchine later described as the great turning point in his life, and Prodigal Son (1929)—both constantly revived to this day.

After Diaghilev’s death in 1929 and the fragmentation of the Ballets Russes, Balanchine worked in Copenhagen, Paris, and René Blum’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. It was in London during his directorship of Les Ballets 1933 that Lincoln Kirstein persuaded him to come to America, where they founded the American School of Ballet in New York (1934), out of which emerged The American Ballet (1935), Ballet Society (1946), and eventually the New York City Ballet (1948). Initially based at City Center, it moved in 1964 to its present home at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, built to Balanchine’s specifications. During the 1930s and 1940s Balanchine also choreographed extensively for Broadway and the movies,

including Rodgers and Hart’s On Your Toes and The Boys from Syracuse. He later married Maria Tallchief (1946-1952) and Tanaquil LeClercq (1952-1969), for whom he also created leading roles.

Balanchine’s ballets are notable in that his musical training enabled him to work closely with the music of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Webern—some of the greatest names of 20th century music—as well as reinterpret the music of the past: Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. One of the world’s greatest choreographers, he created a neoclassical aesthetic that connected the vigor of American modernism with the Russian ballet tradition.

Balanchine now stands as a ballet colossus between America and Europe, his rich repertoire of ballets constantly performed and appreciated around the world.

“I can always invent movement, and sometimes it can be fitted into the right place, but that is not choreography. It is the music that dictates the whole shape of the work. I do not believe in the permanence of anything in ballet save the purely classical.”

- George Balanchine

Divertimento No. 15

In Divertimento No. 15 Balanchine set himself an interesting problem, casting five ballerinas and three cavaliers in the formal frame of Mozart’s score. As the music was intended to give pleasure to a sophisticated audience, so Balanchine gives pleasure to the eye through the inventive changes as dancers form varied partnerships of two and three against the background of a corps of eight women. A prime example is the beautiful Adagio, where one might expect a pas de deux, only to find a series of pas de deux with shifting partners for the five ballerinas.

A point of style: when the music reaches a cadence where Mozart expected the solo violin to improve a cadenza, Balanchine commissioned one for violin and viola. He also cut one of the two minuets and the slow introduction to the last movement. Mozart himself thought highly of the score, as is clear from his letters to his father.

Balanchine first used this music for a ballet called Caracole , a technical term in fine horsemanship, as if suggesting that he was displaying his thoroughbreds. Reworked in 1956 as Divertimento No. 15 to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of Mozart’s birth, it became one of Balanchine’s purest examples of dance for its own sake as well as his tribute to a composer he revered.

First Performed by American Ballet (now New York City Ballet) March 1, 1935

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet April 13, 2012

Choreography by George Balanchine Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Costume Design by Peter Farmer Staged by Sandra Jennings

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart COMPOSER

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was one of the most influential, popular and prolific composers of the classical period. He composed over 600 works, including some of the most famous and loved pieces of symphonic, chamber, operatic, and choral music. Born in Salzburg to a musical family, from an early age Mozart showed all the signs of a prodigious musical talent. By the age of five he could read and write music, and by the age of six he was writing his first compositions. Mozart was generally considered to be a rare musical genius, though Mozart said that he was diligent in studying other great composers such as Haydn and Bach. During his childhood, he would frequently tour various palaces around Europe playing for distinguished guests. At 17 he accepted a post as a court musician in Salzburg; although this did not suit him very well, the next few years were a time of prolific composition. In 1781 he moved permanently to Vienna, where he stayed for the remainder of his life. Despite his relative fame and renown he struggled to manage his finances and moved between periods of poverty and prosperity. In 1782 he married against the wishes of his family; he had 6 children, but only 2 survived infancy. There were few branches of music Mozart did not touch. His work spanned from joyful light-hearted pieces to powerful, challenging compositions that touched the human emotion. Mozart was brought up a Roman Catholic and remained a member of the church throughout his life. Some of his greatest works are religious in nature, such as Ave verum corpus and the final Requiem

Peter Farmer COSTUME DESIGNER

Born 1941 in Luton (England), Peter Farmer enjoyed a hugely successful and prolific theatre design career, embracing over 300 theatre and dance productions, with a special sympathy for set and costume design in dance, including productions for many of the world’s major companies including The Royal Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, London Festival Ballet, Australian Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and Vienna State Opera.

Farmer’s first ballet design was for Ballet Rambert’s Agrionia (1964), the first of many key collaborations with choreographer Jack Carter. Since then, he collaborated with most of the world’s leading choreographers and dance companies, including designs for Sir Peter Wright’s Giselle and Coppélia , Dame Alicia Markova’s Les Sylphides , Robert North’s Troy Game , Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream , Andre Prokovsky’s The Three Musketeers , Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Winter Dreams , Erik Bruhn’s Chopiniana , Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly , Houston Ballet’s Manon , among many others.

Farmer enjoyed a possibly unparalleled reputation among British theatre and dance designers, and his designs of both costumes and sets for dance have had a major impact on 20th century theatre design. Peter Farmer passed away on the 1st of January 2017.

The Four Temperaments

In classical and medieval medicine it was thought that four temperaments or “humours” ruled the human body, controlling our health and personalities: the somber Melancholy, the livelier Sanguine, the introverted Phlegmatic, and the forceful Choleric. In 1940 George Balanchine, with some money to spare from his Broadway work, commissioned Paul Hindemith, who had left Germany and was about to start teaching at Yale, for a work for piano and string orchestra to be played at one of the musical evenings he liked to host. The result was The Four Temperaments. Balanchine soon thought of choreographing it for the American Ballet Caravan’s tour of South America, but abandoned the project and the ballet eventually appeared in 1946 on the first program of Ballet Society, the forerunner of today’s New York City Ballet. There is no plot, but in realizing Hindemith’s score, Balanchine closely followed its structure, with its three-part Theme, set for three couples, followed by the four extended variations, realizing many of the details in the music. Movements are taken to extremes, reaching, turning, pushing and pulling. But every step is clear, if often given a surprising shift within the classic vocabulary, and often seen in profile, as with the couples who perform the three parts of the theme and who introduce many of the steps

Choreography by George Balanchine Music by Paul Hindemith Staged by Sandra Jennings

that will be developed in the variations. There are also five soloists (Sanguine is a couple), along with two demi-soloists and a small corps of women, with the finale bringing together the entire cast. Originally the ballet had elaborate costumes by the artist Kurt Seligmann that while striking in themselves obscured the movements of the dancers, so eventually they were replaced by the black and white practice dress that soon became one of the company’s signatures. Over the years Balanchine reworked many details of the ballet while keeping the spirit and, above all, the through line of the music.

Paul Hindemith COMPOSER

Although already a working violinist in his teens, his compositions soon brought Paul Hindemith (18951963) to a wider audience and by the late 1920s he was considered one of the leading composers of Weimar Germany. Rebelling against the opulent post-Wagnerian music of composers like Richard Strauss, he offered a leaner sound while pushing the limits of tonality without becoming doctrinaire. A prolific composer in many forms from opera to chamber music, he also had a practical side, writing music using unusual combinations, sonatas for nearly every instrument, and for amaateurs. He also taught, and when the Nazi regime made his work increasingly difficult, he reorganized the teaching of music in Turkey. He left Germany in 1938, emigrating to the United States in 1940, where he taught at Yale. His major works include the ballets Noblissima Visione (1938) for Léonide Massine, Herodiade (1944) for Martha Graham, and The Four Temperaments (1946).

Western Symphony

Aballet about cowboys and dance-hall girls may seem an odd fit for a Russian choreographer from Saint Petersburg, but in 1954 George Balanchine’s Western Symphony set such characters dancing to a score packed with familiar Western tunes like “Red River Valley” and “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers.” And, as Hershy Kay’s exhilarating score uses those tunes as the themes for a classical symphony, so Balanchine uses the classic ballet vocabulary to bring to life the goings-on in a typical frontier town as shown in the Western movies he loved to watch on TV. (He also regularly showed up for classes wearing plaid shirts with a Western slide-tie.) There is no plot as such as the dancers show the gaiety and loneliness of life on the vast Western ranges, but with everything larger than life as in a John Ford movie. It also includes many small jokes, some recalling other ballets including his own, with his ballerinas in frilly dance-hall costumes or wearing an extravagant hat, while the men seem ready to mount the nearest steed.

by

Balanchine Music

Set

He once said to a biographer, “If you were to say to me ‘What’s the best thing in America’ I would reply ‘Cowboys! Westerns!’ The people are right for it, they know what they’re doing and to me it rings true.”

Balanchine often compared his ballet programs to a menu, needing the right balance of starter, main course, and dessert. A week after the premiere of the lighthearted Western Symphony came Ivesiana , to the music of the American iconoclast Charles Ives, one of his darkest ballets, just as Western Symphony is one of his brightest, a soufflé that we all can share.

Choreography

George

Arranged by Hershy Kay

Design by John Boyt Costume Design by Karinska Staged by Sandra Jennings

Hershy Kay MUSIC ARRANGEMENT

The Philadelphia-born pianist and composer Hershy Kay established his reputation as a leading Broadway orchestrator, working closely with Leonard Bernstein on On The Town (1944) and later Candide (1956). Marvin Hamlisch’s A Chorus Line , Cy Coleman’s Barnum , and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita were among the many musicals he orchestrated. In a longstanding collaboration with Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, Kay arranged the scores for many ballets, including Western Symphony , Tarantella , Stars and Stripes , Union Jack , and Who Cares?

Karinska COSTUME DESIGN

Originally named Varvara Jmoudsky, Karinska was born 1886 in Kharkov, Ukraine. Remaining in Russia after the Revolution, she remarryed and managed a fashion house and embroidery school, but when these were nationalized, she moved to Brussels and then Paris. She began making costumes for cinema and ballet, notably the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Les Ballets 1933, and this started her long collaboration with Balanchine. Karinska was a top costume-maker and designer, winning an Oscar for Joan of Arc (1948), a nomination for Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and the first Capezio Dance Award for Costume. In 1964 she accepted a permanent appointment making costumes for Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, from which she retired in 1977. Karinska died in 1993 at the age of 97.

John Boyt SET DESIGN

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1921, John Boyt designed sets, costumes, and occasionally lighting, from the 1940s to the early 1980s. His oeuvre entails designs for dance, theater, opera, television, and film, with credits including Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional theater productions, as well as New York City Ballet and New York City Opera. In 1969 he was appointed Design Director for the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts upon the building’s opening on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Boyt passed away in 1986 at the age of 65.

First Performed by New York City Ballet September 7, 1954

First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet November 22, 2019

Choreographers, Foundations, and Trusts

The Frederick Ashton Foundation exists to enrich the legacy of Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988) and his ballets. The Ashton ballets performed this season as some of over one hundred ballets created by Sir Frederick Ashton TM. The Frederick Ashton Foundation, a registered charity working independently of, but in close association with, The Royal ballet, exists to enrich the legacy of Frederick Ashton TM and his Ballets. For further information, please go to www.frederickashton.org.uk.

The performances of Divertimento No. 15, The Four Temperaments, and Western Symphony Balanchine® Ballets, are presented by arrangement with The George Balanchine Trust and have been produced in accordance with the Balanchine Style® and Balanchine Technique® service standard established and provided by the Trust.

Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes is performed by kind permission of Deborah, Lady MacMillan.

In the Night and Fancy Free performed by permission of The Robbins Rights Trust.

Special thanks to Gemma Bond, Arcadian Broad, Ricardo Graziano, Richard House, Johan Kobborg, and Jessica Lang.

Balanchine Forty YearsAfter

By Alastair Macaulay

On April 30, 2023, forty years will have passed since the Russian American choreographer George Balanchine died, in New York. He was seventy-nine years old; it was almost fifty years since he had first arrived in that city from Europe, on October 19, 1933. During those almost-fifty years, he had become widely recognized as the greatest choreographer in ballet in the United States of America. He himself had laughed about how, after his death, arguments about his work would subside: “everything masterpiece!” Since he was sure his ballets after his death would stop looking the way he liked, the idea of posterity’s approval amused him.

Sure enough, in the twenty-first century, he has become widely hailed as the last century’s greatest ballet choreographer. To take just one example: his 1967 triple bill of pure-dance ballets, Jewels, was not widely accepted as a classic outside New York during his lifetime. During our own century, by contrast, Jewels has been danced in St Petersburg and Moscow, Paris and London, and in American cities from Miami to Seattle, from Boston to San Francisco.

We don’t, however, need to run a Greatest Choreographers’ League Table. The middle of the twentieth century can be seen as a golden age of choreography, with New York as Choreography City. Balanchine (1904-1983) shared his prime with Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988), Martha Graham (18941991), Merce Cunningham (1919-2009), Jerome Robbins (1918-1998), Antony Tudor (1908-1987), and others; Ashton was an Englishman who enjoyed his greatest triumphs in New York, while Tudor, another Englishman, moved permanently to New York in 1940.

We do, however, need to recognise how Balanchine changed the ballet of his day and of our day too.

In brief: He made dance itself the main subject of choreography; he increased the speed of steps that they would catch the details of classical music

when played at correct tempi; he clarified, intensified, and extended the impetus of the body; he pared away intrusive visual decoration; he made dances that had the structural sophistication of great music. And the most remarkable feature of all was the one least remarked upon: he was a superlative dramatist.

When Balanchine arrived in New York, Martha Graham was already there. She, in modern dance, and he, in ballet, gradually made New York the epitome of modernism in dance as it already was in architecture, painting, and other genres. They were both teachers as well as choreographers, shaping dancers in the studio to their ideals; their classrooms were their laboratories. Dancers came to New York to study with them. In 1948, Balanchine became founder-choreographer of New York City Ballet. Whereas other major ballet companies were basing themselves in the nineteenth-century repertory, he and his colleague Lincoln Kirstein deliberately made their priority. In the years that followed, they invited Ashton, Cunningham, Graham, Robbins, and Tudor to work with their company.

In this illustrious context, Balanchine became the choreographers’ choreographer. At the end of the Second World War, Ashton, who had adored Balanchine’s ballets in the 1920s and 1930s, wrote from London to a New York colleague

that he longed to see Balanchine’s choreography more than anyone else’s. In the 1960s, when Ashton became director of the Royal Ballet and took it to the height of its international fame (it was New York’s - and North America’s - favourite visiting ballet company), he acquired Balanchine’s Apollo and Serenade for its repertory, describing Balanchine as “indisputably one of the two greatest choreographers in the world”. In the late 1950s, when Graham and Balanchine were both choreographing the two halves of Episodes to music by Webern, she once exclaimed of Balanchine’s creation “It’s like watching light pass through a prism. The music passes through him, and in the same natural yet marvelous way that a prism refracts light, he refracts music into dance.” In the 1970s, when Robbins was at the peak of his own career, he wrote in his journal “When I watch George work, it’s so

extraordinary that I want to give up.” In 1996, Cunningham agreed that Graham and Balanchine had been the two choreographers who had influenced him most.

And among these choreographers, Balanchine was the most prolific, the one from whom new choreography poured forth with least trouble. He was also the one whose dance language was most closely connected with the classroom vocabulary of ballet. In many Balanchine ballets, dance is all that happens – and usually the dancing consists of the language of the daily ballet class. In this respect, Balanchine was a man with a mission. In the early 1940s, in a conversation with the critic Edwin Denby, Balanchine suddenly declared, “We must save ballet.” When Denby replied “But it is immortal,” Balanchine explained “I don’t mean the dance, I mean ballet.” From that moment, pure ballet became the be-all and end-all of most of his choreography – though his choreography was also, inherently, dramatic and expressive.

Most ballet people speak in terms of upper body and lower body. Many of Balanchine’s ballets show that he, too, distinguished between upper and lower – but he preferred to divide the body differently: “The body is divided into two halves - left and right.” His point was that, in ballet, the body turns outward not just beneath the waist but all up and down the spine. Turnout, he knew, makes the body and its limbs radiate outward.

Balanchine also based his style on the contrast between tight closed positions and wide-stretched open ones. (The five ballerina solos in Divertimento no 15 supply many brilliant examples of this.) He wanted the dancer to have the weight on the front of the foot—ready to travel—with the heel seldom fully at rest on the floor. From this premise, the Balanchine body moved with rhythmic musicality into space and through space. The dancer stepped out boldly into space as if over a brink – often transferring weight in mid-air, moving their pelvis and torso with the advancing leg, with a visible ingredient of risk-taking.

Donizetti Variations

All three of the ballets danced by The Sarasota Ballet this Season—The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony, and Divertimento no. 15—have remarkable instances of the Balanchine torso and pelvis making striking effects. Among these, the knockout example occurs during the Melancholic section of The Four Temperaments. Four women advance together down a diagonal, kicking alternate legs high into the air ahead of them, in unison, and then, while bringing those legs down, swinging those pelvises forward with a powerful thrust. If you thought ballet was about passive women behaving politely, think again.

Balanchine gained a widespread reputation as the most musical of choreographers. Not everyone agreed: the composers Prokofiev and Poulenc were among those who objected to Balanchine’s response to their music. He took surprising liberties with music by his beloved Tchaikovsky and even with his friend Stravinsky (once the latter was dead). Nonetheless he was more musically literate than any other eminent dance-maker, able to make (and play) a piano transcription of a big orchestral work, attentive to details in scores. His choreography formed a brilliantly close counterpoint with its music, so that the movement onstage led audiences closely into the workings of the score.

Modern music that seemed uncomfortably difficult to many ears (by such composers as Ives, Schoenberg, Webern, Xenakis) became newly absorbing once it was part of Balanchine dance theatre. Perhaps the greatest compliment along these lines came from Stravinsky. When he saw Balanchine’s 1963 choreography to his 1960 score Movements for Piano and Orchestra, he declared that it led him to understand his own composition better – it was

as if Stravinsky had designed the plan but Balanchine had constructed the architecture.

Balanchine’s taste was not all highbrow. He loved jazz; he staged the chorography to many of the original productions of the musicals by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart (On Your Toes, Babes in Arms, The Boys from Syracuse, and more); he commissioned a number of Americana scores by Hershy Kay, none of them more popular than Western Symphony

But Balanchine dance theatre also investigated the concert music of the past. Scores by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Bizet, Brahms, Tchaikovsky (above all), Fauré and many other composers fed his dance imagination. So he loved classical music, but were his own creations classical? This was—and remains—a matter of intense debate. When the Royal Ballet (originally the Sadler’s Wells Ballet) visited New York between 1949 and 1976, it seemed to many people the epitome of traditionally classical style. Balanchine’s form of ballet, by contrast, kept taking classicism where it had not been before. Outsiders called it neoclassicism, but he didn’t. Just as his friend Stravinsky was taking the musical principles of Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky into the twentieth century, so Balanchine was taking the tradition of ballet forward. Classicism is not something fixed in amber. As Diaghilev had said in the 1920s, “Classicism evolves.” Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, in their era, had all seemed to be breaking rules, and were only gradually recognised to be fundamentally classical; Balanchine was the same. He knew that his ballets were made to the same ballet language that he had been taught as a child in St Petersburg.

Perhaps the most radical adventure of Balanchine dance theatre in America began when he started to peel all scenery away from many ballets and to pare costumes down to an unobtrusive minimum. Often the dancers,

Serenade

performing against nothing but a blue backdrop, wore only leotards, tights, and dance shoes. Nothing mattered in these works save the meeting of music and dance. We mortals; that sky; this earth; this music. What else is needed?

Like many great artists, Balanchine sometimes contradicted himself, nowhere more so than about whether his ballets had meanings. On the one hand, he insisted that it was enough if ballet was beautiful: you don’t need to ask what a rose means. On the other, he denied that ballet could be abstract: as soon as you have a man meeting a woman onstage, you have a story.

Many of the Balanchine all-dance ballets are threaded through with powerful suggestions of dramas, stories, characters. No, The Four Temperaments has no literal narrative – but, as its title shows, its four main variations (with many kinds of movement drama) portray four dissimilar aspects of human character. In its great finale, the ballet’s drama passes through intense ceremony into exuberant release. Nobody watching Western Symphony can miss the ways in which the ballet is about folk America: its deeper fun lies in how Balanchine turns the American West into the stuff of classicism, especially in the rhythmic intricacy of the mass finale. As for Divertimento no 15, it’s a view of brilliant civilization as suffused by chivalry, nobility, wit, energy, cooperation, harmony.

All these ballets—perhaps all Balanchine’s creations—are based on an excitingly subversive form of sexism. The ballerinas of most (not all) Balanchine ballets dance on point. Their whole bodies are turned out from the center, with legs sweeping high and radiantly, limbs lighting up space like beacons. The Balanchine man is seldom

an orthodox Mr Right; often he is some kind of outsider or rebel, a visionary artist or knight errant. But the Balanchine man, at times as invisible as possible, is also often a cavalier who serves one woman or several. And though the Balanchine ballerina may experience a man’s love and devotion, those seldom suffice her: she retains an independence that she can never quite compromise. The view of the sexes in The Four Temperaments has always been radical. Its women dance strong, taking command, whereas its men are wracked by conflicting impulses.

Forty years after his death, it’s clearer than ever that Balanchine is among the greatest of all artists. What vast, piercing, and still thrilling views of the world and society and art his choreography presents! His subjects are human energy; human potential; and civilization.

Diamonds

Voices of Her

The concept behind The Sarasota Ballet’s Voices of Her project was to establish a multi-year venture celebrating the influence of women on the evolution of ballet throughout history, as a result of their choreographic output and leadership. We wanted to establish a space in which we can acknowledge just how crucial women have been, and continue to be, in shaping the narrative of ballet over the past century.

This Season, that entails sharing two thrilling world premieres, Gemma Bond’s Excursions, and Jessica Lang’s Shades of Spring - which received its premiere during the Company’s August 2022 New York tour to the Joyce Theater.

Through Voices of Her, The Sarasota Ballet takes enormous pride in elevating women’s voices in ballet, and we hope you will join us in supporting their futures.

Below are the ballets that have been performed by The Sarasota Ballet within the Voices of Her project:

> Gemma Bond’s Excursions

> Asia Bui’s Song on the Beach

> Dame Ninette de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress > Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring > Jessica Lang’s Shades of Spring > Emelia Perkins’ Washington Square > Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs > Macyn Vogt’s Exurgency

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Born in Yorkshire, England, Iain Webb started ballet at 14 before moving to London at 16, where he trained for two years with The Rambert School of Ballet and a year at The Royal Ballet School. He further spent a year as an apprentice with The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet where he was offered a full-time position. His principal repertoire included Ashton’s The Dream (Oberon), La Fille mal gardée (Colas and Alain), The Two Pigeons (Young Man); Bintley’s The Snow Queen (Kay); Fokine’s Petrushka (Petrushka), Les Sylphides (Poet); Balanchine’s Prodigal Son (The Son); Cranko’s Card Game, Lady and the Fool, Taming of The Shrew; Nureyev’s Raymonda; Massine’s La Boutique Fantasque; van Manen’s Five Tangos; and Wright’s productions of Coppélia (Franz), The Sleeping Beauty (Blue Bird), Swan Lake (Prince and Benno).

In 1989 Webb transferred to The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, to perform character roles that included Ashton’s Cinderella (The Small Sister, Dancing Master, and Napoleon), The Dream (Bottom), Tales of Beatrix Potter (Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Pigling Bland); Baryshnikov’s production of Don Quixote (Sancho Panza); and MacMillan’s Different Drummer (The Doctor), Manon (The Client). During this time he was a board member of Sir Matthew Bourne’s Adventures in Motion Pictures. In 1996 Webb retired from The Royal Ballet, but was invited back as a guest artist to give three farewell performances at Covent Garden as The Small Sister in Ashton’s Cinderella. After retiring as a dancer, he was invited by Sir Matthew Bourne to be Rehearsal Director for The West End, L.A. and Broadway seasons of Swan Lake and continued to work with Bourne on his production of Cinderella

In 1999 Webb was asked by Tetsuya Kumakawa to join his newly formed K-Ballet Company in Japan as Ballet Master and two years later was appointed Assistant Director. During this time, he worked with Kumakawa on building the company into one of Japan’s leading ballet companies—and the only company to tour extensively throughout Japan as well as New York and Shanghai. Webb also worked with many international stars including Adam Cooper, with whom he co-directed The Adam Cooper Company and organized its tour to The Kennedy Center. Likewise, he coproduced with Johan Kobborg the London performances of Out of Denmark and staged Roland Petit’s Carmen Pas de Deux for Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca for American Ballet Theatre’s 65th Anniversary Gala.

Throughout Webb’s career he has produced and directed many international performances, presenting dancers from The Royal Danish Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, and Stuttgart Ballet, to name a few. He has been a guest teacher for White Oak Dance Project, Birmingham Royal Ballet, and Rambert Dance Company, as well as teaching master classes and workshops for all the major ballet schools in England. In 2013 he became an Ashton Associate for the Sir Frederick Ashton Foundation.

In July 2007 Webb took over the directorship of The Sarasota Ballet. Under his leadership the Company will have performed 173 ballets and divertissements by the end of the 20222023 Season, including 51 world premieres and 13 American Company and American premieres. These include ballets by

Ashton, Balanchine, Bintley, Bourne, Cranko, de Valois, Lang, MacMillan, Robbins, Taylor, Tharp, Tuckett, Tudor, van Manen, Wheeldon, and Wright.

In 2011 Webb secured The Sarasota Ballet’s first national tour, performing George Balanchine’s Diamonds in collaboration with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. This would be swiftly followed by invitations to perform at festivals and theaters including The Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America III, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, and Ballet West’s inaugural National Choreographic Festival

In 2014, Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri organized The Sir Frederick Ashton Festival, commemorating the 25th anniversary of Ashton’s passing. The Festival garnered national and international acclaim for its dedication in preserving and presenting the choreographic legacy of Sir Frederick Ashton.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Webb reinvented the Company’s previously announced Season, creating 7 digital programs that showcased the Company’s artistry and depth of repertoire. This not only allowed The Sarasota Ballet to continue to employ all of its dancers, but also brought the Company into the homes of thousands of audience members in 47 states and across 30 different countries.

Webb’s leadership and vision continues to grow The Sarasota Ballet’s national and international reputation and acclaim.

JOSEPH VOLPE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Joseph Volpe, retired General Manager of The Metropolitan Opera and theater and management consultant, was appointed Executive Director of The Sarasota Ballet in February 2016. Volpe first joined the Board of The Sarasota Ballet in 2014 after a long history in the world of the performing arts. He spent 42 years working at The Metropolitan Opera, rising from apprentice carpenter to General Manager from 1990 to 2006. In that role Volpe expanded the length of The Met repertory season as well as the number of new productions, including four world premieres, 22 Met premieres, four commissions, and expanded international touring activities. His term was characterized by sound fiscal management, fresh customer service initiatives, and no contract disputes for over three decades of his leadership in contract negotiations.

He conceived and developed “Met Titles,” an innovative titling system providing multilingual translations of the operas on the backs of each seat, visible only to the individual audience member who wished to utilize them, and initiated the development of Tessitura, a management software program for targeted marketing and fundraising appeals, which is now licensed to more than 400 companies worldwide.

In 1998, Volpe instituted an education outreach project for young children in cooperation with the City of New York Department of Education emphasizing direct experience with music and opera for students. He also established a partnership with the University of Connecticut that provides students from music and drama departments with behind-the-scenes access to the creative and technical processes that bring the opera to life on The Met stage.

Volpe retired from The Met in July of 2006, leaving the company with a strong administration, an endowment fund that had increased from $100 million to $345 million and exceptional artistic plans for the future. Since then, Volpe has consulted with Theatre Projects Consultants where he provided comprehensive advice from project conception and design to daily operations and fiscal management. Additionally Volpe helped major arts organizations and universities as they planned moves into new facilities or addressed the reorganization and renovation of existing ones. He has also served as a Senior Consultant for Hudson Scenic Studios, advising on all aspects of management, labor negotiation, and strategic planning.

Volpe taught a course entitled “Managing in the Performing Arts” for five years at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Georgetown, SUNY Purchase, Harvard University, and Oxford University. He has received honorary degrees from numerous universities, including Georgetown University, Fordham University, and Hamilton College.

Volpe is the author of The Toughest Show on Earth, My Rise and Reign at The Metropolitan Opera, published by Random House in 2006.

As Executive Director of The Sarasota Ballet, Volpe has overseen a period of significant and sustained growth and financial stability. He has focused on expanding and strengthening the administrative structure, increasing not only staff, but also refining and augmenting administrative infrastructures. Through his support of the visions of Director Iain Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri, The Sarasota Ballet has expanded its national touring, and has undertaken some of its largest and most significant projects, including The Sarasota Ballet School’s expansion into The Patricia A. Golemme Studios and commissioning hugely successful World Premieres such as Sir David Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors and Jessica Lang’s Shades of Spring

Under his leadership, The Sarasota Ballet weathered the unpredictable and volatile COVID-19 pandemic. Through his investment and guidance, The Sarasota Ballet managed to return to a full season of in-person performances, which was followed by a highly successful tour, returning to New York’s Joyce Theater in August of 2022.

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MARGARET BARBIERI

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Born in South Africa of Italian parents, Margaret Barbieri moved to England to study at The Royal Ballet School. In 1965 she joined The Royal Ballet Touring Company (now Birmingham Royal Ballet), and became a Principal Dancer in 1970. During a highly successful 25-year dancing career, she danced most of the leading roles in the classical repertoire (including The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Coppélia, Romeo and Juliet, La Fille mal gardée, Taming of the Shrew, The Two Pigeons, and The Dream). However it was her major impact in the title role of Giselle at the age of 21 that first established her special reputation as a Romantic Ballerina. In 1973 she was invited to dance Giselle at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and received high praise from the press and audiences alike, a triumph which she repeated in 1974 when she returned to her native South Africa to dance the role in Durban. She replaced an indisposed Natalia Makarova at short notice in the same role for Norwegian National Ballet and made many guest appearances with companies internationally in Giselle, Swan Lake, Coppélia, and Cinderella. In addition to guesting, Barbieri also performed worldwide with The Royal Ballet.

Barbieri worked closely with most of the great masters of the 20th Century, including Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Dame Ninette de Valois, John Cranko, Antony Tudor, Rudolf Nureyev, and Hans van Manen. Roles were created on her by Ashton, Sir Peter Wright, Tudor, Sir David Bintley, Michael Corder, Ronald Hynd, and Joe Layton. Many of her best-known roles were televised, including Swanhilda (Coppélia), Black Queen (Checkmate), The Mother (Bintley’s Metamorphosis), Young Girl (Le Spectre de la Rose), and van Manen’s Grosse Fuge. With David Ashmole, she was featured in BBC TV’s Ballet Masterclass series, given by Dame Alicia Markova, who later coached her in Fokine’s The Dying Swan and Pavlova’s The Dragonfly

Barbieri retired from The Royal Ballet in 1990 to become Director of the new Classical Graduate Programme at London Studio Centre and Artistic Director of the annual touring company, Images of Dance. During her tenure, she was instrumental in devising the Classical Ballet Course for the BA Honours degree. Here she gave Christopher Wheeldon his first professional commission and Sir Matthew Bourne his first classical ballet commission. She also found time to teach at Birmingham Royal Ballet Company, English National Ballet School, and The Royal Ballet School. Additionally she served on The Royal Ballet’s Board of Governors from 1994-2000 and participated as an External Assessor for the Arts Council of England from 1995-2001.

Her staging credits include Swan Lake Act II, Le Jardin Animé from Le Corsaire, and Kingdom of the Shades from La Bayadère for Images of Dance; Nureyev’s production of Raymonda Act III for K-Ballet in Japan; Ashton’s Façade for Scottish Ballet, K-Ballet, and Oregon Ballet Theatre; and The Two Pigeons for K-Ballet and State Ballet Theatre of Georgia. During the last 10 years at The Sarasota Ballet she has staged Wright’s production of Giselle, Mirror Walkers, Summertide; Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Jazz Calendar, Les Patineurs, Les Rendezvous, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Two Pigeons, Valses nobles et sentimentales, The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Bintley’s

Four Scottish Dances; Bourne’s Boutique; Cranko’s Pineapple Poll; Darrell’s Othello; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress, Checkmate; Fokine’s Les Sylphides and Petrushka; Layton’s The Grand Tour; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Samsova’s production of Paquita; Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved

Barbieri has been invited to judge at numerous ballet competitions across the globe, including Brazil, Japan, South Africa, the United States, and Europe. In April 2010, she was awarded Distinction by the University of the Arts, London, for her Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning. In 2013 she was invited to speak at the Ashton Symposium in London and became an Ashton Associate for the Sir Frederick Ashton Foundation.

Having previously staged several works for The Sarasota Ballet, Barbieri was appointed Assistant Director in August 2012. During her time with the Company, in addition to staging ballets, Barbieri has focused on the coaching and nurturing of dancers, passing on her unparalleled experience and artistry to former, current, and future members of the Company. Her expertise as a stager proved especially valuable during the 2020 – 2021 Digital Season, as she oversaw revised production techniques necessary to stage ballet for a digital medium. Through her keen eye and remarkable dedication and work ethic, her impact on the Company is evident from the moment the curtain rises.

ARTISTIC STAFF

Mandy-Jayne Richardson

BALLET MISTRESS

Mandy-Jayne Richardson has established an international reputation as a truly accomplished Stager, Repetiteur, and Ballet Mistress. Her staging credits include works by George Balanchine, Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, and Sir Peter Wright, for companies such as American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, and the Royal Swedish Ballet. As a Ballet Mistress, Richardson worked as Senior Ballet Mistress with The National Ballet of Canada for over twenty years coaching and nurturing the numerous dancers that have worked under her careful eye. Prior to her career offstage, Richardson danced with The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, and New York City Ballet, giving her a unique and valuable perspective and expertise on the technique and stylistic details that define the repertoires of those three iconic ballet institutions.

Octavio Martin ASSISTANT BALLET MASTER

A native of Havana, Cuba, Martin received his training at the Cuban National Ballet School, joining the National Ballet of Cuba in 1994, and in 2001 was promoted to Primer Bailarin. In 2004 Martin was awarded the Alejo Carpentier medal, one of the highest honors an artist can receive in Cuba. For two years he was a Principal Guest Artist with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet of Canada and in 2006 he joined The Sarasota Ballet, rising to Principal Dancer in 2008, where he danced leading roles in ballets by Ashton, Balanchine, de Valois, and Wheeldon. As Assistant Ballet Master with the Company, Martin works closely with Director Iain Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri in working and rehearsing with the Company, and in addition teaches at The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory.

Ricardo Graziano RESIDENT CHOREOGRAPHER

In 2011, Ricardo Graziano was given the opportunity by Iain Webb to choreograph his first ballet, Shostakovich Suite, which premiered in October 2011. Following this ballet, Graziano choreographed four new ballets before being appointed Resident Choreographer by Iain Webb on stage in 2014 after a performance of Symphony of Sorrows. Since then he has choreographed several more works for the Company, including In a State of Weightlessness, which premiered August 12, 2015, as a part of The Sarasota Ballet’s first week-long residency at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. In total, Graziano has choreographed ten one-act ballets and three divertissements for The Sarasota Ballet, and is also a Principal Dancer with the Company.

Lindsay Fischer PRINCIPAL COMPANY TEACHER

Lindsay Fischer brings a wealth of experience to The Sarasota Ballet through his twenty-four years of service with The National Ballet of Canada, including six as Principal Ballet Master. Over and above his work in Canada, Fischer worked with companies like San Francisco Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, and Bavarian National Ballet as a Stager and Guest Teacher. During his onstage career, Fischer danced with both New York City Ballet and Dutch National Ballet as a Principal Dancer, and his international guesting credits include performances with Merrill Ashley, Margaret Barbieri, Cynthia Gregory, and Evelyn Hart. He has also staged works for and been a guest ballet master with companies around the world.

Pavel Fomin COMPANY TEACHER

Pavel Fomin was born in Ukraine and received his ballet training at the Odessa Ballet School and the Kirov Ballet. From 1964 to 1990 he was a Principal Dancer with the State Academic Opera and Ballet House in Odessa City and danced most of the Russian classical repertoire, including Basilio in Don Quixote, Albrecht in Giselle, and Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty While still performing, Fomin rose quickly to the position of Principal Ballet Master and Artistic Director at the Odessa State Academy of Opera and Ballet. Joining The Sarasota Ballet in 1991 as Ballet Master, Fomin has staged many ballets and pas de deux for the Company. Today, as a Company Teacher, he continues to impact the dancers of The Sarasota Ballet.

From left to right:

Luke Schaufuss

Ricardo Graziano

Richard House Macarena Gimenez

From left to right:

Danielle Brown

Maximiliano Iglesias

Marijana Dominis

Ricardo Rhodes

Ricki Bertoni

PRINCIPALS

Danielle Brown

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2007 Promoted to Soloist in 2009 and Principal in 2010

Lead and Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, Enigma Variations, La Fille mal gardée, Jazz Calendar, Marguerite and Armand, Méditation from Thaïs, Scènes de ballet, Symphonic Variations, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci, The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Balanchine’s Apollo, Diamonds, Emeralds, Prodigal Son, Serenade, Stars and Stripes, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Bourne’s Boutique; Darrell’s Othello; de Valois’ Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress; Fokine’s Les Sylphides; Graziano’s Amorosa, In a State of Weightlessness, Sonatina; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Concerto, Las Hermanas; Nijinsky’s L’après-midi d’un Faune; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Possokhov’s Firebird; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Taylor’s Brandenburgs; Tharp’s In the Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Tuckett’s Lux Aeterna; Tudor’s Lilac Garden; Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Marijana Dominis

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Promoted to Soloist in 2020 and Principal in 2022

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, The Sleeping Beauty Vision Solo, Valses nobles et sentimentales; Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations, Serenade, Theme and Variations, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Graziano’s En Las Calles de Murcia, Shostakovich Suite, Sonatina; Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, Las Hermanas; Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B; Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs; Walsh’s I Napoletani; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Previous Company: Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón

Lead and Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Varii Capricci

Lead and Featured Roles with Other Companies include:

Ashton’s Sylvia; Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante; Bigonzetti’s Sinfonía Entrelazada; Holmes’ Le Corsaire; Hynd’s The Merry Widow; Lacotte’s La Sylphide; MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet; Makarova’s La Bayadère; Mollajoli’s Giselle; Nureyev’s Nutcracker; Petipa’s Swan Lake; Stevenson’s Cinderella; Vasiliev’s Don Quixote

Macarena Gimenez

Ricardo Graziano

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2010 Promoted to Principal in 2011

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Enigma Variations, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Illuminations, Jazz Calendar, Marguerite and Armand, Méditation from Thaïs, Monotones II, Symphonic Variations, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci, The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Balanchine’s Diamonds, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Prodigal Son, Stars and Stripes, Western Symphony, Who Cares?; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café; Darrell’s Othello; de Mille’s Rodeo; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; Fokine’s Les Sylphides; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, Las Hermanas; Nijinsky’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Robbins’ The Concert; Tharp’s In the Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Taylor’s Airs, Brandenburgs; Tuckett’s Changing Light, Lux Aeterna; Tudor’s Lilac Garden; Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Maximiliano Iglesias

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022

Previous Company: Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering Lead and Featured Roles with Other Companies include:

Ashton’s Sylvia; Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, Theme and Variations, Symphony in C; Holmes’ Le Corsaire; Hynd’s The Merry Widow; Lacotte’s La Sylphide; Makarova’s La Bayadère; MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet; Nureyev’s Nutcracker; Petipa’s Swan Lake; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Stevenson’s Cinderella; Vasiliev’s Don Quixote

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2007 Promoted to Soloist in 2010 and Principal in 2012

Lead and Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Birthday Offering, The Dream, La Fille mal gardée, Jazz Calendar, Méditation from Thaïs, Monotones II, Les Rendezvous, Rhapsody, Scènes de ballet, Sinfonietta, Symphonic Variations, The Two Pigeons, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci; Balanchine’s Apollo, Bugaku, Diamonds, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Rubies, Serenade, Stars and Stripes, Theme and Variations, Western Symphony, Who Cares?; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café; Bruce’s Sergeant Early’s Dream; Darrell’s Othello; de Valois’ Checkmate; Fokine’s Les Sylphides; Kobborg’s Salute; Lang’s Shades of Spring; Nijinsky’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune; North’s Troy Game; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Robbins’ The Concert, Fancy Free; Taylor’s Brandenburgs; Tharp’s In The Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Tuckett’s Changing Light; Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Ricardo Rhodes

PRINCIPALS

Luke Schaufuss

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019

Previous Companies: Royal Danish Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, & Scottish Ballet Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Les Rendezvous; Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Graziano’s En las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness, Shostakovich Suite, Sonatina; Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations; Morris’s The Letter V; Schaufuss’ La Sylphide pas de deux; Walsh’s I Napoletani; Wright’s Giselle, Mirror Walkers, Summertide

Richard House

Junior Principal

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Junior Principal in 2022

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, Les Patineurs, The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Balanchine’s Diamonds, Stars and Stripes, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony, Who Cares?; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors, Four Scottish Dances; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness, Sonatina; Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Concerto pas de deux, Elite Syncopations; Morris’s The Letter V; Taylor’s Company B; Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs; Walsh’s I Napoletani; Wright’s The Mirror Walkers

Character Principal

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2007 Promoted to Character Principal in 2014

Ricki Bertoni

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s The Dream, Enigma Variations, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Jazz Calendar, A Wedding Bouquet; Balanchine’s Bugaku, Diamonds, Rubies, Prodigal Son, Western Symphony, Who Cares?; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café; Bruce’s Sergeant Early’s Dream; de Mille’s Rodeo; de Valois’ Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress; Flindt’s The Lesson; Fokine’s Petrushka; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; Graziano’s Before Night Falls, Symphony of Sorrows; Layton’s The Grand Tour; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations; North’s Troy Game; Robbins’ The Concert; Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B; Tharp’s In The Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Tuckett’s Changing Light, The Secret Garden; Walsh’s I Napoletani; Wheeldon’s The American; Wright’s Giselle

SOLOISTS

Arcadian Broad

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Promoted to Soloist in 2022

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Varii Capricci Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Graziano’s Sonatina Lang’s Shades of Spring MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations Morris’s The Letter V Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021

Previous Company: Bucharest National Opera Ballet

Featured Roles include: de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Graham’s Appalachian Spring Graziano’s Sonatina MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations Wright’s Summertide

Featured Roles with Other Companies include: Bombana’s Carmina Burana Cranko’s Lady and the Fool, Onegin, Romeo and Juliet Dumitrescu’s Coppélia Iancu’s Swan Lake Neumeier’s Endstation Petipa’s La Bayadère, The Nutcracker, Vilàn’s Amorul Vragitor, Tricornul

Yuki Nonaka

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Promoted to Soloist in 2022

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Façade, Les Patineurs, Les Rendezvous, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci Balanchine’s Tarantella, Western Symphony Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Graziano’s Shostakovich Suite, Sonatina Lang’s Shades of Spring MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Marco Alessandro Corcella

Lauren Ostrander

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Coryphée in 2020 and Soloist in 2022

Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Façade, Les Patineurs Balanchine’s Serenade, Western Symphony, Who Cares? Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Graham’s Appalachian Spring Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia, Shostakovich Suite Lang’s Shades of Spring MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations Taylor’s Company B Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Wright’s Giselle

Anna Pellegrino

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Soloist in 2022

Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations, Serenade Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Lang’s Shades of Spring MacMillan’s Las Hermanas Taylor’s Company B Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Walsh’s I Napoletani

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2012 Promoted to Coryphée in 2019 and Soloist in 2022

Daniel Pratt

Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, Enigma Variations, Façade, Jazz Calendar, Monotones II, Sinfonietta, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci, A Wedding Bouquet Balanchine’s Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Serenade Darrell’s Othello de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Graham’s Appalachian Spring Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia, Sonatina, Morris’s The Letter V Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Tudor’s The Leaves are Fading Tuckett’s Lux Aeterna, The Secret Garden Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved Wright’s Summertide

SOLOISTS

Ivan Spitale

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Coryphée in 2020 and Soloist in 2022

Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, Enigma Variations, Façade, Rhapsody

Bourne’s The Infernal Galop

Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors

Balanchine’s Diamonds, Western Symphony de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Graham’s Appalachian Spring Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness

Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Walsh’s I Napoletani, Clair de Lune Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Luis Gonzalez

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021

Previous Company: Joffrey Ballet

Featured Roles include: Graziano’s Sonatina MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations

Featured Roles with Other Companies include:

Ashton’s Cinderella

Lopez Ochoa’s Mammatus Neumeier’s Orpheus and Eurydice Robbins’ Glass Pieces

Dominique Jenkins

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019

Promoted to Coryphée in 2022

Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Valses nobles et sentimentales

Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors Graziano’s Sonatina

Lang’s Shades of Spring MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations Morris’s The Letter V Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

CORYPHÉE

Emelia Perkins

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019

Promoted to Coryphée in 2022

Featured Roles include:

Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Valses nobles et sentimentales

Varii Capricci

Graham’s Appalachian Spring Lang’s Shades of Spring Morris’s The Letter V Taylor’s Brandenburgs

Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Walsh’s I Napoletani

CORPS de BALLET

Sierra Abelardo

Isabella Benton

Mihai Costache

Kennedy Falyn Cassada

Willa Frantz

Josh Fisk

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at Ellison Ballet Professional Training Program

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Previous Company: Los Angeles Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (21/22) & The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at Charlotte Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2020 Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (19/20) & The JKO School at American Ballet Theatre

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at English National Ballet School

Evan Gorbell Andrea Marcelletti

Thomas Leprohon

Samuel Gest

Bel Pickering

Morgan Rust

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2020 Previous Company: National Ballet of Canada

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Trained at Miami City Ballet School

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Trained at English National Ballet School

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Trained at The Royal Ballet School

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (21/22) & The Royal Ballet School

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Previous Company: The Washington Ballet

CORPS de BALLET

Taylor Sambola-Broad

Gabriella Schultze

Juliano Weber

Paige Young

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022

Previous Company: Ballet West II

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Previous Company: Intuição Companhia de Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Trained at the School of Pennsylvania Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021

Previous Company: Orlando Ballet

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Studio Company

As part of the Education Department, The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company provides an opportunity for young dancers to prepare for a professional career. The Studio Company provides a comprehensive training curriculum for dancers to refine their artistic and technical skills alongside gaining valuable performance experience.

Studio Company members have the chance to rotate into main Company class and understudy main Company roles. Seventy-five percent of the 2022 – 2023 Studio Company members are graduates of The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory’s Trainee Program.

Performing in the local community is an important part of the Studio Company’s outreach. In previous years, the Studio Company has performed as part of a collaboration with Marie Selby Gardens, University Town Center Mall, in an annual collaboration with Key Chorale and at retirement communities including Plymouth Harbor and Valencia Lakes.

Former Studio Company members are now dancing with The Sarasota Ballet, Ballet Austin, Colorado Ballet, Croatian National Ballet, Ballet Hispanico, New York Theatre Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and The Washington Ballet, among others.

2022 – 2023 Studio Company:

(Back Row) Joe Huberty, Iosif Trubin, Tricia Carmody, Wyatt Dodd, Ella Lau, Josiah Lax, Ezra Schenck

(Front Row) Savannah Campbell, Emmanuelle Watkins, Pearl Smith, Tia Wenkman, Riley Putnal

Savannah Campbell Tricia Carmody Wyatt Dodd Joe Huberty

Ella Lau Josiah Lax

Riley Putnal Ezra Schenck

Iosif Trubin Pearl Smith Emmanuelle Watkins Tia Wenkman

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Nancy Bushnell

Diana Cable

Kim Azar-Calka and Brian Calka

Julie Carmody

Emily Carrier

Diane Caudill

Amy Cipau

Sandra Cohen

Elsbeth M. Connors

Stevie and John Coppin-Polking

Rosalind Cowie

Kristie Cox

Fiona Crawford

Joanne and Warren Christopher Curtis

Susan Loren

Dennis and Maria Day

Stephen and Judith Del Viscio

Laura Denenholz

Robert Deutsch

Marianne and Paul Diczok

Amy and Michael Drake Brian and Victoria Eckl

Barbara Eisenberg

Denise and Norris Elswick

Douglas Endicott

Jason Ettore

Patti Eylar

Tim Metz and Geraldine Fabrikant

Betty Ferguson

Cherie and Jeff Finn

Beverly Fisher Joann Flanigan Elizabeth and Ben Forsyth Elaine and Robert Foster Tim and Ellen Foster Suzan and Barry Friedman David and Carol Furer Kate Relling-Garskof and Melvyn Garskof Jerry Genova and Bob Evans Ernest Gibson and Kim Pickens Hermione Gilpin

Susan Girese

Rita and Paul Glosser

Marilyn Goldman Faith and Michael Goldman

Marjorie R. Goldstein Susan and David Gorin

Anthony Grasso Marshall Greenwald and Catherine Cooper James and Debra Griffin Sharon Grisez

Suzanne Guyette and Bill Citara Irene Hagman Maureen Darby Hamrock

Scott Harkness Sistie Fairweather-Harmes Robert and Shari Harris Doris Hasson Elaine C. Herda James W. and Mary R. Heslin Dr. Gregory P. Hetter and Ms. Anita Pihl Elliott Himelfarb and Janet Minker Michael Hird Anne and Carl Hirsch

$100 - $249

John and Nina Hockenberry

Ashley S. Hodson

Melitta Hoenle

William Holmes

Barbara Hopton

Dr. Alastair Hunter-Henderson and Dr. Noralyn Marshall

Tamara L. Ittersagen

Gail Jackson

Lisa and Jim Jacobson

Barbara Jacoby

Millicent B. Jaekle

Andrea Justiniano

Deb Kabinoff

Marvin Kadesh

Edward and Lyn Kahn

Risa Kaplowitz

Roger and Kristin Kaufman

Carolyn Keidel

Richard Kiegler and Ruthann Sturtevant-Kiegler

Joan Kiernan

Phillip King

Louise Klain

Amanda Klein

In Memory of Gail Davies

Ilene and David Klein

Mary Klimasiewfski

Philippe Koenig and Jan Wallace

Carla S. Guarascio

Lois and James Kourlas

Sakti and Brian Kunz

Carol Lackey

Nancy J. Laird

Earl and Tony Lamb

Tassana and Michael Landy

Harriet Lane

Phyllis A. and Fred D. Lasky

Carolee Lesyk

Phyllis and Phil Lieberman

Anne Linn

Phyllis and Saul Lowitt

Richard Mace

Gerda Maceikonis

Rita and Ian MacLure

Pamela Mahoney

Kimberley Mancini

Julius and Kay Marcus

Glen and Rose Marino

Jane McCormack

Henry McFarland

Marianne McKenna

Paula McKeough

Tom Metz

Joan and Robert Meyer

Carolyn Michel and Howard Millman

Dean and Patty Miller Nelle Miller

R. Bonnie Haber and Sven Mohr

Marie Monsky

Chad and Ruth Morrison

Barbara and Victor Morrison

David Morriss

Paul and Karen Morton Ruth Moshman

Lana Mullen

Laurie Murphy

Phyllis Myers

Martha Naismith

Gerald and Georgia Navaretta

Dr. and Mrs. John M. Nelson

Marrie Neumer

Susan and Kenneth J. Newmark

Michael M. Noga

Regina Noonan

William J. Noonan and Bonnie McIntyre

Marilyn Nordby Elise Ostrander

Conrad and Lenée Owens

Jeannette Paladino

Theron Palmer

Laura and Fred Pardee

Phillip Parham and Nettie Pepe Parham

Deborah and William Partridge

Lorelei A. Paster Diana L. Paver

Joe and Janis Peixoto Sue and Jerry Peterson

Sally W. Peterson

Lynne Pettigrew and Jay Plager

Joseph and Sharon Petty Bernard and Elaine Pfeifer

Andrea Pilch

Elizabeth Pitts

Julie Planck

Carol and Marc Pohl Melissa Politte-Martin

Gifts are current as of September 12, 2022. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Allen and Stephanie Hochfelder

Kelley

Christine

Jimmye

Jerry

Tere

Natasha

Clara

William

Andrew

Sandra

Martin

Vancene

Elizabeth

Robert

Jennifer

Frank

Sally

Stanford

Herbert

Lynn

Susan

Mr.

Sara

Paul

Gail

Norma

Irwin

Jane

Patricia A. Prozzi

Rea and Mary Jecklin

Reed

Reeves

and Carole Reid

Reis

Reisner

Reynardus de Villanueva

Richlin

Rief

and Bill Ripberger

Robbins

In Honor of Audrey Robbins

and John F. Robenalt

Robinson

Rodenberger

and Rob Rominiecki

Rosemeier

Ross

and Rona Ross

Saul and Joyce Rubenstein

Ruderman

and Ned Rule

Russell

Sidney and Marcia Rutberg

and Mrs. P. Ryan

Sharon and Paul Saatsoglou

Sardelli-Rachon and Kenny Rachon

and Anita Sarno

Schaeffer and Edward Ellis

Phyllis Schaen

H. Schatz

and Denise Scheineson

Gary Schieneman

W. Schlegel

Zoe Sealy

Patricia Seftel

Barbara P. Segal

Millicent Serling

Susan Serling and David Kessler Paula Sharp Stephen Sills

Roger and Barbara Sipson

David and Linda Sischy

Turbi and Paul Smilow

Douglas J. Smith Rose Sobel

Barbara Somma

Alfredo Sotomayor

Christopher W. Soule

Gordon Stanley Carol Stares

Alison Stottlemyer

Dee and Charles Stottlemyer

Cheryl Sublette

Mary Swanton and Stanley Kozubek Patricia Sweet

Ann Syring Eva Talbert

Diran and Virginia Tashian Bogdana Tchakarova

Jacqueline and John Thompson Sondra J. Thorson

Carl Tursi

Lawrence Twill Jocelyn Udell Walt and Carole Ulin Lisa and Gary Ulrich Helen Vetter Stanley Vickers

Bill Wagy

Jenny Aldrich Walker

Michele Ward Carolyn K. Warren Gisela Weinland Dr. Ronald Weintraub and Margo Howard Sandy Whyte Barbara Wilcox

Aaron and Susan Wilner Karen Wiltsie Nicole Winter

Norma and Terry Wohl Joan Wood Mari Wright Amy and Jay Young Anonymous (7)

In Memoriam

The following members of our Sarasota Ballet Community have passed away in the last year. We celebrate their lives and honor them for their generosity and patronage.

The In Memoriam page above is presented to the best of our knowledge. We truly apologize if we have not recognized members of our Ballet community that have recently passed away. Please contact the Development Department so that we may update our records.

Dr. Sidney Katz

Warren Coville

Gail Davies

Bert Schweigaard-Olsen

Jennifer Gemmeke

Vielka

Foundation & Public Support

Allenby Goldstein Touring Fund William A. Farber, Trustee

Jean

Media Sponsors

Season Sponsors Sponsors

2020 Strategic Plan

The Sarasota Ballet has become one of the nation’s most exciting ballet companies. With an extensive repertoire of over 170 ballets and divertissements including 51 world premieres and 60 internationally renowned choreographers, The Company has achieved national and international acclaim. In addition to the mainstage, The Sarasota Ballet operates nationally recognized dance education and community engagement programs. The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory provides instruction for talented pre-professional students from across the globe and The Sarasota Ballet School provides quality dance education for all ages. In addition to outstanding education programs, The Sarasota Ballet maintains a community engagement platform offering over 80 free or low-cost activities annually. In March of 2020, the Board of Trustees approved the 2020 Strategic Plan. This plan outlines a comprehensive strategy to strengthen all aspects of the organization while planning for the future of The Sarasota Ballet.

THE 2020 STRATEGIC PLAN TODAY

The Sarasota Ballet enters its third and final year of the 2020 Strategic Plan this Season with a focus on key Strategic Focus Areas including Artistic Programming, Education, Community Engagement, Audience Expansion, and Future Initiatives. In August, the Company completed a weeklong residency at the Joyce Theater in New York City. These performances gave our organization the opportunity to expand our artistic footprint. Voices of Her, a multi-year initiative celebrating female choreographers continues this Season with a new work by Jessica Lang. The Board of Trustees continues to expand the leadership structure by growing the Advisory Council and evaluating the ways in which our organization embodies diversity, equity, access, and inclusion. The Sarasota Ballet School is pleased to announce a new production of The Nutcracker, with performances taking place in Sarasota and Venice. We are also pleased to announce the launch of Dance for All, a new Community Engagement Platform. Dance for All includes six core programs: Dance – The Next Generation, Joyful Movement through Parkinson’s, Silver Swans, Public School Performances & Programs, Community Performances, and Free Lectures, Tickets and Tours. Through these programs, The Sarasota Ballet strives to make dance and the arts accessible to everyone in our community. The Martucci Legacy Society welcomes 7 new members including two leadership gifts of $1M and above, and we continue to grow The Sarasota Ballet Endowment. Our Strategic Planning Committee continues to evaluate the strengths and needs of the organization and plan for its future. As we look ahead, we are encouraged by the remarkable, steadfast support of our leadership, staff, students, patrons, community partners and audience members.

Spotlight on Strategic Focus Areas:

Artistic Programming Education

Expand our footprint in Southwest Florida and the Northeastern United States through implementation of robust artistic programs featuring dancers and choreographers of the highest quality for diverse and expanding audiences.

Provide internationally recognized education programs enhanced with teacher certification, program development, and excellence in education for students of all ages.

Community Engagement

Audience Expansion Future Initiatives

Build expansive community partnerships and develop free and low-cost programs that engage all individuals in the joy of dance.

Expand the ways that people experience, connect with, and support The Sarasota Ballet through new leadership programs, new patron experiences, and community engagement programs that welcome and inspire new and diverse audiences.

Develop long-term plans for future initiatives including financial planning for our endowment, touring, facility improvements, and further audience expansion.

MISSION & VISION

MISSION - We enrich lives, captivate emotions and strengthen community through the art of dance.

VISION - To infuse our community with the highest quality and diversity of dance in America.

The Martucci Legacy Society

We are so grateful to the following individuals who have included The Sarasota Ballet in their estate plans, through wills, trusts, and other avenues. Planned gifts create a lasting impact on our organization, supporting world class artistry and award-winning education and community programs. Members of The Martucci Legacy Society receive special recognition throughout the Season and a luncheon in their honor.

MARTUCCI LEGACY SOCIETY MEMBERS

The Sarasota Ballet is proud to recognize the following individuals for their commitment to The Sarasota Ballet’s future:

George Allison, ASID and Alan Watkins, ASID

Donald H. and Barbara K. Bernstein

Jerry and Gay Bowles

Marty and Barbara Bowling

Kay Delaney and Murray Bring

Donald Britt

Ann Burroughs

Judy Cahn

Lynn Chancer

Jonathan Strickland Coleman and Rick Kerby

Edward N. Cooke

Douglas Endicott

Laura Feder

Frances D. Fergusson

Micki H. Gamer

Cope and Anne Garrett

Ellen Goldman

Jean Weidner Goldstein

Patricia A. Golemme

Gudrun Graugaard

Gerald and Deborah Hamburg

Julie A. Harris

Elaine C. Herda

Richard S. Johnson

In Loving Memory of Marsha Johnson

Deborah Kalb

In Loving Memory of Ellen “Mom” Roesch

Richard Kemmler

Pat and Ann Kenny

Join the Martucci Legacy Society

Ernie Kretzmer

Lydia Landa

Julia Laning

Harry Leopold and Audrey Robbins

Dr. Bart and Joan Levenson

Richard March

Frank and Katherine Martucci

Joan Mathews

Mary Jane McRae

Peter B. Miller and Dr. Martha Harrison

Sandra Miranda

Stu and Gini Peltz

Dr. Richard L. Prager

Rose Marie Proietti

David Welle and Rosemary Reinhardt

Mary Jo Reston

Terry and Susan Romine Will A. Ryall

Micki Sellman

Bud and Betty Shapiro

Arthur Siciliano and B. Aline Blanchard Jan Sirota and Alison Gardner

Hillary Steele

Melliss Kenworthy Swenson

Marcia Jean Taub and Peter Swain

In Loving Memory of Ethel and Ron Taub Kim Wheeler

Richard Wires

For information about bequests, charitable gift annuities, and other planned giving options, please contact Lauren Stroman, Development Director at 941.225.6510 or lstroman@sarasotaballet.org.

Chicago

English

Buffalo Philharmonic

JoAnn

A Chanticleer

Christmas

The Sarasota Ballet

Endowment Fund

The Sarasota Ballet Endowment

Fund was established during the 2020 - 2021 Season with a $2 million gift thanks to an incredibly generous anonymous patron. The fund has now grown to just over $2.5 million and will support the future of The Sarasota Ballet, ensuring that the organization remains one of the nation’s most exciting ballet companies for years to come.

In addition to The Sarasota Ballet Endowment Fund, The Sarasota Ballet operates endowed funds for Live Music and Dance – The Next Generation.

The Live Music Endowment Fund

Established in 1993 by the Keating Family Foundation and the State of Florida, the Live Music Endowment Fund provides annual support to ensure that live music continues to be part of The Sarasota Ballet experience. The Live Music Endowment Fund supports orchestral accompaniment for main stage performances as well as piano accompaniment for rehearsals and classes.

Dance – The Next Generation Endowment Fund

Dance – The Next Generation Endowment Fund was established in 2000 and provides ongoing support for the annual operations of the Dance –the Next Generation program.

To learn more, please contact Lauren Stroman, Development Director at lstroman@sarasotaballet.org or 941.225.6510

Patron Programs

Patron Programs play an integral role in supporting the artistic, education, and community programs of The Sarasota Ballet. In appreciation for this generous support, The Sarasota Ballet hosts special events and experiences centered around the work of the Company, designed to inform and engage our patrons.

Your Invitation to Join

We invite you to be part of the patron experience and celebrate the 2022 - 2023 Season on stage, in the studio, and in the community! Benefits include special recognition and insider access through the following:

• Virtual and in-person events with dancers, visiting artists, and special guests

• After-Performance Parties (on the opening night of each Program)

• Behind-the-scenes rehearsal experiences

For questions regarding Patron Programs, please contact Lauren Stroman, Development Director, at Istroman@sarasotaballet.org or 941.225.6510.

LUMINARY CIRCLE - $100,000 OR MORE

$1,393 non tax- deductible

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Production Sponsor recognition for Ballet, Education, or Community Program

• Recognition includes curtain announcement, photo in the Season Program Book, photo in Performance Programs, and photo on signage in performance halls

• Invitation to all Studio Rehearsals

BENEFACTOR CIRCLE - $50,000 TO $99,999

$1,393 non tax- deductible

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Invitation to dinner with Directors Iain Webb, Joseph Volpe, and Margaret Barbieri, and select Company members*

CONNOISSEUR CIRCLE - $25,000 TO $49,999

$1,176 non tax- deductible

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Sponsorship recognition for Ballet, Education, or Community Program

• Recognition includes photo in the Season Program Book, photo in Performance Programs, and photo on signage in performance halls

• Invitation to Cocktail Party with the Board of Trustees and Advisory Council*

• Signed Season Program Book

• Invitation to a Studio Rehearsal

AFICIONADO CIRCLE - $15,000 TO $24,999

$954 non tax- deductible

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Signed poster from Principal Dancers

PATRON CIRCLE - $10,000 TO $14,999

$954 non tax- deductible

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Co-Sponsorship recognition for Ballet, Education, or Community Program

• Recognition includes photo in the Season Program Book, listing in Performance Programs, and listing on signage in performance halls

• Invitation to Back-to-Season Brunch with Company Meet & Greet*

• Invitation to Annual Dinner of Excellence*

DEVOTEE CIRCLE - $5,000 TO $9,999

$521 non tax- deductible

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Photo in the Season Program Book

• Invitation to Opening Night Parties with Company and Staff*

GOLDEN CIRCLE - $2,500 TO $4,999

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Concierge Ticketing Service

• Q&A with Company dancers

SILVER CIRCLE - $1,000 TO $2,499

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Invitation to the Silver Circle Reception

ENTHUSIASTS - $500 TO $999

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Invitation to exclusive Livestream Rehearsal

• Listing in all Performance Programs

ADMIRERS - $250 TO $499

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Listing in the 2022 - 2023 Encore Annual Magazine

ADVOCATES - $100 TO $249

All benefits listed below, plus:

• Listing in the Season Program Book

SUPPORTERS - $50 TO $99

• In Step monthly newsletter

The Sarasota Ballet recognizes all gifts of $100 or more in the Season Program Book. Gifts are current as of September 12, 2022. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Benefits indicated with a * have a value of goods and services assigned to them. Per IRS regulations the value of goods and services must be deducted from your tax benefit. You may choose to decline these benefits if you wish to take the full tax benefit.

Beneva Weddings has been committed to couples for 36 years, helping them create the wedding of their dreams. With over 50 years of combined experience, our design team’s knowledge and creativity are unparalleled. When we’re not educating other florists, we are educating ourselves.

WHAT SETS US APART?

We buy our flowers directly from farms all over the world. We take pride in the top-notch quality of our florals, and we’re still able to offer competitive wedding flower pricing to our clients. Whether it’s the most romantic occasion of your life, a huge corporate gala or a milestone birthday, we’re here to translate your floral fantasies into reality.

HOW FAR DO WE GO?

Beyond the Sarasota area, we’ll make our way to the barrier islands as well as to Bradenton, Parrish, St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Tampa Bay to the north. To the south, we

Neuro Challenge Foundation offers an array of programs to assist you in your Parkinson's journey, including Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s in partnership with the Sarasota Ballet. This therapeutic dance-movement program, led by Sarah Krazit, dancer and Principal of The Sarasota Ballet School, is designed especially for people with Parkin son's and their care partners.

Neuro Challenge Foundation for Parkinson's provides services including education, therapeutic and support programs, individualized care advising and community resource referrals at no charge to the Parkinson's community.

Neuro Challenge is here to help you on your Get connected with a community of caring and support today! (941) 926-6413 • NeuroChallenge.org

The Sarasota Ballet is pleased to launch Relevé, a Society to Develop Younger Audiences. Relevé is a new social society designed to give young patrons (ages 21-45) access to The Sarasota Ballet. Through a range of program offerings, Relevé members receive exclusive benefits including discounted performance tickets, invitations to exciting events and activities throughout the Season, and the opportunity to connect directly with artists, staff, and the leaders who make up The Sarasota Ballet. Relevé members form a unique network of emerging dance and arts supporters in Sarasota through providing philanthropic support, volunteering, and helping The Sarasota Ballet welcome future leaders, supporters, and audience members.

Join The Relevé Society

For more information on membership opportunities, please contact Rachael Fisk, Events & Engagement Manager at 941.225.6519 or rfisk@sarasotaballet.org.

2022 – 2023 Season Relevé Society Leadership Council Jade

2022 - 2023 Season | IGNITE

WAYS TO GIVE TO THE SARASOTA BALLET

Support world-class artistry by making a gift today!

Ignite creativity, artistry, and cultural vibrancy with your gift to The Sarasota Ballet. Your generous support allows us to continue to bring world-class performances and accessible arts education to our community.

Here are the many ways to make a meaningful gift to The Sarasota Ballet:

By Phone

To make a contribution over the phone using your credit card, please contact the Development Department at 941.225.6510

Online

To make a donation online, please visit: sarasotaballet.org/sarasota-ballet-giving

By Mail

Send a check made payable to The Sarasota Ballet:

The Sarasota Ballet

Attn: Development Department 5555 N Tamiami Trail Sarasota, FL 34243

Charitable IRA Rollover

The IA Charitable Rollover provision allows individuals who have reached age 70½ to donate up to $100,000 to charitable organizations directly from their Individual Retirement Account (IRA), without treating the distribution as taxable income.

Matching Gifts

Double or triple your impact! If your firm or company offers a matching gift program, you are credited with the entire contribution. Many companies even match gifts made by board members or retirees.

Gifts of Stock or Equities

Your contribution of stock is tax deductible at its fair market value at the time it is donated, even if its value has decreased or increased. Below are the transfer instructions to use when you wish to contribute securities and/or cash to The Sarasota Ballet:

Account Name: Sarasota Ballet of Florida General Account Number: 57-4735-00

DTC: #2803

Tax ID: #65-0135900

Custodial Bank: US Bank Attn: Christopher “Lee” Stewart Questions: 513.632.4194 | Christopher.Stewart3@usbank.com

Please note: Electronic transfers are made without identifying the donor. Please contact the Development Department in advance of your transfer to ensure receipt of your gift.

Planned Gifts

Planned gifts provide creative and flexible ways for you to support The Sarasota Ballet and receive a lifetime income or tax benefit for your estate. For information about bequests, charitable gift annuities, and other planned giving options, please contact Lauren Stroman, Development Director, at 941.225.6510 or Istroman@sarasotaballet.org. Patrons who make provisions for the Ballet through their estate plans receive membership in the Martucci Legacy Society and are celebrated and recognized throughout the Season.

ABOUT MELISSA L. MCCOY

Melissa McCoy joins The Sarasota Ballet in 2022-2023 Season as its Chief Strategy & Advancement Officer. In the newly expanded position, McCoy will lead strategies for Philanthropic initiatives, Marketing, Box Office, and Community Engagement for Education while contributing to the overall mission.

McCoy most recently served as Chief Advancement Officer at Abilities First, Inc., a non-profit in New York where she was instrumental in growing the brand from $27 million to $40 million through organizational realignment, community engagement, and innovative strategies in diverse aspects of the corporation. She is a certified fundraising executive (CFRE) and certified fundraising manager (CFRM), a certified master trainer, and a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) for which she has been actively involved locally and nationally, presently serving on the AFP Global Marketing & Communications Committee. She has maintained an ongoing commitment to community service personally and professional, which she finds is instrumental to an organizations successful alignment to the community they serve.

Melissa L. McCoy, CFRE, CFRM Chief Strategy & Advancement Officer

It is my distinct privilege to welcome you to the 2022 – 2023 Season! We thank you for the numerous ways you have supported this mission throughout the recent years and the challenges brought on by the pandemic. Thanks to you, The Sarasota Ballet has emerged stronger and is delighted to be presenting an exceptional Season of premieres and renowned repertoire.

As I joined The Sarasota Ballet this Season, it quickly became apparent that behind the stage is a talented team of administrative professionals, a supportive Board of Trustees and Advisory Council, committed volunteers through the Friends of The Sarasota Ballet, and most poignantly, an organization deeply rooted in and committed to its community. All these combined, ensure the community continues to benefit from a progressive and professional arts experience.

With a community drawn to the critically acclaimed performances and professionalism of The Sarasota Ballet company, it is noteworthy to celebrate all of the initiatives which make up The Sarasota Ballet brand:

• The Sarasota Ballet Companyw

• The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company

• The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory

• The Sarasota Ballet Summer Intensive

• The Sarasota Ballet School

• Dance for All Dance – The Next Generation Joyful Movement through Parkinson’s Silver Swans Public School Performances and Programs Community Performances Free Lecture, tickets, and tours

We invite you to learn more about these exceptional programs and performance, and their impact on individuals, and our communities.

Our commitment remains steadfast to expanding and developing programming to support the needs and interest of your community. This Season, we have launched our newest patron program, Relevé, to engage and embrace younger audiences to the experience of dance and the theater. We look to future generations to ensure a continuation of enthusiasm and leadership of the arts in Sarasota and beyond.

Each year brings opportunity and an exciting Season for the entire Sarasota Ballet brand. Through leadership and support, the organization is poised for significant growth and impact as both a performing arts organization and significant contributor to arts education in communities, both regionally and nationally.

We look forward to seeing you and having you experience everything The Sarasota Ballet has to offer.

Company Staff

SENIOR MANAGEMENT

DEVELOPMENT

MARKETING

Melissa L. McCoy Chief Strategy & Advancement Officer

Courtney Hansen Marketing & Design Manager

Lauren Stroman Development Director

Amy Wensley Development Associate

Jason W. Ettore General Manager

Adriana Muniz Marketing & Communications Associate

Rachael Fisk Events & Engagement Manager

Kristie Cox Finance & HR Director

Meybis Chavarria Video & Graphic Designer

Nicole Mobley Institutional Giving Officer

Katherine Knowles Grants Manager

Rod Kelly

Box Office & House Manager

Leslie Van Brink Company Manager

Ethan Vail Production Consultant

Richard Amato IT & Database Officer

Jerry Wolf Head of Wardrobe

Bryan Lewis Box Office Associate

Amy Miller Finance / Office Manager

Doug Nicholson Production Consultant

Barbara Epperson Administrative Assistant, Board Liaison

Brienne Cooper Wardrobe Assistant

Aaron Muhl Lighting Designer

Glen Edwards Facilities Coordinator

Zara Baroyan Class Pianist

Luke Woods

Diana Childs

Michael Pasquini Lighting Designer

Education Department

Christopher Hird Education Director

Christopher Hird is from England and studied at The Royal Ballet School. He toured Europe as part of a company headlined by the internationally acclaimed Ballerina Sylvie Guillem. After retiring from the stage, Hird worked as the Assistant to the Director of the British Ballet Organization, and later as Assistant to the Development Manager at The Royal Ballet School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from the University of Roehampton and a Diploma from Canada’s National Ballet School’s Teacher Training Program.

Hird joined Boston Ballet School in 2003 and was promoted to Artistic Manager and Head of Adult Programming in 2009. He has served on the international jury of the Youth America Grand Prix, the Japan Grand Prix, the Surrey Festival of Dance (Canada), the ADC International Ballet Competition, and the Seminário Internacional de Dança de Brasília. He has been a guest teacher for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Canada’s National Ballet School, Academy of Nevada Ballet Theatre, Cecchetti Council of America, and Harvard University.

The Sarasota Ballet appointed Christopher Hird as Director of Education and Principal of The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory in July 2016. During his tenure, Hird has expanded the visibility of the Education Programs, and enhanced the Margaret Barbieri Conservatory, launching a new Trainee Program, as well as a summer exchange program with Canada’s National Ballet School. In addition, Hird oversees The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company, and has developed the Adult Program to offer more opportunities for students.

Dierdre Miles Burger

Born in Burlington, Massachusetts, Dierdre Miles Burger began her formative dance training with Margaret Prishwalko Fallon and subsequently the Boston Ballet School. In 1974 she joined Boston Ballet, where she would dance countless principal roles in the classical and contemporary ballet repertory.

In June of 1993 Ms. Miles Burger retired from performing and joined Boston Ballet’s Artistic Staff and in September 2002 she was appointed Principal of Boston Ballet School. The summer of 2006, she left Boston Ballet to move to Florida. During this time Ms. Miles Burger became an ABT® Certified Teacher, successfully completing the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive and was later appointed to the prestigious Board of Examiners for the curriculum. She has served on the jury for several ballet conventions and competitions including Youth America Grand Prix regional semi-finals and New York City finals.

In July 2010 she was appointed Director of Orlando Ballet School, serving there for eight years until August 2018. Under her leadership Orlando Ballet School grew and developed programming, most notably the Orlando Ballet School Academy which develops young dancers for professional careers. In June 2019 Ms. Miles Burger was appointed Assistant Education Director at The Sarasota Ballet.

Lindsay Fischer Assistant Education Director

Lindsay Fischer joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 from The National Ballet of Canada where he served as Artistic Director of YOU Dance, the company’s flagship Education and Community Outreach program. Under Fischer’s guidance, YOU Dance reached over 300,000 students and community members, introducing young people to the world of dance and ballet. By 2015, he also held the position of Principal Ballet Master. Additionally, he operated as Program Head of The Banff Centre’s Professional Summer Dance Program in Banff, Canada, for eight years. During his tenure at The National Ballet of Canada, Fischer designed and implemented the company’s Apprentice Program.

Assistant Education Director & Head of Curriculum

Lauren Taylor Education Administrative Manager

Risa Kaplowitz Full-Time Faculty

Franco De Vita Guest Faculty

Addul Manzano Full-Time Faculty

Raymond Lukens Guest Faculty

Manolo Molina Full-Time Faculty

Jean Volpe Guest Faculty

Erica Raver Full-Time Faculty

Sarah Krazit Principal,The Sarasota Ballet School

Doricha Sales Program Director Dance For All

The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory

The Conservatory is overseen by Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri and run by Education Director Christopher Hird. In addition, two Assistant Education Directors, Dierdre Miles Burger and Lindsay Fischer, lead the exceptional faculty in providing the highest quality dance education.

Through an inclusive and nurturing environment that embraces diversity, our philosophy of training is to educate and train young dancers to become not only technically strong and versatile, but also have a true sense of clean, classical artistry, musicality, and style. We also believe in supporting a dancer’s mental health through a collaboration with Artists Becoming. We are dedicated to guiding our students as they prepare for a career in the dance industry or higher education. The Conservatory offers a safe place for students to grow and develop at their own pace with small class sizes and individual attention.

Trainee Program

As the top level of The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory, the Trainee Program is designed to prepare talented young dancers for their next steps in their dance career. Students from the Trainee Program are selected to join The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company. Since the Trainee Program’s inception, 14 students have moved into the Studio Company and 11 students are dancing in other companies around the USA.

“We have just had the best experience with The Sarasota Ballet.”

- Donna Kolb

Collaborations and Performance Opportunities

The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory is proud to partner with local arts organizations to give many performing opportunities throughout the year. In November, we perform with Sarasota’s premier symphonic chorus, Key Chorale. In May, Images of Dance celebrates talented local youth as our students perform to live music with partners including the Sarasota Youth Opera and the Sarasota Music Conservatory.

Appreciation

The Conservatory remains ever grateful to the support of our donors. We particularly recognize the Eliza Culverhouse Foundation and the Muriel O’Neil Fund at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Without their support we would not be able to provide scholarships and support for our deserving students.

Official Youth America Grand Prix Partner School

We are proud to be one of a select number of official schools recognized by YAGP for providing quality training for the pre-professional student. As well as entering students for YAGP, both Christopher Hird and Dierdre Miles Burger are part of the international jury and faculty for the semi-finals and finals. The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory is now a popular destination school for young talented students from around the world.

Images of Dance – May 2, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

The Sarasota Ballet School

The Sarasota Ballet School provides a quality dance education while inspiring a lifelong love of dance for children ages 3 and above. We believe that dance training should not only be fun and creative, but also develop students’ confidence and celebrate their individuality.

American Ballet Theatre® National Training Curriculum

We are the only school in Sarasota to offer the internationally recognized ABT National Training Curriculum. The Curriculum is a breakthrough program that combines high quality artistic training with the basics of dancer health and child development. The ABT National Training Curriculum consists of a comprehensive set of age-appropriate, outcome-based guidelines to provide the highest quality ballet training to dance students of all ages and skill levels.

The Sarasota Ballet School’s Children’s Program – ages 3-7

Designed for our youngest dancers, the Children’s Program is led by qualified and nurturing teachers experienced in child development. Children develop motor skills and coordination, while increasing balance and strength. These skills are taught through storytelling, imagery and opportunities for children to self-express.

The Sarasota Ballet School – ages 8+

Students now attend classes 2 or more times a week and the curriculum expands to include jazz, modern and character. Students begin pointe work in Level 4 after 3 years of training. Students who study dance also develop life-long skills including self-confidence, discipline, time management and how to set and achieve goals.

We are thrilled to announce a brand-new production of The Nutcracker. For the first time in its history, The Sarasota Ballet School brings together students across the organization to join with The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company as we follow the adventures of young Clara. With lavish sets and costumes, this exciting new production will be seen at the Sarasota Opera House and at Venice Performing Arts Center as part of a new partnership with VPAC and the Venice Symphony. We look forward to this new production becoming an annual holiday tradition in Sarasota and Venice.

Summer Intensive

Every summer, we hold a 5-week intensive for talented young dancers from all over the United States. Students attend auditions during January and February and those who are selected receive a comprehensive curriculum. The culmination of the program is InMotion – a special performance that showcases the hard work of the students during the Summer Intensive. Held at the Mertz Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, the students are fortunate to perform at one of the venues the main Company uses during its season.

Residential Life

We partner with New College of Florida to provide housing and a residential life program for the summer students. This past summer, we had over 80 residents who made lifelong friends through the shared experience of living together.

Excursions

This summer we were able to relaunch our excursion offerings for all students. For the first time ever, we took over 75 students to Walt Disney World – they enjoyed a full day at the park, enjoying the rides, seeing the characters, and finishing off the trip with the fireworks display. Other excursions included Marie Selby Gardens, Pop Stroke, and the Ringling Museum.

- Piper Bonner

InMotion – July 2023 | FSU Center for the Performing Arts

“...The environment you’ve created at Sarasota is a healthy, nurturing one that has excellent training without the negative intensity often found in competitive programs.”

From special occasions to daily dining, Morton’s Market has got you covered. Stop in for fresh seasonal produce, prime cuts of meat and seafood, and hot-from-the-oven baked goods. Choose from our tempting array of chef-prepared deli and gourmet to-go items, as well as fine wines, exotic cheeses and cut flowers. Think of us for your catered events, holiday menus and gift baskets too. Serving

Adult Program

The Sarasota Ballet School offers a continuing education program for adults of all ages and experience. Taught by expert faculty who are passionate about inspiring the adult dancer, our classes are fun, engaging and a great workout.

Weekend Workshops

Our popular Weekend Workshops return this year. A wonderful opportunity for adults to spend two days discovering the art of dance, the Workshops also highlight the link between the Adult Program and the professional Company, with all Workshop attendees receiving a ticket to a Sarasota Ballet performance.

Friendly Community

The Sarasota Ballet School’s Adult Program offers a welcoming and community atmosphere – it’s a special place for adult dance lovers to share their passion with others who love the beautiful art form of ballet.

“I so appreciate the high-caliber, high-quality instructors you provide. They are enthusiasticgiving corrections and pointers; giving technically challenging classes while being aware of our age and ability; and they make it fun for everyone!”

- Kumu Dreier, Adult Student

Dance – The Next Generation

In 1990, Jean Weidner Goldstein, founder of The Sarasota Ballet, established Dance – The Next Generation (DNG) to directly impact underserved children of the local community. Now in its 32 nd year, The Sarasota Ballet is excited to expand upon this program’s successes while reimagining its potential, reach, and offerings.

DNG continues to provide equitable access to quality dance education by offering a comprehensive tuitionfree dance program to children in grades 3-12. For the 2022 – 2023 school year we have diversified the dance curriculum and increased learning and developmental opportunities that include life skills, mentoring, enrichment, and wellness.

The Sarasota Ballet covers the cost of a complete dance education for each DNG student including class tuition, dance attire, field trips, and activities. Each year, approximately 150 Sarasota and Manatee County students enjoy dance training which now includes a variety of techniques such as Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Latin, Hip Hop, and West African Dance. Students remaining

in the program for all ten years will graduate with comprehensive dance training in all listed genres.

DNG is more than a dance program – it is a program to nurture, enrich, and support the entire child. Elementary and middle school students are transported directly from their schools to our Tallevast studios via Sarasota Ballet vans. All Faiths Food Banks assists students by providing healthy after-school snacks. Enrichment opportunities include mentoring, college and career planning through our relationship with Take Stock in Children Sarasota, health and wellness classes, and dance history. One of the highlights is the end of year performance which gives all students the chance to shine!

We look forward to increasing our visibility within the community and widening opportunities for quality dance training by growing enrollment in Manatee and Charlotte counties, expanding post-secondary education tours, and developing our community partnerships and collaborations.

Silver Swans®

The Sarasota Ballet is licensed to offer the Royal Academy of Dance’s Silver Swans®. A special dance and movement program for dance lovers ages 55 and over, Silver Swans® classes are taught at local retirement communities. We currently hold Silver Swans® at Plymouth Harbor, Sarasota Bay Club, Grand Living, and Senior Friendship Centers and are planning to expand further into Sarasota and Manatee Counties.

Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s

The Sarasota Ballet is proud to offer Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s in partnership with the Neuro Challenge Foundation for Parkinson’s. Designed for people living with Parkinson’s disease, students enjoy an exploration into the beautiful world of ballet through movement, creativity, and music. Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s is a wonderful chance to exercise while encouraging range of motion, coordination, and mobility. With the success of the Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s program, The Sarasota Ballet looks forward to unveiling additional adaptive and integrative dance classes for specialized and inclusive populations.

Community Performances

Curated performances by The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company and The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory celebrate the history of ballet and share the beauty of dance with hundreds of attendees each year. These performances take place in local venues including Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, University Town Center Mall, Pelican Cove, and Plymouth Harbor.

Lectures, Tickets & Tours

Backstage tours, free lectures, and deeply discounted tickets to The Sarasota Ballet performances provide access for people of all ages and backgrounds to explore the beauty of The Sarasota Ballet each season. With continually expanding community relationships, The Sarasota Ballet is energized to broaden these offerings building long-term and invested audiences.

Public School Performances & Programs

Each season, we partner with public schools in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte County to bring dance into schools. From in-classroom learning sessions to specialized matinee performances at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, The Sarasota Ballet engages thousands of students from pre-K through high school in the experience of dance, often for the first time. As we begin to transition to more in-person events, The Sarasota Ballet looks forward to expanding our collaborations within the community.

YOUR SPECIAL INVITATION

WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN THE HEART OF THE SARASOTA BALLET COMMUNITY, THE FRIENDS OF THE SARASOTA BALLET.

As a member of the Friends of The Sarasota Ballet you will:

• Contribute to the success of one of the most exciting ballet companies in America

• Share in The Sarasota Ballet’s growth and achievements

• Become “an insider” of The Sarasota Ballet through exclusive programming

• Meet the Dancers, key staff members, and leadership of The Sarasota Ballet

• Deepen your understanding of the art form

• Form new relationships with those who are also dance and arts enthusiasts

• Receive a monthly letter from the President of the Friends

• Receive invitations to special events

• Receive advance notice of performances by the Studio Company and The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory

• Through your volunteer efforts, discover the inner workings of the Company

2022 - 2023 SEASON | 941.359.0099

MAKE CONNECTIONS THROUGH VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

The Friends of The Sarasota Ballet have the opportunity to volunteer their time and get involved in the many different aspects of The Sarasota Ballet. Whether you wish to assist the box office, act as a performance greeter, mentor our Dance – The Next Generation students, or simply share your love for The Sarasota Ballet, there are endless opportunities to become an Ambassador for The Sarasota Ballet.

SHOWCASE LUNCHEONS & SPECIAL EVENTS

Luncheons, events, and virtual programs are held by the Friends throughout each Season and are open to both Friends members and guests. Showcase Luncheons and other Friends events are designed to enhance understanding of the inner workings of the Company. These events offer the exclusive opportunity to interact with exciting special guests and gain access to unique programming, while also providing a social outlet to interact with others who share your enthusiasm for The Sarasota Ballet. The Friends dedicate proceeds from the Showcase Luncheons and Special Events to The Sarasota Ballet.

SHARE THE PASSION

We hope you will join our community of dance enthusiasts and become a Friend of The Sarasota Ballet. For further information on the Friends of The Sarasota Ballet, please contact the Membership Chair: Betty Ferguson, Friends Membership Chair Email bcamarest@yahoo.com

The Friends of The Sarasota Ballet look forward to welcoming you to another incredible Season!

““

DANCE IS JOY, DANCE IS LOVE. DANCE IS WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

President Patricia Golemme

Vice President Laurie Fitch

Secretary Peggy Sweeney

Treasurer Elaine Foster Past President Richard March

EX OFFICIO

Richard Johnson Board Chair, The Sarasota Ballet

Frank Martucci Board President, The Sarasota Ballet

Iain Webb Director, The Sarasota Ballet

Joseph Volpe Executive Director, The Sarasota Ballet

Rachael Fisk Liaison, The Sarasota Ballet

STANDING COMMITTEE CHAIRS

Advisory Council Liaison

Laura Feder Communications

Christina Cowell

Dancers Liaison Melliss Swenson Education Liaison

Bruce Ensinger Events

Donna Maytham

Membership Betty Ferguson

Outreach

Andi Lieberman & Carolou Marquet

Reservations

Phyllis Myers

Will Call/Box Office Carol Arscott

Members-At-Large Isabel Becker & Barbara Hyde

The Friends of The Sarasota Ballet is an incredible group of individuals who champion the Company throughout the region. Through their events and volunteer work, The Friends are a vibrant part of The Sarasota Ballet community and play a vital role in the continued success of the Company, while forming close bonds through a mutual love of the art form.

Julia Aaron

Catha Abrahams

Nancy Abrams

Ken & Peggy Abt

Priscilla Adams

Kay Aidlin

Janette Albrecht

Maryann Armour

Carol Arscott

Shari & Stephen Ashman

Ruth A. Barker

Marge Barpal

Jocelyn & Nick Baskey

Patricia Bass

Joan Bauerlein

Lark Baxter

Isabel Becker & David Lipton

Patricia Belote

Rhoda & Herb Beningson

Kacy Carla Bennington

Lisa Binkley

Barbara Blackburn

Barbara Blumfield

Lydia Bohn

Robert Boyd

Janet & James Breidster

Arline Breskin

Susette T. Bryan

Ann Burroughs

Marilyn Burysz

Cynthia Byce

Diana Cable

Kim Calka

Barbara Callahan

Peter & Judy Carlin

Richard & Darlene Carroll

Frank Cerullo

Lynn C. Chancer

Barbara Chertok

Dennis Ciborowski & Meryl Gale

Saul & Naomi Cohen

Jonathan Coleman

Juanita Connell

Jude Conway Evelyn & Glenn Cooper

Pat Corson

Katie Couchot

Christina Cowell

Sandra Cowing

Kristie Cox Colleen Curran

Jacqueline & Harold D’Alessio

Lucille R. D’Armi-Riggio

Jeanie Davis

James & Leila Day

Robert de Warren

Louis DeFrancesco & Anne Heim

Kay Delaney & Murray Bring

Kim Deme-Fulcher & Kevin Fulcher

Katherine DeMoure-Aldrich JoAnne DeVries

Lynda Doery

Sybie Dolan-DiGirolamo Monika Dorman

Barbara Dubitsky

Cori Susanna Dykham

Rosalyn Ehrenpreis

Linda Elliff

Ellen Ellis

Douglas Endicott

Bruce Ensinger & Clark Denham

Barbara E. Epperson

Sharon Erickson

Patti Eylar

William & Janice Farber

Laura Feder

Shirley Fein

Patricia D. Fennessey

Betty Ferguson

Frances Fergusson

Sandy Fink Cherie & Jeff Finn

Linda Fiorelli

Beverly Fisher

Laurie Fitch

Bert Fivelson

Marjorie Floyd & Carolie Amory Karol Foss

Don Fosselman

Elaine Foster

Suzanne Freund

Kathryn Gibby Jacqueline Giddens

Rita Glosser

Linda A. Glover

Nancy Gold Ellen Goldman

Patricia Golemme Kathryn Goodwin Sue M Gordon

Dedrea A. Greer

Dr. James Griffith

Bob Griffiths & David Eichlin

Carla Guarascio Helen & John Habbert

Renee Hamad

Gerald & Deborah Hamburg

Julie Harris

Donna Hecker

Charlotte Hedge

JoAnn Heffernan Heisen

Ashley Hodson

Laurie Hofheimer

Dennis Holly

Stephanie Horeis

Dale Horwitz

Barbara Hyde

Barbara Jacob & Karen Lichtig

Barbara Jacoby

Barbara Jarabek

Mary & Tim Johnson

Richard Johnson

Susan Kaye Johnson

Alison Jones

Anne Jones

Merrill Ann Kaegi

Deborah R. Kalb

Elaine Keating

Ken Keating

Carolyn Keidel

Ann & Pat Kenny

John Kiernan

Marlene Kitchell

Robin Klein-Strauss & Michael Srauss

Mary S. Klimasiewfski

Bob Kloss

Pat Klugherz

Phillippe Koenig & Jan Wallace

Randi & Donald Kreiss

Peter E. Kretzmer

Robert Ladieu & David Hamilton

Lydia H. Landa

Gail Landry

Harriet K. Lane

Jim & Peggy Lang

Joan Langbord & George Hollingworth

Iris Leonard

Judith Levine

Margaret Levinson

Marlene & Hal Liberman

Cynthia Lichtenstein

Andrea Lieberman

Tina & Rick Lieberman

John F. Lindsey

James Long & Barbara Fischer Long

George B. Ludlow

Francine Luque

Dorothy L. Lutter

Meg Maguire

Maria Mandler

Richard March

Donald Markstein

Carolou & Lou Marquet

Dr. Albert & Marita Marsh

Mary Lee Martens & Charleen Alper

Anita Martin

Jean Martin

Frank & Katherine Martucci

Jacqueline Massari

Peter & Teresa Masterson

Joan Mathews

Carol Mathias

Cornelia Matson

Donna Maytham

Helen McBean

Leanne McKaig

Jennifer Meinert

Carla & Michael Miller

Peter Miller & Martha Harrison

Sandra Miranda

Jean A. Mitchell

Linda & Bill Mitchell

Mary Mitchel

Raymond & Maralyn Morrissey

Phyllis Myers

Eric & Malfalda Neikrug

Susan Newsome

Marilyn Nordby

Rosemary Oberndorf

Mercedita OConnor

Catherine Olsen

Conrad & Lenée Owens

Jeannette Paladino

Helen Panoyan

Cynthia & Barry Pearlman Virginia & Stuart Peltz

Colette Penn Susan Peterson

Sharon Petty Bernard & Elaine Pfeifer

Julie Planck & Charles Albers

Richard Prescott & DJ Arnold

Rose Marie Proietti

Barbara Quinn

Sara Rachon

Jimmye Reeves

Rebecca Reilly

Rosemary Reinhardt & David Welle

Natasha Reisner

Pam Reiter

Cheryl Richards

Sandra & Bill Ripberger

Audrey Robbins & Harry Leopold

Vancene Robenalt

Anne Roberts

Sara Curtis Robinson

Ellen Roderick

Elinor Rogosin

Terry & Susan Romine

Sally Ross

Nancy & Jack Rozance

Francis Russo

Marcia & Sidney Rutberg

Beverly Ryan

Sharon & Paul Saatsoglou

Linda Salomon

Phyllis Schaen

Norma Schatz

Barbara Schott Eda T. Scott

Barbara Segal

Carol & Erwin Segal

John & Carole Segal

Tracy Seider

Micki Sellman

Susan & Timothy Sheehan

Vielka Sheppard

Jane Sheridan

Beverly & Jim Smith

Maria Smith

Nancy Smith & Fred Frankel

Zerbe Sodervick & Jane Reed

Irene Stankevics

Gordon Stanley Barbara Staton

Hillary Steele

Patricia Steftel

Maureen & Thomas Steinger

Judilee Sterne

Louise Stevens

Susan Strahs

Lois Stulberg Ann Sundeen

Peggy Sweeney Melliss Swenson

Virginia & Dee Tashian

Joan Tatum

Marcia Jean Taub & Peter Swain

John Teryek

Marion Tillack

Carol Tillotson

Janet Tolbert

Janet Traub

Marianne Trulson

Judith Turrentine

Sallie Carter Tyler

Susan Valentine

Karen Vereb

Joseph & Jean Volpe

Carol Von Allmen

Emily Walsh

Lauren Ann Walsh

Tom & Gwen Watson

Judith Waxberg

Myrna & Jeremy Whatmough

Kim Wheeler

Laurie Wiesemann

Robert Wilk Edie Winston Elizabeth Wolfe

David Wood

Pauline Wood & Wesley Spencer Vivian Zaffulo Dr. Elaine Zwelling

Doctors Circle

These physicians have agreed to see our dancers immediately and treat them at a substantially reduced fee or no fee at all. To show your appreciation, please consider using their services when you may have the need.

ACUPUNCTURE:

Filipp A. Gadar, A.P, D.O.M

Gadar Oriental Medicine 3205 Southgate Circle, Suite 18 Sarasota, FL 34239 941.735.6786

CHIROPRACTIC:

Dr. Jared A. Winters

Florida Chiropractic & Rehabilitation Clinics 1918 Robinhood Street Sarasota, FL 34231 941.955.3272

Dr. Eric Larson

Larson Natural Health Center 3560 S Tuttle Avenue Sarasota, FL 34239 941.363.6744

DENTAL:

Dr. Peter Masterson

Lakewood Ranch Dental 6270 Lake Osprey Drive Sarasota, FL 34240 941.907.8300

DERMATOLOGY:

Dr. Elizabeth Callahan

SkinSmart Dermatology 5911 N Honore Avenue, Suite 210 Sarasota, FL 34243 941.308.7546

Dr. Erin Long

Intercoastal Medical Group 3333 Cattlemen Road, Suite 106 Sarasota, FL 34232 941.379.1799

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES:

Partners Imaging Center of Sarasota

1250 S Tamiami Trail, Suite 103 Sarasota, FL 34239 941.951.2100

VISION CARE:

Dr. Susan M. Sloan 500 S Orange Avenue Sarasota, FL 34236 941.365.4060

INTERNAL MEDICINE:

Dr. Bart Price

1250 S Tamiami Trail, Suite 301 Sarasota, FL 34239 941.365.7771

ORTHOPAEDICS:

David A. Sugar, MD Sugar Orthopaedics 1630 S Tuttle Ave Sarasota, FL 34239 941.556.6900

PHYSICAL THERAPY:

Rick Haupt Physical Therapy Inc. 2620 S Tamiami Trail Sarasota, FL 34239 941.955.1239

PODIATRY:

Dr. Robert F. Herbold 4717 Swift Road Sarasota, FL 34231 941.929.1234

Dr. Paul Yungst 2000 Webber St, Suite 110 Sarasota, FL 34239 941.917.6232

Advertisers Index

1st Source Bank

Beneva Weddings & Events

BMO Wealth Management

Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation Community Foundation of Sarasota

Concierge Medical Services

Cumberland Advisors

Designing Women Boutique

DEX Imaging

Eurotech Cabinetry, Inc.

Fifth Third Bank

Florida Chiropractic & Rehabilitation Clinics

Freed of London

Goldman, Babboni, Fernandez, Murphy, & Walsh

Gulf Coast Community Foundation

LifeWorx

Mariner Wealth Advisors

Mauldin & Jenkins, LLC

Michael’s on East

Morgan Stanley, Susan T. Wilson

Morton’s Gourmet Market

Neuro Challenge Foundation, Inc.

New York Dancewear Company

Observer Media Group

Peter G. Laughlin Group

Plymouth Harbor

Rugs as Art

Sarasota Art Museum

Sarasota Bay Club

Sarasota Concert Association

Sarasota Magazine

Scene Magazine

Selva Grill

SNN

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Southeastern Guide Dogs

The Exchange

The Jewish Federation

The Sarasota Opera

The Sarasota Orchestra

Tidewell Foundation

Venice City Lifestyle

WEDU

White Oaks Investment Management

Williams Parker Attorneys at Law

WUSF/WSMR

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