The Sarasota Ballet's 2023 – 2024 Season Program Book

2023 – 2024 SEASON

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PROGRAM 1 PROGRESSION IN REP October 20 – 22, 2023 FSU Center for the Performing Arts Sir Frederick Ashton’s Varii Capricci Gemma Bond’s Panoramic Score (World Premiere) Johan Kobborg's Salute

PROGRAM 2 CONFLICTED BEAUTY November 17 - 18, 2023 Sarasota Opera House Edwaard Liang’s The Art of War (Company Premiere) Sir Frederick Ashton’s Dante Sonata Paul Taylor’s Company B

PROGRAM 3 MOMENTS OF MEANING December 15 - 16, 2023 Sarasota Opera House

Accompanied by Sarasota Orchestra

George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room

The Sarasota Ballet

2023 – 2024 SEASON 4

PROGRAM 4 GRAZIANO CELEBRATED January 26 - 29, 2024 FSU Center for the Performing Arts Ricardo Graziano’s Sonatina Ricardo Graziano World Premiere Ricardo Graziano’s In a State of Weightlessness

PROGRAM 5 BALLET HISPÁNICO March 8 - 11, 2024 FSU Center for the Performing Arts The Sarasota Ballet Presents Ballet Hispánico

PROGRAM 6 PORTRAITS OF EXPRESSION April 5 - 6, 2024 Sarasota Opera House

Accompanied by Sarasota Orchestra

George Balanchine’s Emeralds Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Las Hermanas George Balanchine’s Who Cares?

PROGRAM 7 INSPIRATIONS April 26 - 27, 2024 Sarasota Opera House Accompanied by Live Music

Christopher Wheeldon’s The American Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces (Company Premiere) Sir Frederick Ashton’s Sinfonietta 5

TABLE OF

CONTENTS Letters from Leadership and Company Overview

Leadership Letters The Sarasota Ballet’s Repertoire Board of Trustees Advisory Council History of The Sarasota Ballet The Facts The Sarasota Ballet Gala London Tour

9 - 17 18 - 19 20 - 21 22 24 - 25 26 - 27 28 - 29 30 - 31

Season Program Notes Program 1 - Progression in Rep Program 2 - Conflicted Beauty Program 3 - Moments of Meaning Program 4 - Graziano Celebrated Program 5 - Ballet Hispánico Program 6 - Portraits of Expression Program 7 - Inspirations The Fred Step Choreographers, Choreographic Foundations and Trusts

33 - 39 41 - 47 49 - 53 55 - 59 60 - 61 63 - 69 71 - 77 78 - 82 83

Biographies and Dancers

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Biography of Iain Webb Biography of Joseph Volpe Biography of Margaret Barbieri Artistic Staff Principals Soloists Coryphée Corps de Ballet Apprentices Studio Company

85 87 89 90 - 91 92 - 97 98 - 99 100 - 101 102 - 105 106 108

Patrons, Institutions and Staff Patron Listings In Memoriam Foundations and Public Support Corporate Support Media Sponsors The Sarasota Ballet Today The Martucci Legacy Society The Endowment Fund Patron Season Experiences Relevé Society Company Staff

110 - 137 139 140 -142 143 - 145 146 148 150 - 151 153 154 156 - 157 161 - 163

Education, Community Engagement, and The Friends Education Staff

The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory The Sarasota Ballet School Summer Intensive Adult Program Community Engagement The Friends of The Sarasota Ballet Doctors Circle Advertisers Index

164 - 165 166 - 167 168 - 169 170 173 174 - 179 180 - 183 184 186 7

The performance continues at selva SELVA PROUDLY SUPPORTS THE SARASOTA BALLET.

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DIRECTOR

IAIN WEBB

O

n behalf of the entire Sarasota Ballet family, I welcome you to our 2023 – 2024 Season and another year of world class artistry and historic firsts.

Our first World Premiere of the Season will be a new and inspiring work from acclaimed Choreographer, Gemma Bond, who we are thrilled to continue building an artistic partnership with. A long time in the works collaboration, I am excited to finally bring Choreographer Edwaard Liang’s work to the Sarasota stage with the Company Premiere of his powerful and symbolic The Art of War. Celebrating ten years of Ricardo Graziano as Resident Choreographer for the Company, Program Four showcases his newest World Premiere alongside two works from his growing choreographic repertoire. Yet another first, The Sarasota Ballet is proud to partner with Jessica Lang as our newly announced Artist in Residence. Program Seven will feature the Company Premiere of her dynamic ballet, Lyric Pieces.

Honoring the classics that helped build our Company, The Sarasota Ballet will continue to pay homage to the iconic masters of choreography this Season. Renowned as the ‘Father’ of Ballet in America, George Balanchine is showcased through Theme and Variations, Who Cares?, and Emeralds. Mentor and a significant source of inspiration to myself and our repertoire, Sir Frederick Ashton, comes to life with humor in Varii Capricci, drama in Dante Sonata, and swiftness in Sinfonietta. And we continue to bring back beloved works this Season with Johan Kobborg’s Salute, Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Las Hermanas, Paul Taylor ‘s Company B, Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, and Christopher Wheeldon’s The American.

Going into my seventeenth Season as Director, and with a recently signed ten year contract extension, I am privileged to be able to continue to advance the future of The Sarasota Ballet in our community and beyond. A significant step in that development is the unparalleled honor we have to be traveling internationally to London for the first time in June of 2024 at the invitation of The Royal Ballet’s Director Kevin O’Hare, where the Company will be performing in the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House to launch the five-year Ashton Worldwide Festival. We hope you will join us for this historic tour.

It is always a pleasure to share with you our passion and love for the art form each and every Season, and I look forward to us celebrating together this breathtaking art form for at least another ten years!

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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Joseph Volpe

I

t is with a great sense of pride that I extend a warm welcome to you as we embark on a new Season. As I look back thus far on my seven-year tenure as Executive Director, it is beyond evident that our organization has experienced a significant amount of growth and transformation. We have not only survived challenging times, but we have emerged stronger and more resilient. This growth would not have been possible without the brilliant vision of Directors, Iain Webb and Margaret Barbieri; our extremely dedicated dancers and staff; our Board of Trustees; and of course, you, our loyal audience and supporters.

This Season, we continue to uphold our commitment to excellence, both onstage and in the community.

The range of repertoire in this Season’s lineup is truly remarkable and demonstrates our dancers’ artistry and versatility. A prime example of this is Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. A personal favorite of mine, the work is set to a stunning score by renowned composer and my longtime friend and colleague, Phillip Glass. The strength, resilience, determination, and artistry required by our dancers in order to perform this iconic Tharp work is a perfect representation of what we do here at The Sarasota Ballet day in and day out to provide audiences, students, and members of our community access to this extraordinary art form.

In the vein of education, The Sarasota Ballet School’s beloved production of The Nutcracker returns this Season, engaging audiences of all ages. The production, with impressive sets and costumes created by acclaimed designer Peter Farmer, will remain a Sarasota Ballet tradition for years to come. Offstage, our Education and Community Engagement departments continue to work diligently in the Greater Sarasota and Manatee community to ensure arts accessibility for all. I am particularly proud of the way Dance – The Next Generation, our program for under-served youth, has grown and flourished under the new leadership of Community Engagement Program Director, Doricha Sales.

Once again, I thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to experiencing The Sarasota Ballet’s 2023 - 2024 Season with you both onstage and in the community.

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ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Margaret Barbieri

W

elcome back to another Season of The Sarasota Ballet. Our entire artistic team is excited to welcome you back in the theater again with seven unique and enthralling programs.

Bringing works to our stages represents an intricate process and a delicate balance. There are so many elements that go into a production, from costumes, sets, and music to incredibly precise choreography that is passed down to our dancers through the meticulous endeavors of the world class Répétiteurs that work with us. This Season, we are fortunate to work closely with The George Balanchine Trust and their Répétiteurs, Philip Neal and Sandra Jennings - who will help us carefully craft our performances of Mr. B’s stunning ballets. For Twyla Tharp’s, In The Upper Room, the company is thrilled to work directly with Répétiteur Shelley Washington who worked closely with Tharp during her career, and Kaitlyn Gilliland - a former New York City Ballet and Twyla Tharp dancer, who assists Shelley on this iconic work. We are so grateful for these relationships, as they help us honor and preserve the legacy of the artists that created some of the most beloved works in our repertoire. For myself, as I stage works this Season by Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, and Christopher Wheeldon, I focus on the unique challenge of allowing our dancers to input themselves and their artistry into the roles I coach them in while ensuring that the intent and meaning that the choreographers and original cast imbued into the steps and musicality of the ballets.

As always, I am overjoyed to welcome back all our wonderful dancers this Season, and excited to work with new Company members who joined us this August, and to help celebrate the continued growth of the talent that brings such depth to our performances. I continue to be amazed by the grace and athleticism of our dancers. They create living, breathing art for our audiences with every step they take onto the stage. We are so grateful for our dancers, and we know our audiences are as well.

We also appreciate enormously you, our audiences and loyal fans, and we hope to continue to delight and inspire you this Season.

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

- Margie Barancik

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BOARD CHAIR

Sandra Defeo

A

s I begin my first term as Chair of the Board of The Sarasota Ballet, I am astounded by what this Company has achieved over the past few years and so excited about the possibilities for our future.

Under the leadership of Director Iain Webb, Executive Director Joe Volpe, and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri, The Sarasota Ballet has earned critical acclaim from throughout our Community, across the United States, and from the international ballet world.

The incredible accomplishments of this organization could not have been possible without the steadfast leadership and support of our Board of Trustees and the members of our Advisory Council. They, alongside our loyal patrons, community-minded corporate sponsors, generous foundations, and devoted audience, have developed a firm financial footing for The Sarasota Ballet that allows us to set our sights on the horizon for new opportunities to fulfill our mission to enrich lives, captivate emotions, and strengthen the community through the art of dance. I also want to thank and recognize The Friends of Sarasota Ballet who volunteer their time and talents to support our Company, like our dancers and staff, their passion for The Sarasota Ballet is on display daily.

Many of you will know this already, but The Sarasota Ballet makes an impact not just through the beauty we see on stage. Offstage our Education programs attract diverse groups of students - from young children exploring dance at age 3 to pre-professional dancers from around the world who are looking for the highest level of training to help them reach their ambitions. Our many Community Engagement Programs offer different ways for all members of society to experience dance. The cornerstone of all this is Dance - The Next Generation (DNG), which offers children from schools in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte Counties a tuition free, 10-year dance program that helps them gain confidence and personal growth through the power and discipline of dance. Again, we are so thankful to all that help make programs like DNG possible.

With Iain at the helm, we will continue to grow as we reach for higher and greater artistic achievements.

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FOUNDER & CHAIR EMERITA

Jean Weidner Goldstien

A

s the curtain rises on this new Season, I am filled with pride and excitement. Over the years, our Ballet Company has grown, evolved, and enchanted our community through the art of dance. Thanks to our 2020 - 2021 Digital Season, a multitude of national tours, and numerous national and international reviews, The Sarasota Ballet’s reputation has been carried across the United States and beyond. The 2023 - 2024 Season brings new opportunities for growth. Directors Iain and Margaret have selected a diverse range of repertoire that will captivate and uplift audiences, while at the same time challenge our dancers.

From beloved ballet classics such as Balanchine’s Emeralds to cutting edge World Premieres like Gemma Bond’s Panoramic Score, there is truly something for everyone to fall in love with this Season.

Perhaps the most thrilling news of all is the Company’s first-ever international tour, which will take place in June of 2024 at London’s Royal Opera House. This Tour was beyond even a distant dream when I founded The Sarasota Ballet over 30 years ago, and now to see this Company perform on one of the world’s greatest and most beloved stages is simply incredible. During their week-long residency in London, our dancers will represent Sarasota as they open a multi-year festival dedicated to Sir Frederick Ashton. His choreography has been a beacon for The Sarasota Ballet, and along with Iain and Margaret’s commitment to artistic excellence, has placed us firmly on the map. It is truly astonishing to be asked by an institution like The Royal Ballet to perform in their theater and to play such an important role in celebrating their Founding Choreographer. It is a testament to how fortunate we all are to have this Company in our community.

I must say though, that even with the beauty on stage we have, this monumental achievement would not have been possible without the profound leadership of Executive Director, Joseph Volpe. I continue to be inspired by the way he guides our Company to new heights, working hand in hand with Iain and Margaret to bring their vision to life.

Of course, none of this, none of the achievements we see on and off the stage, would be even remotely possible without the support, generosity, and love that our patrons provide. For that, and for everything you do for The Sarasota Ballet, I offer you my deepest and most sincere thanks.

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The Sarasota Ballet’s

Repertoire 2007 - 2023

SIR FREDERICK ASHTON

Apparitions, Birthday Offering, La Chatte métamorphosée en femme, Dante Sonata, The Dream, Enigma Variations, Explosionspolka, 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, Diamonds, Divertimento No. 15, Donizetti Variations, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Jewels, Prodigal Son, Rubies, Serenade, Stars and Stripes, Tarantella, Theme and Variations, ValseFantaisie, Western Symphony, Who Cares?

RICKI BERTONI

Hip 2 Be Square, Ragtop

SIR DAVID BINTLEY

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

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

Hommage à Chopin

GEORGE BIRKADZE

Dear Life...

GEMMA BOND

Appalachian Spring

SIR MATTHEW BOURNE

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, 2024 World Premiere

Farandole

Excursions, Last Solo, Panordamic Score Boutique, The Infernal Galop

AUGUST BOURNONVILLE

Flower Festival in Genzano Pas de Deux, From Siberia to Moscow (The Jockey Dance), The Kermesse in Bruges (Act I Pas de Deux), William Tell Pas de Deux

ARCADIAN BROAD

Frequency Hurtz, Passing By

CHRISTOPHER BRUCE

Sergeant Early’s Dream

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JAMES BUCKLEY

Anne Frank

MARCELO GOMES MARTHA GRAHAM RICARDO GRAZIANO

ALEX HARRISON

The Blue Hour

MATTHEW HART

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

TWYLA THARP

In The Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs

KATE HONEA

DAVID TLAIYE

Baroque and Blues, Gitana Galop, Headlines, Percolator

RICHARD HOUSE

Living Ghosts, Lost in a Dream

JOHAN KOBBORG

Xibalba

RENATO PARONI

Rococo Variations

ANNA PAVLOVA

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

The Dragonfly Solo

JESSICA LANG

Washington Square

JOE LAYTON

La Bayadere (Bronze Idol, Act II - Pas de Trois, Pas de Deux), Le Corsaire (Pas de Trois), Diana and Actaeon (Pas de Deux), Don Quixote (Pas de Deux), Harlequinade (Solo), Paquita, The Sleeping Beauty (Act III - Pas de Deux, Blue Bird Pas de Deux), Swan Lake (Act II - Pas de Deux, Act III - Black Swan Pas de Deux)

Lyric Pieces, Shades of Spring The Grand Tour

LOGAN LEARNED

Nebulous, Scene de Ballet

SIR KENNETH MACMILLAN

Concerto, Danses Concertantes, Elite Syncopations, Las Hermanas, The Four Seasons (Summer Pas de Deux)

EMELIA PERKINS MARIUS PETIPA

YURI POSSOKHOV

OCTAVIO MARTIN

Firebird

MARK MORRIS

Anna Karenina, Vespri

VASLAV NIJINSKY

The Concert, Fancy Free, In the Night

On The Outside, Orpheus and Eurydice The Letter V

L’Après-midi d’un faune - The Afternoon of a Faun

ROBERT NORTH

Troy Game

RUDOLF NUREYEV

Raymonda Act III

ANDRÉ PROKOVSKY JEROME ROBBINS

GALINA SAMSOVA

Paquita [production]

PETER SCHAUFUSS

La Sylphide (Pas de Deux) [production]

PAUL TAYLOR

Airs, Brandenburgs, Company B

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 VOGT

Exurgency

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, There Where She Loved

SIR PETER WRIGHT

Giselle [production], The Mirror Walkers, The Sleeping Beauty (Pas de Quatre), Summertide

KELLY YANKLE

Ne Me Quitte Pas

ROSTISLAV ZAHKAROV

Gopak

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Board of Trustees SANDRA DEFEO

PETER B. MILLER

Board Chair

Board Vice Chair

PAT KENNY

JONATHAN STRICKLAND COLEMAN

Treasurer

Secretary

RICHARD S. JOHNSON Immediate Past Chair

Jean Weidner Goldstein

Founder and Chair Emerita

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Sydney Goldstein Chair Emerita

Mark Famiglio Honorary Trustee

Dr. Bart Price Honorary Trustee

Isabel Anchin Becker

Ginger Cannon Bailey

William E. Chapman, II Advisory Council Chair

Lynda Doery

Bill Farber

Patricia A. Golemme

Julie A. Harris

JoAnn Heffernan Heisen

Phil Lombardo

Frank Martucci

Rosemary Oberndorf

Friends of The Sarasota Ballet President

Education Committee Chair

Mercedita OConnor

Maureen Steiner Governance Committee Chair

Audrey Robbins

Development Committee Chair

Jean Weiller

Jan Sirota

Hillary Steele

David Welle

Charles Wilson

Audit Committee Chair and Relevé Liaison

Chair Emerita

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Advisory Council

Jan Farber

Advisory Council Vice Chair

Frances D. Fergusson

Maryann Armour

Marnie Grossman

Laura A. Feder

Friends of The Sarasota Ballet Liaison

Dr. Amy L. Harding

Charles Huisking

Robin KleinStrauss

Peter E. Kretzmer

Karen Lichtig

Tina Lieberman

Richard March

Joan Mathews

Donna Maytham

Linda Mitchell

Dr. Joel Morganroth

Gini Peltz

Kimberley Anne Pelyk

Marilynn Petrillo

Rose Marie Proietti

Melba Ramirez

Richard Segall

Micki Sellman

Lois Stulberg

Melliss Kenworthy Swenson

Marcia Jean Taub

Clara Reynardus de Villanueva

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1987 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.

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2007 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.

History of The Sarasota Ballet

Present

2016 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 seven years, Volpe has expanded the organizational structure of The Sarasota Ballet and strengthened the Company’s future.

Alongside his wife Margaret Barbieri, Assistant Director and former principal of The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Webb has introduced 183 ballets and divertissements through the 2023 - 2024 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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Artistry & Audience

183

Ballets and Divertissements under Webb through 2023 - 2024 Season

61

Different Choreographers

55

2,000

World Premieres

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Community Performance Audience Members

123

Dance - The Next Generation Students

110 50 15

Community Partners

Silver Swans ® Members

Joyful Movement through Parkinson’s Students

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Community

American Company and American Premieres

45 Dancers

The Facts 18,332 Audience Members Yearly

100+

10

National and International Reviews

National Tours

199 175

Summer Intensive Students

The Sarasota Ballet School Students

11

45

Margaret Barbieri Conservatory Students

Studio Company Members

Education

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The Sarasota Ballet Gala

SUPPORTING THE 2024 -2025 SEASON

Save the Date | Sunday, April 28, 2024 For more information, please contact Rachael Fisk at rfisk@sarasotaballet.org | 941.225.6519 28

HONORING BUD AND BETTY SHAPIRO SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 2024 The Sarasota Ballet cordially invites you to share in the experience of what is sure to be an unforgettable London-themed evening, in celebration of The Sarasota Ballet’s premiere international tour. Funds of The London Calling Gala will support the mission and operations of The Sarasota Ballet for the 2024 - 2025 Season.

Exclusive Performance | Sarasota Opera House Dinner and Dancing | Circus Arts Conservatory

PATRON TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE BEGINNING AT $1,000 ($500 Tax-Deductible) Become a Patron of The Sarasota Ballet’s London Calling Gala by Friday, December 22, 2023 to receive recognition on the Gala invitation, performance program, and in media publications.

For more information, please contact Rachael Fisk at 941.225.6519 | rfisk@sarasotaballet.org

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Presents

Ashton Celebrated JUNE 4 - 9, 2024 | ROYAL OPERA HOUSE, LONDON UK At the invitation of The Royal Ballet’s Director Kevin O’Hare, The Sarasota Ballet will travel for their first international tour to London, performing in the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House. The Sarasota Ballet will perform works by the legendary choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton over seven performances, and will feature several works that have not been seen in the UK for over 30 years. These performances will also act as the launch of a five-year Festival named Ashton Worldwide honoring Sir Frederick Ashton.

London Sponsors The Sarasota Ballet would like to thank and recognize the following Foundations for their vital support of The Sarasota Ballet’s Touring Fund and the London 2024 International Tour.

JEAN ALLENBY GOLDSTEIN TOURING FUND 30

PHILIP AND JANICE LEVIN FOUNDATION

RICK MATHER DAVID SCRASE FOUNDATION

William A. Farber, Trustee

Richard Jarman, Chairman

PROGRAM 1 - JUNE 4, 5, 8

Valses nobles et sentimentales Dante Sonata Sinfonietta

GALA PERFORMANCE - JUNE 8

Valses nobles et sentimentales Varii Capricci Façade

PROGRAM 2 - JUNE 6, 7, 9

Valses nobles et sentimentales Ashton Divertissements Façade

Play a Principal Role in London!

This is a landmark opportunity for our Company and for Sarasota to showcase our vibrant performing arts. Tours, such as this, are only made possible through the generosity of our donors, sponsors, and foundation partners.

We hope you will consider a sponsorship or gift to support our dancers on their first-ever international tour. Sponsors receive special recognition in London and Sarasota and receive access to special events and performances.

For more information, please contact: Lauren Stroman, CFRE | Development Director lstroman@sarasotaballet.org | 941.225.6510

Scan to make your gift today!

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Proud Supporter of Sarasota Ballet

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PROGRESSION IN R EP

Program 1 | October 20 – 22, 2023 FSU Center for the Performing Arts Sir Frederick Ashton’s Varii Capricci Gemma Bond Panoramic Score (World Premiere) Johan Kobborg’s Salute

OCT 20 7:30 PM

OCT 21 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM OCT 22 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM

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Program 1 | Progression in Rep | October 20 - 22, 2023 | FSU Center

Varii Capricci

Choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton Music by Sir William Walton Costume Design after Ossie Clark Revival Staged by Grant Coyle

F

or the 1983 Britain Salutes New York Festival, the Metropolitan Opera House insisted that the planned Royal Ballet season feature a new work by Sir Frederick Ashton. A ballet that the choreographer had been working on to cheer up his old friend, composer Sir William Walton, was swiftly completed to premiere in New York. The original performances included a lavish backdrop of primitivist trees and sunlit swimming pool by esteemed artist David Hockney, inspired by the tropical garden at Walton’s home on the island of Ischia. Original costume designs were by Ossie Clark. Though Clark’s costumes evoke the era of Travolta, the ballet is a stylish caprice in the manner of Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Biches and Le Train Bleu; Ashton acknowledging the influence Nijinska had on his own career throughout his lifetime.

The ballet amusingly subverted stateside expectations of the refined, reticent English classicism that Ashton and The Royal Ballet represented. A strutting, sashaying gigolo in satin suit, shades, and quiff, Lo Straniero, makes love to La Capricciosa, the elegant hostess of a poolside party at her villa, while her guests, Varii Amici, enjoy themselves. Framed by the music’s celebratory opening allegro, hectically buzzing final presto, and the two short lento movements, the ballet’s heart is the alla Cubana pas de deux, all languorous sensuality. New York audiences relished seeing princely Anthony Dowell as a poolside gigolo to Antoinette Sibley’s Capricciosa, embodying the fizz of sexual frivolity that punctuates the work. Critic Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times observed: “It is that rare ballet bird – a self-parody and an honorable parody of The Royal Ballet’s own traditions”.

Varii Capricci never truly entered the company’s repertoire receiving its only Covent Garden performance in July of 1983.

In January 2019, The Sarasota Ballet, together with répétiteur and notator Grant Coyle, revived the ballet with projection and lighting inspired by Hockney’s backdrop, and redesigned corps costumes that better complimented the original principal couple’s designs. Through collaboration with conductor Barry Wordsworth, John Beadle, and The Royal Ballet Sinfonia, the Company commissioned the first and only recording of Walton’s revised fifth movement.

Restaged by Margaret Barbieri

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 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, and under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar (1968), 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. Tiggy-Winkle.

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.

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Program 1 | Progression in Rep | October 20 - 22, 2023 | FSU Center

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 1926, with poems by Edith Sitwell and Walton’s score, from which he arranged the two delightful suites for orchestra. In 1931, Ashton borrowed some of this music for his ever-popular ballet.

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.

Ossie Clark

COSTUME DESIGNER

The British fashion designer Raymond “Ossie” Clark was a golden boy of London’s Swinging Sixties. Born 1942 in Warrington, Lancashire during an air raid, he showed precocious talent at an early age. At 16, Ossie attended Manchester’s Regional College of Art, where he met his future wife Celia Birtwell and lifelong friend David Hockney. Moving to London to study at The Royal College of Art, his 1965 degree show was a triumph, with major press coverage and commissions following. Soon after Ossie became the darling of the London, Paris, and New York jet-set, mixing with The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful, and Liza Minnelli. In 1969 he married Celia Birtwell and they had two sons; however by the late 1970s, his marriage began to fall apart. After converting to Buddhism, he made a 1990s comeback, but in 1996, at the age of 54, Ossie was stabbed to death in his London flat by a former male lover and fellow designer.

First Performed by The Royal Ballet April 19, 1983 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet January 25, 2019

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Program 1 | Progression in Rep | October 20 - 22, 2023 | FSU Center

Panoramic Score World Premiere

“I

didn’t want to make a human piece, where the ballet is about relationships. I wanted to make a piece about the architecture of the body.” With Gemma Bond’s second full company work for The Sarasota Ballet, the choreographer sets herself a puzzle to solve: how do you create a feeling without inserting human emotion into a piece of dance?

The music of Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera became the tool Bond used to exhibit her point of view. Inspired by the landscape of his homeland with sweeping grasslands, itinerant gauchos, and their horses, Ginastera’s String Quartet no. 1 offered Bond an inherent structure to grow from. Images of Argentina’s terrain became stimuli for the tone of movement so that the dances we witness become a distillation of the environment Bond explores. Lauren Starobin’s costumes subtly project these ideas: a soft hip on a bodice evokes the feeling of a rolling hillside, and an organic palette supports a harmony of concepts.

Within the ballet, covert meaning quietly flows, making physical the idea that underneath the beauty of a landscape - or an image - is a whole unspoken history. As with the Surrealist paintings of the time Ginastera was composing, there is a strange beauty in the unexpected, uncanny or disregarded.

Bond’s ambition for her world premiere was to display the athleticism of The Sarasota Ballet, but this piece also demonstrates her understanding that ballet is architectural.

Proportion, rhythm, and shape - features of satisfying architecture and visual art - are just as foundational to ballet as the ability to move well. Bond lets structure be a conduit for beauty, allowing the audience to enjoy the immanent craft of her work. In this way, we understand critic Marina Harss’ description of Bond’s choreography as “expansive, lyrical, handsomely coordinated, with a focus on the beauty of the line of the body”.

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Choreography by Gemma Bond Music by Alberto Ginastera Costume Design by Lauren Starobin Lighting Design by Ethan Vail

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.

Program 1 | Progression in Rep | October 20 - 22, 2023 | FSU Center

Alberto Ginastera COMPOSER

Born in Buenos Aires to a Catalan father and Italian mother in 1916, Alberto Ginastera entered the prestigious Williams Conservatory at age 12. Whilst training, Ginastera heard Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, an event that galvanized his approach to music. Its influence can be heard in Ginastera’s first ballet score, Panambí, a composition that reveals Ginastera’s preoccupation with the indigenous traditions of his homeland. In these formative years, hearing Bartók’s Allegro barbaro, with its allusions to that composer’s Magyar roots, focused Ginastera’s aim to create a national concert music for Argentina.

The impact of two Americans on Ginastera’s musical life would be pivotal. Lincoln Kirstein, on tour in South America with his American Ballet Caravan, commissioned the young Ginastera to create a ballet, Estancia, with sounds inspired by the heroic individualism of the gaucho against the harsh but beautiful terrain of central Argentina. At this time, Ginastera was scouted

by American composer Aaron Copland under the aegis of the Committee for Inter-American Artistic and Intellectual Relations.

Ginastera received a Guggenheim Fellowship to come to the USA, where he studied with Copland and absorbed the work of Schoenberg. This experience gave a tougher, more modernistic sound to Ginastera’s work, alongside a more ambiguous tonality.

Typical of this period is Ginastera’s String Quartet no. 1, where native elements are subsumed beneath a taut, propulsive energy.

Ethan Vail

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Credits include – The Sarasota Ballet: La Sylphide, Frequency Hurtz, Living Ghosts, The Pilgrimage; Florida Studio Theatre: Black Pearl Sings, What the Constitution Means to Me; Urbanite Theatre: The Burdens, At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen; Asolo Repertory Theatre: Grand Horizons, Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, Camelot; The Players Centre for the Performing Arts (Sarasota, FL): Head Over Heels, All Shook Up; Millbrook Playhouse (Mill Hall, PA): 65 Productions including the regional premiere of Fun Home. He was the recipient of the 2013 USITT YD&T Award, sponsored by Barbizon Lighting Company, for A Midsummer Night’s Dream that he designed at Purdue University. He is also the Production Manager and Resident Lighting Designer for The Sarasota Ballet.

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 second work with The Sarasota Ballet.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet October 20, 2023

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Program 1 | Progression in Rep | October 20 - 22, 2023 | FSU Center

Salute T

he brutality of war doesn’t usually give us pause for pleasure, but Johan Kobborg’s Salute takes something of the gallantry and honor we associate with warfare in bygone times to create a good-humored ballet that is a lighthearted vehicle to display the dancers expressive abilities and comic timing.

Set to the irresistible sway of Hans Christian Lumbye’s waltzes and polkas, links to the nineteenth century continue in how Kobborg uses his Danish heritage as a departure point for Salute, taking elements of Bournonville style and restating them anew for contemporary audiences. A loose story illustrates the relationship between soldiers and the women they leave behind before going off to war; danced vignettes imbued with the blithe innocence of youth feature a comically blustering general, and a recruit who isn’t exactly what they seem. Through the wellmannered comedy, Salute presents people coming together in the face of uncertain times ahead. Created in 2010 for North Carolina School of the Arts, Salute has entered the repertoire of the Royal Danish Ballet and Royal New Zealand Ballet.

Choreography by Johan Kobborg Music by Hans Christian Lumbye Costume Design by Natalia Stewart

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 June 5, 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 work 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 August 26, 2019 to an audience of over ten thousand. Today, Kobborg continues to choreograph and stage works for ballet companies all around the world.

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Program 1 | Progression in Rep | October 20 - 22, 2023 | FSU Center

Hans Christian Lumbye COMPOSER

Born in 1810, Hans Christian Lumbye grew up in Denmark having violin and trumpet lessons from a young age. His first musical appointment came at age 14 in a military band. In 1829, Lumbye joined the Horse Guards of the Royal Danish army whilst continuing his musical studies. It was hearing a Viennese orchestra playing the music of Johann Strauss Sr. that inspired Lumbye to seriously compose music, launching a career that saw him garner attention for his light compositions in the popular style of the day: waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and galops. This preoccupation earned him the affectionate title: ‘Strauss of the North’. Lumbye’s 29-year tenure as music director and composer at the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen’s famous pleasure park, secured his position within Danish high society.

The composer died in 1874, leaving behind an oeuvre of witty compositions that faithfully recreated unexpected sounds in the concert hall, like his Champagne Galop, or another galop that featured the sound of a laboring steam train. Lumbye was father to two musical sons and his grandson, Georg Høeberg became an important conductor at the Royal Danish Theatre.

First Performed by North Carolina School of the Arts May 6, 2010 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet January 27, 2012

Natalia Stewart

COSTUME DESIGNER

Born in Russia to a theatrical family, Stewart started her career as a classical ballet dancer, graduating from Moscow’s Bolshoi Academy to perform as a dancer with the Bolshoi Theatre and Moscow City Ballet.

Upon her retirement from dancing, Stewart moved to London and received her BA in Theatre Design after completing her studies at the London College of Fashion. Stewart began work as a wardrobe mistress for many West End productions including Grease, Sideman, and Napoleon. Parallel to this work, Stewart joined the Royal Opera House as a costume supervisor in 2001.

This invaluable experience enabled Stewart to work alongside illustrious designers including Yolanda Sonnabend and Peter Farmer bringing their artistic visions to life on stage, in addition to assisting with the preservation of heritage classics within The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera’s repertoires.

2011 saw the beginning of a fruitful artistic collaboration with Danish dancer Johan Kobborg during his tenure as artistic director of the National Romanian Ballet, where Stewart worked as designer for Kobborg’s productions including La Sylphide, Salute, and Les Lutins for the Royal Danish Ballet, Kobborg’s and Ethan Steifel’s production of Giselle for Royal New Zealand Ballet, and a production of Balanchine’s Theme & Variations. Stewart’s rich experience both on and behind the stage uniquely position her as a designer with exciting vision underpinned by an intimate understanding of the needs of the performer. Her recent work includes a production of Tosca for Iceland Opera.

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CONFLICTED

BeAuty

Program 2 | November 17 – 18, 2023 Sarasota Opera House Edwaard Liang’s The Art of War Sir Frederick Ashton’s Dante Sonata Paul Taylor’s Company B

NOV 17 7:30 PM

NOV 18 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM

Program Media Sponsor

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Program 2 | Conflicted Beauty | November 17 - 18, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

The Art of War Company Premiere

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dwaard Liang’s The Art of War draws its name from the ancient Chinese military treatise, transforming its dancers into warriors through strong, dominate movements. Choreographed to Michael Torke’s powerful composition Ash and inspired by the controlled chaos of calligraphy, The Art of War is an intentional piece about determination and strength. Reviewing the ballet to The Columbus Dispatch, Peter Tonguette wrote, “With assertive partnering and forceful music by Michael Torke, Liang’s The Art of War was meant to call to mind calligraphy, with dancers sprinting across the stage with lengths of black silk — akin to ink filling a page.”

During the work, dancers perform alongside large flowing fabrics of red and black, accentuating Liang’s calligraphic inspiration.

Talking about the ballet the choreographer has stated that “In calligraphy, there are different brushstrokes, so we asked the dancers to make those strokes from the elbow, transposing visual art into physical art.”

Choreography by Edwaard Liang Music by Michael Torke Staged by Andres Esterez Original Lighting Design by Les Dickert

Edwaard Liang

CHOREOGRAPHER

A former dancer with New York City Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater, Edwaard Liang has built an international reputation as a choreographer. Over the last decade, he has created work for the Bolshoi Ballet, Houston Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Kirov Ballet, New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Shanghai Ballet, Singapore Dance Theatre, and Washington Ballet.

Born in Taipei, Taiwan and raised in Marin County, California, Mr. Liang began his dance training at age five with Marin Ballet. After studying at the School of American Ballet, he joined New York City Ballet in 1993. That same year, he was a medal winner at the Prix de Lausanne International Ballet Competition and won the Mae L. Wien Award. By 1998, he was promoted to Soloist. In 2001, Mr. Liang joined the Tony Award® winning Broadway cast of Fosse. His performance in Fosse was later televised nationally on PBS’ Great Performances series – “Dance in America: From Broadway: Fosse,” and subsequently released on DVD. By 2002, Mr. Liang was invited by Jiri Kylian to become a member of the acclaimed Nederlands Dans Theater 1.

While dancing with NDT 1, Mr. Liang discovered his passion and love for choreography. Since establishing himself as a choreographer, his works have been performed by dance companies around the world and he has won numerous awards for his choreography including the 2006 National Choreographic Competition.

In 2013, Mr. Liang was named Artistic Director at BalletMet where he continues to choreograph new works for companies both domestically and abroad. In 2017, he received an Emmy® Award for his short dance film, “Vaulted.” In 2018, he created a new ballet with Roberto Bolle for the opening of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

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Program 2 | Conflicted Beauty | November 17 - 18, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

Michael Torke COMPOSER

Choreographed to Michael Torke’s powerful composition Ash, Edwaard Liang’s The Art of War was inspired by Sun Tzu’s renowned book of the same name and the controlled chaos of calligraphy. An intentional piece about determination and strength, Peter Tonguette described the ballet in his review for The Columbus Dispatch as a work “With assertive partnering and forceful music by Michael Torke, Liang’s The Art of War was meant to call to mind calligraphy, with dancers sprinting across the stage with lengths of black silk — akin to ink filling a page.”

During the work, dancers perform alongside large flowing fabrics of red and black, accentuating Liang’s calligraphic inspiration.

Talking about the ballet the choreographer has stated that “In calligraphy, there are different brushstrokes, so we asked the dancers to make those strokes from the elbow, transposing visual art into physical art.”

First Performed by BalletMet May 1, 2015 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet November 17, 2023

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Program 2 | Conflicted Beauty | November 17 - 18, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

Dante Sonata “W

hen 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.

First Performed by Sadler’s Wells Ballet January 23,1940 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet November 18, 2022

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

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 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, and under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar (1968), 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. Tiggy-Winkle.

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.

Program 2 | Conflicted Beauty | November 17 - 18, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

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 Sayn-Wittgenstein, 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.”

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Program 2 | Conflicted Beauty | November 17 - 18, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

Company B J

ust as America began to emerge from the Depression at the dawn of the 1940s, the country was drawn into the Second World War. In a seminal piece of Americana, Paul Taylor recalls that turbulent era through the hit songs of the Andrews Sisters.

Although the songs depict a nation surging with high spirits, millions of men were bidding farewell to wives or girlfriends and many would never return from battle.

The dance focuses on such poignant dualities. Young lovers lindy, jitterbug, and polka, in a near manic grasp for happiness while in the background shadowy figures – soldiers – fall dead.

Among the sections of the dance, the one choreographed to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)” is carefree until the moment the bugler is shot; the one set to “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” tells of a young lady’s affections for a soldier an ocean away who, for his part, reaches out to a comrade in arms. The dance ends just as it began, with “Bei Mir Bist du Schon” – but the world has clearly changed. “(Company B) evokes the exuberant rhythms of the 40’s as well as the grim and persistent shadow of war. But even more vividly, it honors Taylor’s magnificent dancers. Some of the most glorious dancing to be seen anywhere…” - Laura Shapiro, Newsweek

Choreography by Paul Taylor Music by The Andrews Sisters Costume Design by Santo Loquasto Original Lighting Design by Jennifer Tipton Staged by Michael Trusnovec

Paul Taylor

CHOREOGRAPHER

Paul Taylor, one of the most accomplished artists this nation has ever produced, helped shape and define America’s homegrown art of modern dance from the earliest days of his career as a dancer and choreographer in 1954 until his death in 2018. As artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, he created 147 dances, many of which rank among the greatest dances ever made. A trailblazer throughout his 64-year career, in 2015 he helped ensure the future of modern dance by establishing Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, which brings to Lincoln Center great modern works of the past, outstanding works by today’s leading choreographers, and commissioned works made on the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

Paul Taylor was born on July 29, 1930 and grew up in and around Washington, DC. He attended Syracuse University on a swimming scholarship in the late 1940s until he discovered dance through books at the University library, and then transferred to The Juilliard School. In 1954, he began his company while still dancing for other great artists. He joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1955 for the first of seven seasons as soloist while continuing to choreograph on his own troupe. In 1959, he was a guest artist with New York City Ballet, where Balanchine created the Episodes solo for him.

Mr. Taylor received nearly every important honor given to artists in the United States. In 1992, he was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and received an Emmy Award for Speaking in Tongues, produced by WNET/New York the previous year. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in 1993. He was the recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships and eight honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees. Awards for lifetime achievement include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship – often called the “genius award.” Mr. Taylor was awarded France’s highest honor, the Légion d’Honneur, in 2000 for exceptional contributions to French culture.

Mr. Taylor died in Manhattan on August 29, 2018, leaving an extraordinary legacy of creativity and vision not only to American modern dance but to the performing arts the world over.

First Performed by Paul Taylor Dance Company June 20, 1991 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet November 16, 2012

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Program 2 | Conflicted Beauty | November 17 - 18, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

The Andrews Sisters A close harmony trio hailing from Mound, Minnesota, The Andrews Sisters – LaVerne, Maxene, and Patty (née Patricia) – formed when Patty, the youngest of the three, was only seven, quickly rising to local success and eventually going on the road to support the family after the closure of their father’s restaurant.

Initially performing as imitators of an earlier popular singing trio, the Boswell Sisters, they would find national attention of their own in 1937 with a series of recordings and radio broadcasts, most notably “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,” an adaptation of a popular Yiddish tune. The next couple of years would bring them significant success through a series of best-selling records, and the Andrews Sisters quickly became a household name.

The timing of their rise to stardom would coincide with the onset of World War II, leaving much of their work inextricable from the period; many of their hits released during this era were themed around the military, including “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me),” and “Rum and Coca Cola. ” Touring extensively in Italy and Africa and visiting military bases, war zones, and hospitals, the Andrews Sisters also recorded a series of “Victory Discs” for distribution to Allied fighting forces; their focus on the wartime entertainment effort earned them the moniker, “Sweethearts of the Armed Forces Radio Service.”

The Andrews Sisters continued to record after the end of the war, until tragedy would take its toll on their collective career – their mother died in 1948, with their father passing a year later.

Both parents were instrumental to the trio’s success, and the group would break up in 1953 in the aftermath, though they would reunite a few years later and tour extensively during the 1960s. LaVerne’s passing in 1967 would mark the end of the trio’s recording career, but their works live on through adaptations of their work by artists such as Bette Midler, Patti Page, and even modern pop performers like Christina Aguilera.

Jennifer Tipton

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Jennifer Tipton is an internationally renowned American lighting designer. A Cornell graduate, she has designed lighting for many companies including Paul Taylor Dance Company and American Ballet Theatre, as well as serving as a Professor-Adjunct of Design at the Yale School of Drama since 1981. Tipton has also won multiple Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards for her lighting designs on and off Broadway, for works including 1977’s The Cherry Orchard and 1989’s Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Her prolific and significant creations via the medium of light have earned her worldwide acclaim and numerous awards, notably the prestigious MacArthur Grant in 2008. She continues to collaborate with many of the greatest choreographers of the modern era.

Santo Loquasto

COSTUME DESIGNER

Since he began working with the New York Shakespeare Festival and his designs for the play That Championship Season in 1972 earned him the first of 21 Tony Awards nominations, Santo Loquasto has been one of the leading–and busiest–American designers, in theatre, dance, film, and opera. Born in WilkesBarre, Pennsylvania, he attended King’s College while working in summer theatre and then went to the Yale School of Design, where he met Joseph Papp and began his professional career with the New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1975, he designed costumes for Twyla Tharp’s Sue’s Leg, followed by her Push Comes to Shove, featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov, the first of forty designs for American Ballet Theatre for sets, costumes, or both. Then in 1987, he began a collaboration with Paul Taylor for a total of 55 dances, with at least one a season until Ports of Call in 2017. In addition to his four Tony Awards and four Drama Desk Awards, Loquasto has also been nominated three times for an Oscar for his work in film. His most recent Broadway credits range from Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh to Hello Dolly! and Carousel.

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MOMENTS of

MEANING

Program 3 | December 15 - 16, 2023 Sarasota Opera House George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room

DEC 15 7:30 PM

DEC 16 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM

Program Media Sponsor

Accompanied by Sarasota Orchestra

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Program 3 | Moments of Meaning | December 15 - 16, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

Theme and Variations

Choreography by George Balanchine Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Designs by Peter Farmer Staged by Phillip Neal

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ith Theme and Variations, Balanchine returned to his heritage in the grand Russian Imperial Ballet tradition. Grandeur is undoubtedly the keynote in this ballet. Conceived for its original principal couple, Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch, the ballet premiered some years before Ballet Theatre added the ‘American’ to become ABT. Balanchine chose the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s 1884 Suite No. 3 for Orchestra, in G major (opus 55), with its twelve variations on an initial theme, redolent of the world of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. Balanchine wrote that he intended the ballet “to evoke that great period in classical dancing when Russian ballet flourished with the aid of Tchaikovsky’s music.”

The curtain rises to reveal its principal couple, resplendently costumed in ivory, before a formally-posed, female corps de ballet of twelve. The principals’ statement of the theme is followed by solos, duets, quartets, and ensemble dances, leading to the central grand pas de deux. Now the twelve male dancers join their partners, and the ballet builds, filling the stage with varying patterns to match the music’s majestic sweep in a gradual crescendo, culminating in a grand polonaise around the stage for the entire cast of 26 dancers. We need no set to imagine ourselves in some great imperial court.

Theme and Variations entered the repertory of New York City Ballet in 1960 and ten years later Balanchine incorporated it as the closing section of a longer ballet called Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3, using the entire score. However the original 1947 ballet is frequently danced independently, as now by The Sarasota Ballet, using the designs made by Peter Farmer for the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet.

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 in 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 ballet constantly performed and appreciated around the world.

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Program 3 | Moments of Meaning | December 15 - 16, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky COMPOSER

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Russia in 1840. He began taking piano lessons at age five and, although he displayed an early passion for music, his parents hoped that he would grow up to work in civil service. Tchaikovsky honored his parents’ wishes in 1859 by taking a bureau clerk post for four years with the Ministry of Justice, but became increasingly fascinated with music. When he was 21, he began music lessons at the Russian Musical Society and enrolled at the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory, becoming one of the school’s first composition students. In 1863, he moved to Moscow, where he became a professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory.

Tchaikovsky’s work was first performed in 1865, with Johann Strauss the Younger conducting Characteristic Dance in Pavlovsk.

In 1868, Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony was well received in Moscow and the following year, his first opera, The Voyevoda, was received with little fanfare. He repurposed some of its material to compose his next opera, Oprichnik, which achieved some acclaim in 1874 and he also earned praise for his Second Symphony. Also in 1874, his opera Vakula the Smith received harsh critical reviews, yet Tchaikovsky still managed to establish himself as a talented instrumental composer with Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor.

Acclaim came readily for Tchaikovsky in 1875 with Symphony No. 3 in D major. He embarked on a tour of Europe and in 1876 completed the ballet Swan Lake. He resigned from the Moscow Conservatory in 1878 to focus his efforts on composing. His collective body of work constitutes 169 pieces; among his most famed late works are the ballets The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and The Nutcracker (1892). Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg in 1893.

Peter Farmer DESIGNER

Born in 1941 in Luton, England, Peter Farmer had an immensely successful theatre design career, leaving a lasting mark on over 300 theatre and dance productions. His expertise and affinity were particularly notable in set and costume design for dance, where he contributed to renowned productions for leading companies such as 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 January 1, 2017.

First Performed by Ballet Theatre November 26, 1947 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet December 1, 2017

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Program 3 | Moments of Meaning | December 15 - 16, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

In the Upper Room

Choreography by Twyla Tharp Music by Phillip Glass Costume Design by Norma Kamali Original Lighting Design by Jennifer Tipton Staged by Shelley Washington Assisted by Kaitlyn Gilliland

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landmark collaboration between world-class choreographer and composer, both at the very peak of their form, In The Upper Room was an instant hit with audiences, and equally acclaimed by critics. Dale Harris (Wall Street Journal 1986) wrote that it “takes possession of our emotions…through our growing awareness of its complex and harmonious structure” adding that its abstract content eludes description “except in terms of the steps, rhythms, and strategies for deploying space [and] the expressive force of the work.” Other critics noted that despite its exuberant energy, the ballet contains a dense, complex dance vocabulary and structure.

In her autobiography, Ms. Tharp describes her inspiration and working approach. The ballet is initiated and the stage “framed” by two women, based on “ferocious and brave porcelain dragon dogs that guard Zen temples” and dubbed during the creation process “china dogs” from her recollection of ornaments at her grandmother’s home. These herald the bursting onstage of the other dancers: first, three couples in running shoes (“stompers”) conceived as “down-home, plain-spun folks…driving through space…[with] technique developed through determination,” then two women en pointe (“the bomb squad”) “lighter and more elegant, making up for a lack of raw force with…sophisticated technique.” The “bomb squad” gradually evolves into the “ballet cadre.”

The choreographer wanted to make her dancers “fierce, driving and relentless” movements and breath-catchingly swift unison moves “burn the retina.” The costumes echo this intention, with bare torsos, black-and-white stripes and scarlet standing out boldly against the inky-black background, from which the dancers seem to emerge and vanish, matching the music’s pulsing, winding and unwinding progressive climaxes, in a dramatic but almost hypnotic high-energy rush.

Thanks to its tremendous quality and impact, the ballet is in great demand and has entered the repertoires of over 20 companies internationally between 1992 and 2010, including Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Monte Carlo, Netherlands and Germany, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Houston, Pacific Northwest, Boston, American Ballet Theater, The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, and The Bolshoi Ballet.

First Performed by Twyla Tharp Dance Company August 28th, 1986 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet December 3, 2010

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Twyla Tharp

CHOREOGRAPHER

Twyla Tharp has choreographed over 135 dances for numerous companies including her own company, American Ballet Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, and Martha Graham Dance Company to name but a few. She has choreographed five Hollywood films: Milos Forman’s Hair (1978), Ragtime (1980), and Amadeus (1984); Taylor Hackford’s White Nights (1985); and James Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything (1994). She has directed and choreographed four Broadway shows: When We Were Very Young (1980), The Catherine Wheel with David Byrne (1981), Singin’ In the Rain (1985), and Movin’ Out (2002).

Among Ms. Tharp’s numerous awards, she has received a Tony, two Emmys, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Born July 1, 1941 in Portland, Indiana, Twyla Tharp was educated and began dance training in California before moving to New York, where she graduated from Barnard College (1963) with an Art History degree and studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, before joining the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

She formed her own company Twyla Tharp Dance in 1965, which toured internationally from 1971 to 1988. She merged it with American Ballet Theatre to re-form a new company in 1991 for a major international tour of Cutting Up with Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Twyla Tharp Dance toured internationally from 1999 to 2003.

From Twyla Tharp’s distinguished choreographic work, one might single out landmark works: Deuce Coupe (Joffrey Ballet, 1973) to Beach Boys music, often credited as the first “crossover” ballet, Sue’s Leg (1975), Push Comes To Shove (American Ballet Theatre, 1976) for Baryshnikov, Nine Sinatra Songs (1982), The Golden Section (1983), and In The Upper Room (1986).

Ms. Tharp has written her autobiography Push Comes To Shove (1992), The Creative Habit, and The Collaborative Habit. She has a son and a grandson. She continues to create, write, and lecture.

Program 3 | Moments of Meaning | December 15 - 16, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House

Phillip Glass COMPOSER

Through his operas, his symphonies, compositions for his own ensemble ,and wide-ranging collaborations with artists from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.

Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film, and in popular music—simultaneously. Born in 1937, he grew up in Baltimore, studying at the University of Chicago, The Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar.

He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble—seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer. The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism,” but Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than 20 operas, 8 symphonies, 2 piano concertos, film soundtracks, string quartets and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.

Jennifer Tipton

LIGHTING DESIGN

Jennifer Tipton is an internationally renowned American lighting designer. A Cornell graduate, she has designed lighting for many companies including Paul Taylor Dance Company and American Ballet Theatre, as well as serving as a Professor-Adjunct of Design at the Yale School of Drama since 1981. Tipton has also won multiple Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards for her lighting designs on and off Broadway, for works including 1977’s The Cherry Orchard and 1989’s Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Her prolific and significant creations via the medium of light have earned her worldwide acclaim and numerous awards, notably the prestigious MacArthur Grant in 2008. She continues to collaborate with many of the greatest choreographers of the modern era.

Norma Kamali

COSTUME DESIGNER

Norma Kamali, a prominent fashion designer, has thrived for over 50 years in the industry. A native New Yorker, she graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1964 and opened her first boutique in 1968, showcasing innovative designs like “Hot Pants” and the “Sleeping Bag Coat.” Kamali’s contributions expanded to Los Angeles and gained international recognition. Notably, her parachute designs are part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Throughout her career, Kamali received numerous prestigious awards, reflecting her pioneering influence in fashion and her dedication to innovation, and artistic collaborations like her designs for Twyla Tharp’s In The Upper Room (1988).

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Graziano Celebr at ed Program 4 | January 26 - 29, 2024 FSU Center for the Performing Arts Ricardo Graziano’s Sonatina Ricardo Graziano’s World Premiere Ricardo Graziano’s In a State of Weightlessness

JAN 26 7:30 PM

JAN 27 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM JAN 28 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM JAN 29 7:30 PM

Program Media Sponsor

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Program 4 | Graziano Celebrated | January 26 - 29, 2024 | FSU Center

Ricardo Graziano CHOREOGRAPHER

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 August 12, 2015, as a part of The Sarasota Ballet’s first week-long residency at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

”

Ricardo Graziano started dancing when he was eight 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.

I’m very proud to have this triple bill of Ricardo’s ballets to represent his 10 years as resident choreographer. As a dancer, it is vitally important to have the experience of having works created on you, and because of Ricardo’s position as also a Principal Dancer, he knows each of the dancer’s qualities and personalities and therefore the outcome is always personal and intimate.

”

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, Sonatina in October 2021, and The Pilgrimage in October 2022.

In total, Graziano will have choreographed 11 one-act ballets and three divertissements by the end of the 2023 - 2024 Season.

Iain Webb

Director, The Sarasota Ballet

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Program 4 | Graziano Celebrated | January 26 - 29, 2024 | FSU Center

Sonatina “A

fter so many years creating ballets for the company, most of them contemporary works,” explained Graziano, “it felt suitable to create something distinctly Ashtonian in tone and style. The more of Sir Frederick Ashton’s repertoire I danced, the more frequently I would incorporate some of his signature elements into my own contemporary ballets, like his emphasis on the use of the upper body. With Sonatina though, this influence is more noticeable - I wanted to create a plotless ballet that both demonstrates the heart of The Sarasota Ballet and would just be fun for our company to dance, and our audiences to watch.”

Graziano’s ninth complete work for the company opened the 2021-2022 season as a love letter of sorts, heralding the return of audiences to the theater after the long hiatus caused by the pandemic lockdown. Sonatina displays hallmarks of company style with its palette of bright footwork contrasting to pliant upper body movements present in the choreography for the entire cast. An extended pas de deux blushing with charm yields to a soulful and nostalgic larghetto movement for the male principal, the ballet building to a joyful conclusion in the final allegro movement of Dvořák’s Violin Sonatina, with dancers covering the stage like blossoms caught on the wind. Graziano’s choreography is a loving homage to the choreographer whose work is so identified with The Sarasota Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton.

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.

Choreography by Ricardo Graziano Music by Antonin Dvořák Costume Design by Jerry Wolf Lighting Design by Ethan Vail

Antonin Dvořák COMPOSER

Antonin Dvořák was born September 8, 1841 and raised in a small village outside Prague, Czech capital of Bohemia, then a province of the Hapsburg Empire. A devout Roman Catholic, Dvořák drew key inspiration from Czech folk music, studied organ, viola, and violin and spent his early years as a professional musician and piano teacher in Prague, where in 1871 he wrote his first string quartet and in 1873 married Anna Cermakova. Of their nine children, three died in infancy.

With a wife and growing family to support, Dvořák secured the post of organist at St. Adalbert’s Church, Prague, continued to compose, and found a publisher through Brahms, who became a friend and major influence. Throughout the 1870’s, Dvořák’s reputation in Prague grew with his works for strings, piano, and especially his Symphony No. 5. The international success of his Stabat Mater led to nine triumphant visits to England, including the premieres of his Symphony No. 7 in London (1885) and Requiem in Birmingham (1891), and an honorary degree from Cambridge University.

In 1890 - 1891 Dvořák conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Prague, before spending three fruitful years in America (1892 - 1895) where he directed the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Dvořák’s desire to discover an “American music” with strong Native American and African-American roots, introduced him to American spirituals, which influenced his 9th Symphony, From the New World (New York 1893).

Homesick, Dvořák returned in his later years to Prague, directing the Conservatory until his death on May 1, 1904. Apart from his nine symphonies, choral works, and many concerti, he composed symphonic poems, chamber music, and 10 operas, of which one, Rusalka (1900), is frequently performed.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet October 22, 2021

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Program 4 | Graziano Celebrated | January 26 - 29, 2024 | FSU Center

Choreography by Ricardo Graziano

World Premiere T

his world premiere by Ricardo Graziano finally resolves ideas the resident choreographer has meditated on since the Coronavirus pandemic. Sketching out initial movements and motifs on an intimate group of dancers as the world grappled with uncertainty, Graziano knew he wanted to produce a ballet that would sit between his previous works in a contrasting way.

The ballet remained paused, percolating in the choreographer’s imagination and awaiting the right moment to be taken up again.

With this ballet, the audience is watching a moment of release, and Schubert’s Symphony no.2 in B flat sets the pace. Tuneful melodies that reveal the influence of Beethoven on this giant of classical and romantic music give the dancers thrilling license to extend the language of classical ballet they know so well. This joyful exploration matches Graziano’s intention to stretch his limits: “Although there is a style I lean towards, every time I make a new ballet, I want to do something different. How do I push these dancers that I’m so familiar with?” Influenced by his experience dancing works by Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato, a lineage of European-based dance makers hangs in Graziano’s creative mind: the powerful statements of William Forsythe; the rhapsodic dances of Jiří Kylián. This world premiere is a passing along of these visions in its reaction against the constriction of the pandemic. With color and vibrancy, Graziano wants the audience to see the dancers’ bodies and skills. For the dancers, this world premiere is a stretching of the skin, a sunburst moment.

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.

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Music by Franz Schubert Costume Design by Jerry Wolf Lighting Design by Ethan Vail

Franz Schubert COMPOSER

Franz Schubert, born on January 31, 1797 near Vienna, led a prolific yet brief life, leaving an immense musical legacy.

Introduced to the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven during his education, Schubert’s compositions were heavily influenced by these masters. While working as a schoolteacher, he continued to create, primarily focusing on chamber-scaled music. Schubert faced rejection from prestigious musical societies and only publicly performed his work once in 1828.

Stricken by syphilis, his late compositions often mirrored the emotional struggles he faced. He passed away at the age of 31 in November 1828, leaving an indelible mark on the Lied genre with poignant settings of Goethe’s poetry. His repertoire, appreciated for more than melodious tunes, embodies rich experimentation in modulation and instrumentation. Posthumously revered by Brahms, Schumann, Liszt, and others, Schubert’s music straddles 19th-century classicism and early romanticism, capturing the essence of his tumultuous yet brilliant artistic journey.

Ethan Vail

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Credits include – The Sarasota Ballet: La Sylphide, Frequency Hurtz, Living Ghosts, The Pilgrimage; Florida Studio Theatre: Black Pearl Sings, What the Constitution Means to Me; Urbanite Theatre: The Burdens, At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen; Asolo Repertory Theatre: Grand Horizons, Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, Camelot; The Players Centre for the Performing Arts (Sarasota, FL): Head Over Heels, All Shook Up; Millbrook Playhouse (Mill Hall, PA): 65 Productions including the regional premiere of Fun Home. He was the recipient of the 2013 USITT YD&T Award, sponsored by Barbizon Lighting Company, for A Midsummer Night’s Dream that he designed at Purdue University. He is also the Production Manager and Resident Lighting Designer for The Sarasota Ballet.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet January 26, 2024

Program 4 | Graziano Celebrated | January 17 - 18, 2024 | FSU Center

In a State of Weightlessness

Choreography by Ricardo Graziano Music by Phillip Glass Original Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

G

raziano’s most critically acclaimed work, In a State of Weightlessness, was commissioned for The Sarasota Ballet’s first residency at the famed Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, in Becket, Massachusetts. Premiering on the 12th of August 2015 on a program featuring Sir Frederick Ashton’s Monotones I & II and Christopher Wheeldon’s The American, it was his first work to achieve national recognition and, two years later, would be requested by Ballet West to be performed by The Sarasota Ballet as part of the inaugural National Choreographic Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Different than his previous choreographic creations, where the music served as his initial inspiration, Graziano had already fleshed out the ballet before he had arrived at the perfect accompanying score. Having listened to numerous composers and their works, he eventually settled on the second movement of Philip Glass’ Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. The score would fit perfectly to Graziano’s choreographic exploration of concepts of lightness, movement, and suspension.

Created on five couples, Graziano’s men almost fade into Aaron Muhl’s enigmatic and shadowy lighting, allowing the women to appear virtually weightless during the intense pas de deux that form the choreographic structure of the piece. Reviewing the world premiere of In a State of Weightlessness, Boston Globe dance critic Janine Parker wrote, “Weightlessness is indeed weighted, with intensity and beauty.”

Phillip Glass COMPOSER

Through his operas, his symphonies, compositions for his own ensemble ,and wide-ranging collaborations with artists from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.

Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film, and in popular music—simultaneously. Born in 1937, he grew up in Baltimore, studying at the University of Chicago, The Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar.

He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble—seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer. The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism,” but Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than 20 operas, 8 symphonies, 2 piano concertos, film soundtracks, string quartets and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.

Aaron Muhl

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Aaron Muhl (He/Him) is from Sarasota, FL and has over 20 years of experience in the performing arts. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatrical Design and Technology from the University of Central Florida. He is currently the production manager for Charlotte Ballet. Aaron was the Sarasota Ballet’s resident lighting designer and supervisor from 2007 to 2022. During his tenure there, he designed and/or recreated over 100 one-act and fulllength ballets. Notable lighting designs include Will Tuckett’s Changing Light and Lux Aeterna, Jessica Lang’s Shades of Spring, and Sir Peter Wright’s Summertide.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet August 12, 2015 at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival

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Program 5 | March 8 - 11, 2024 FSU Center for the Performing Arts

MAR 8 7:30 PM

MAR 9 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM MAR 10 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM MAR 11 7:30 PM

Program Media Sponsor

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Club Havana by Pedro Ruiz | Photo by Erin Baiano

Program 5 | Ballet Hispánico | March 8 - 11, 2024 | FSU Center

Ballet Hispánico

B

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

Dance visionary and National Medal of Arts recipient Tina Ramirez founded Ballet Hispánico in 1970, at the height of the post-war civil rights movements. From its inception, Ballet Hispánico focused on providing a haven for Black and Brown families seeking place and artistic sanctuary. By creating the space for Latine dance and dancers to flourish, Ballet Hispánico uplifted marginalized artists and youth, which combined with the training, cultural pride, and the power of representation, fueling the organization’s roots and trajectory. Eduardo Vilaro joined Ballet Hispánico as a Company dancer in 1985 and became the organization’s second Artistic Director in 2009 and CEO in 2015. Vilaro is building on Ramirez’s impact; expanding, and deepening the legacy of visibilizing Latine cultures, and exposing the intersectionality and depth of diversity found in them.

Through its exemplary artistry, distinguished training program, and deep-rooted community engagement, Ballet Hispánico champions and amplifies Latinx voices in the field. For over fifty years, Ballet Hispánico has provided a place of honor for the omitted, overlooked, and othered. As it looks to the future, Ballet Hispánico is pushing the culture forward on issues of dance and Hispanic creative expression.

Eduardo Vilaro

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & CEO

Eduardo Vilaro joined Ballet Hispánico as Artistic Director in August 2009, becoming only the second person to head the company since it was founded in 1970. In 2015, Mr. Vilaro took on the additional role of Chief Executive Officer of Ballet Hispánico. He has been part of the Ballet Hispánico family since 1985 as a dancer and educator, after which he began a ten-year record of achievement as founder and Artistic Director of Luna Negra Dance Theater in Chicago. Mr. Vilaro has infused Ballet Hispánico’s legacy with a bold and eclectic brand of contemporary dance that reflects America’s changing cultural landscape.

Born in Cuba and raised in New York from the age of six, he is a frequent speaker on the merits of cultural diversity and dance education. Mr. Vilaro’s own choreography is devoted to capturing the spiritual, sensual, and historical essence of Latino cultures. He has choreographed over 40 pieces throughtout his career and has received commissions from the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Grant Park Festival, the Lexington Ballet, and the Chicago Symphony. In 2001, he was a recipient of a Ruth Page Award for choreography, and in 2003, he was honored for his choreographic work at Panama’s II International Festival of Ballet.

Mr. Vilaro was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame in 2016 and was awarded HOMBRE Magazine’s 2017 Arts & Culture Trailblazer of the Year. In 2019, Mr. Vilaro was the recipient of the West Side Spirit’s WESTY Award, was honored by WNET for his contributions to the arts, and most recently, was the recipient of the James W. Dodge Foreign Language Advocate Award. In 2022 and 2023, Mr. Vilaro was included in Crain’s New York lists of Notable Hispanic Leaders and Notable LGBTQ Leaders; and was acknowledged as one of Forbes’ Kings of Culture, Legends of Business.

Johan Rivera

ARTISTIC ASSOCIATE & REHEARSAL DIRECTOR

Johan Rivera (He/Him) is the Artistic Associate & Rehearsal Director at Ballet Hispánico. Johan was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and began his dance training at the School for the Performing Arts, PR under the direction of Waldo Gonzalez.

Johan graduated Magna Cum Laude, with a BFA from the New World School of the Arts/University of Florida in 2013.

During his tenure as a Ballet Hispánico Company member, Johan originated roles in ballets by choreographers such as Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, Pedro Ruiz, and Eduardo Vilaro. In addition, he was a teaching artist with Ballet Hispánico’s Community Arts Partnerships team while on tour and at home in NYC. Johan received a Master of Arts in Executive Leadership with high honors, an achievement he dearly treasures as the first member of his family to have this opportunity. Johan had the honor of mentoring and directing second company BHdos in the fall of 2016 before becoming the Rehearsal Director for Ballet Hispánico’s main Company. As the Artistic Associate & Rehearsal Director, Johan supports the artistic development of the company and the implementation of Ballet Hispánico’s core artistic vision.

New Sleep by William Forsythe | Photo by Erin Baiano

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Portraits of

Expression Program 6 | April 5 - 6, 2024

Sarasota Opera House George Balanchine‘s Emeralds Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Las Hermanas George Balanchine‘s Who Cares?

APR 5 7:30 PM

APR 6 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM

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Accompanied by Sarasota Orchestra

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Program 6 | Portraits of Expression | April 5 - 6, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Emeralds T

o the already performed Rubies and Diamonds, The Sarasota Ballet now adds to its repertoire the first ballet in Balanchine’s famous Jewels triptych, each ballet intentionally different.

Where Rubies is crisp and edgy, typifying Balanchine’s American neo-classicism to Stravinsky’s score, and Diamonds celebrates, to Tchaikovsky’s music, the glittering Imperial Russian Ballet tradition, Emeralds is Balanchine’s “evocation of France—the France of elegance, comfort, dress, perfume.”

Choosing incidental music for plays by Gabriel Fauré, whose work sits between the Romantics and the Impressionists, Balanchine wanted to pay tribute to the French Romantic ballet of the 1820’s to 1840’s. Emeralds calls for four female and three male principals, supported by a corps de ballet of 10 women, its original cast led by the great Violette Verdy.

From the curtain’s rise, revealing graciously posed dancers in Karinska’s lavish, emerald-green costumes—calf-length tutus in soft tulle for the women, handsomely-decorated tunics for the men—the music and dance flow together with a ravishingly French elegance.

Although he admitted taking inspiration from the great jeweler Claude Arpels, “I have always liked jewels; after all, I am an Oriental, from Georgia in the Caucasus. I like the colour of gems, the beauty of stones…” Balanchine insisted that the ballet “had nothing to do with jewels. The dancers are just dressed like jewels.” The costumes were important to Balanchine, who wrote that “it was wonderful to see how our costume workshop, under Karinska’s direction, came so close to the quality of real stones (which were of course too heavy for the dancers to wear!)”. Arpels expressed admiration at the fine work on Jewels’ costumes, while Karinska proudly claimed to “sew for girls and boys who make my costumes dance; their bodies deserve my clothes.”

Clive Barnes claimed of its 1967 premiere that, in Jewels, even Balanchine had never “created a work in which the inspiration was so sustained, the invention so imaginative or the concept so magnificent.”

Choreography by George Balanchine Music by Gabriel Faure Costume Design by Karinska Staged by Sandra Jennings

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 in 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 ballet constantly performed and appreciated around the world.

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Program 6 | Portraits of Expression | April 5 - 6, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Gabriel Fauré COMPOSER

Gabriel Fauré was the foremost composer of his generation, a huge influence on 20th Century music, bridging the gap between Romanticism and Impressionism, supreme exponent of the French art song and “master par excellence of French music.” His slighter works have proved lastingly popular—Reverie, Apres un Reve, Pavane, Dolly Suite—and his fine Requiem (1888).

Born in 1845 in Southern France in reduced circumstances, his musical gifts, spotted early, took him to study music in Paris, graduating in 1865 and working as a church organist and music teacher. One of his teachers, Saint-Säens, a lifelong friend, secured Fauré an organist post in Paris after four years in Rennes, interrupted by military service in the Franco-Prussian War, which earned him Fauré the Croix de Guerre.

In the 1870’s, Fauré was organist at Saint Sulpice and then the Madeleine in Paris, composing and promoting French music. He traveled extensively, and in 1883 he married his wife Marie who gave him two sons but she resented his constant infidelities.

Since composing paid poorly, he played organ and taught, but in the 1890’s and 1900’s his career took off, directing the Paris Conservatoire of Music 1905-1920, by which time, despite the relative failure of his opera Pénelope, he was hailed as France’s leading composer. Plagued by deafness in later life but still composing, Fauré died in 1924.

Karinska

COSTUME DESIGNER

Originally named Varvara Jmoudsky, Karinska was born 1886 in Kharkov, Ukraine. Karinska remained in Russia after the Revolution, remarrying and managing 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. Her career continued to flourish in London, where she moved in 1936, before settling in New York in 1939.

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.

First Performed by New York City Ballet April 13, 1967 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet January 29, 2016

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Program 6 | Portraits of Expression | April 5 - 6, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Las Hermanas I

n the oppressive heat of a Spanish summer, five women— sisters—wait under the stern eye of their dominating mother.

Then enters a cocky young man, engaged to the eldest sister but more interested in the beautiful youngest. This is the world of Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet Las Hermanas—The Sisters—based on the celebrated play The House of Bernarda Alba, by the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia-Lorca. Each sister presents a full character, most notably the spinsterish eldest, the still attractive but spiteful middle sister, and the passionate youngest, all held down by the baleful matriarch until the arrival of a young man into what one critic has called “this pressurecooker of repressed desire.”

MacMillan choreographed Las Hermanas in 1963 for the Stuttgart Ballet, directed by his close friend John Cranko. He would go on to make five more ballets over the next fifteen years for Cranko and Stuttgart, where he felt relieved of the pressures of The Royal Ballet under the watchful eye of its founder, the redoubtable Dame Ninette de Valois, and the sometimes unsympathetic board of The Royal Opera House. The set was by his frequent collaborator Nicholas Georgiadis, who had first suggested Lorca’s play as a possible subject. But rather than the expected Spanish music, MacMillan turned instead to the Concerto for Harpsichord and Small Orchestra by the Swiss composer Frank Martin, which supplies the suitably moody support for the dramatic action and its stunning conclusion.

The ballet also echoes themes of loneliness and oppression that resonate throughout Macmillan’s work from his earliest apprentice pieces in 1953 to The Judas Tree, his final ballet in 1992. Although the cast of Lorca’s play is entirely women, with men only included through the dialogue, MacMillan needed to show the male suitor as essential to the wordless medium of ballet.

Las Hermanas soon entered the repertory of other companies, including American Ballet Theatre in 1968, The Royal Ballet, starting in 1971 with its touring New Group, and in 2007 The Sarasota Ballet.

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Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan Music by Frank Martin Designs by Nicholas Georgiadis Staged by Margret Barbieri

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 (19661969), 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 recent 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.

Program 6 | Portraits of Expression | April 5 - 6, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Frank Martin COMPOSER

Frank Martin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 15 September 1890.

He was the tenth and youngest child of a clergyman’s family. He played and improvised on the piano even before he went to school. By the age of nine, Mr. Martin composed charming children’s songs that were perfectly balanced without ever having been taught musical forms or harmony. A performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, heard at the age of twelve, left a lasting impression on the composer, for whom J.S. Bach remained the true master.

Martin attended the University of Geneva for two years where he began studying piano and composition with Joseph Lauber, who initiated him in the “craft,” especially in instrumentation. In 1926, Martin founded the Société de Musique de Chambre de Genève, which he led as pianist and harpsichord player for ten years. He was artistic director of the Technicum Moderne de Musique from 1933 to 1940 and president of the Swiss Association of Musicians between 1942 and 1946.

In 1932, he became interested in the 12-tone technique of Arnold Schönberg. He incorporated certain elements into his own musical language, creating a synthesis of the chromatic and twelve-tone techniques. Le Vin Herbé (1941) was the first important work in which he completely mastered this very personal idiom. Together with the Petite Symphonie Concertante (1944-45), it established his international reputation. Martin’s compositions kept the same vitality until the end of his life. He worked on the cantata Et la Vie l’Emporta until ten days before his death on November 21, 1974.

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.

First Performed by Stuttgart Ballet July 13, 1963 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet January 25, 2008

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Program 6 | Portraits of Expression | April 5 - 6, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Who Cares?

T

hough we salute George Balanchine as one of ballet’s greatest choreographers, the Russian émigré also insisted on invention and innovation in the dances he produced for Hollywood and Broadway across his career, raising the level of dancing in the eyes of the American public. Who Cares?, premiered in 1970, displays Balanchine’s deftness at translating the jazzy idiom of American show business into classicism.

The conception on the ballet could be traced back to the 1930s when Balanchine had the opportunity to work with George Gershwin on 1938’s The Goldwyn Follies. Gershwin’s untimely death in 1937 prevented their direct collaboration, but a book of songs gifted to the choreographer by Gershwin germinated into a ballet over 30 years later when Balanchine anthologized what he felt were the most compelling of Gershwin’s songs into a symphonic suite to showcase his New York City Ballet, buoyantly orchestrated by Hershy Kay. The ballet’s opening for a corps de ballet of ten women and five demi-soloist couples demonstrates the exuberant tone, giving way to solos and a series of pas de deux of romantic ardor for the ballet’s principals, originally danced by Karin von Aroldingen, Patricia McBride, Marnee Morris, and Jacques d’Amboise. The ballet marks a specific point in Balanchine’s - and New York City Ballet’s - story, being the choreographer’s first ballet after Suzanne Farrell’s departure from the company before a prodigal return in 1975.

Who Cares? is a ballet that brings out the thrust of urban life, highlighting how the city Balanchine chose to call home, New York, permeated his imagination, an idea Jo Mielziner’s set, comprising of a radiating cityscape glittering in the night, perfectly evokes. Critic Arlene Croce noted that Balanchine’s favorite dancer was Fred Astaire, and this ballet certainly suggests the confident, joyful style of this star. Who Cares? sits alongside Balanchine’s other Americana-infused works including Stars and Stripes, Western Symphony, and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.

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Choreography by George Balanchine Music by George Gershwin Orchestration by Hershy Kay Costume Design by Karinska Set Design by Jo Mielziner Staged by Sandra Jennings

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 in 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 ballet constantly performed and appreciated around the world.

Program 6 | Portraits of Expression | April 5 - 6, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

George Gershwin COMPOSER

George Gershwin, born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn (1898), studied piano and started work at fifteen as a song-plugger and piano-roll arranger, publishing his first song in 1916 and achieving his first hit with the 1919 Swanee. With his lyricist brother Ira, he composed Broadway musicals, including Of Thee I Sing, Strike Up The Band, and Girl Crazy. He established a parallel reputation as America’s leading ‘serious’ composer, fusing jazz and classical music in Rhapsody In Blue and An American In Paris.

Gershwin spent time in Paris and experimented with folk opera, leading to his most ambitious work, Porgy and Bess.

Hershy Kay

ORCHESTRATION

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 DESIGNER

Originally named Varvara Jmoudsky, Karinska was born 1886 in Kharkov, Ukraine. Karinska remained in Russia after the Revolution, remarrying and managing 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. Her career continued to flourish in London, where she moved in 1936, before settling in New York in 1939.

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.

First Performed by New York City Ballet February 5, 1970 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet April 1, 2011

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inspirations

Program 7 | April 26 - 27, 2024 Sarasota Opera House

Christopher Wheeldon’s The American Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces Sir Frederick Ashton’s Sinfonietta

APR 26 7:30 PM

APR 27 2:00 PM | 7:30 PM

Program Media Sponsor

Accompanied by Live Music

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Program 7 | Portraits of Expression | April 26 - 27, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon

The American T

he impact of America upon the great Czech composer Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) is best shown in his famous New World Symphony, written during his three-year sojourn in the United States. Perhaps less well known was the inspiration Dvořák felt from the natural beauty and tranquility of the great Midwestern plains, which he experienced in 1893 when he visited the Czech-speaking community at Spillville, Iowa.

In the Midwest, Dvořák found a striking contrast from the vitality and clamor of America’s new cities, New York and Chicago, where he was living and working. This was of special importance to the composer, who was fervently seeking an equivalent to his own creative sources in Bohemian folk music. One of Dvořák’s American pupils, the early African-American composer Harry Burleigh, had introduced a fascinated Dvořák to spirituals (an influence we can hear in the New World Symphony, of course), and he had published a series of newspaper articles in 1892 on the state of American music, which, he passionately urged, should derive its character and creativity from Native American and African-American traditions, just as his own music had benefited from Bohemian folk sources.

Dvořák responded to the great prairies with his String Quartet “The American” in F major, in which he paid special tribute to the birdsong he recalled hearing. This can be heard clearly at key moments in the score, which is notably serene, peaceful, and pastoral in mood. One can sense the delight of a successful international artist who passed most of his life in Prague, but who had grown up in a small Bohemian village, responding to the idyllic peace and natural beauty of America.

Christopher Wheeldon, another European in America, has in turn responded to these feelings, by setting his ballet to the allegro, lento and final vivace movements from Dvořák’s Quartet. The sense of space, tranquility, the great plains, and the open sky, have inspired composer and choreographer alike.

Music by Antonin Dvořák Staged by Margret Barbieri

Christopher Wheeldon CHOREOGRAPHER

Christopher Wheeldon trained at The Royal Ballet School, joining The Royal Ballet in 1991. In 1993, Wheeldon joined New York City Ballet and was promoted to soloist in 1998. His first professional commission was from Margaret Barbieri for Images of Dance, and in 1997, he created his first work for NYCB, Slavonic Dances, becoming the company’s first Resident Choreographer in 2001. Works for NYCB include Polyphonia (2001, winner of a London Critics’ Circle Award and the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production) and The Nightingale and the Rose (2007).

Other early works included his first full-length work, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for Colorado Ballet, Sea Pictures for San Francisco Ballet and The Four Seasons for Boston Ballet. In 2004, Wheeldon created his version of Tchaikovsky’s classic Swan Lake on Pennsylvania Ballet and revived it for the company again in 2015. In 1991, Wheeldon choreographed the Marvin Hamlisch‘s Broadway musical Sweet Smell of Success.

In 2006 he launched his own company, Morphoses, which was based out of New York City Center and London’s Sadler’s Wells.

His ballets were greeted rapturously by audiences and critics.

Wheeldon ended his tenure as NYCB Resident Choreographer in 2008 to continue his freelance career.

For The Royal Ballet, Wheeldon created Souvenir (Tchaikovsky) and Pavane pour une infant défunte (Ravel) in 1996, and There Where She Loved (Chopin and Kurt Weill) in 2000. Wheeldon premiered at Covent Garden in 2011 a full-length ballet, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, becoming the first full-length ballet created at The Royal Ballet in over 20 years, followed by his second full-length ballet for the company, The Winter’s Tale.

In May 2013, Wheeldon staged his version of Prokofiev’s Cinderella for San Francisco Ballet, a co-production with the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam. Wheeldon premiered his highly-anticipated An American in Paris at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris in December 2014 and, following its success, immediately moved to Broadway, where he won the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 2015.

First Performed by Carolina Ballet 2001 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet December 3, 2010

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Program 7 | Portraits of Expression | April 26 - 27, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Antonin Dvořák COMPOSER

Antonin Dvořák was born September 8, 1841 and raised in a small village outside Prague, Czech capital of Bohemia, then a province of the Hapsburg Empire. A devout Roman Catholic, Dvořák drew key inspiration from Czech folk music, studied organ, viola, and violin and spent his early years as a professional musician and piano teacher in Prague, where in 1871 he wrote his first string quartet and in 1873 married Anna Cermakova. Of their nine children, three died in infancy.

With a wife and growing family to support, Dvořák secured the post of organist at St. Adalbert’s Church, Prague, continued to compose, and found a publisher through Brahms, who became a friend and major influence. Throughout the 1870’s, Dvořák’s reputation in Prague grew with his works for strings, piano, and especially his Symphony No. 5. The international success of his Stabat Mater led to nine triumphant visits to England, including the premieres of his Symphony No. 7 in London (1885) and Requiem in Birmingham (1891), and an honorary degree from Cambridge University.

In 1890 - 1891 Dvořák conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Prague, before spending three fruitful years in America (1892 - 1895) where he directed the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Dvořák’s desire to discover an “American music” with strong Native American and African-American roots, introduced him to American spirituals, which influenced his 9th Symphony, From the New World (New York 1893).

Homesick, Dvořák returned in his later years to Prague, directing the Conservatory until his death on May 1, 1904. Apart from his nine symphonies, choral works, and many concerti, he composed symphonic poems, chamber music, and 10 operas, of which one, Rusalka (1900), is frequently performed.

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Program 7 | Portraits of Expression | April 26 - 27, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Lyric Pieces Company Premiere

L

yric Pieces was originally commissioned and premiered by Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2012, under the Artistic Direction of Sir David Bintley. The ballet is set to 10 movements from Norwegian Composer Edvard Grieg’s solo piano piece of the same name.

Drawing inspiration from the characteristics of each musical theme, this ballet quite literally unfolds into collections of scenes that charms viewers with its poetic sophistication and delightful wit. Praised by critics for her “exceptional stage imagination” (The Guardian, UK), Lang cleverly incorporates concertinaed paper as her set design, created by molo, a Vancouver-based design company led by Stephanie Forsythe and Todd McAlister.

In Lyric Pieces, Lang creates an organic relationship between choreography and set to build new landscapes that suit the musical effect of each piano piece. Lyric Pieces received a 2012 Manchester Theatre Award nomination for Dance.

Choreography by Jessica Lang Music by Edvard Grieg Costume Design by Elena Comendador Original Lighting Design by Nicole Pearce Set Concept by Jessica Lang Black Paper Softwall Designs by Molo Designers, Stephanie Forsythe, and Todd MacAllen

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 is 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 2011-2019.

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.

Birmingham Royal Ballet Photography Roy Smiljanic

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Program 7 | Portraits of Expression | April 26 - 27, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Edvard Grieg COMPOSER

A leading composer of the Romantic era, Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen, Norway in 1843. Grieg was taught to play piano by his mother from age six and entered the Leipzig Conservatory at age 15 to study composition and further his mastery of the piano.

Grieg made his debut as a concert pianist in Sweden in 1861, followed by a period of living and performing in Copenhagen.

Grieg married the soprano Nina Hagerup in 1867.

Grieg realized his talent lay in writing smaller pieces for piano rather than large scale works, though this does not discount the range of expression in his music. His relative familiarity comes from the widespread popularity of tunes like In the Hall of the Mountain King from the composer’s orchestral suite Peer Gynt.

This music exemplifies much of what is particular to Grieg’s sound: commanding instruments to wonderful effect, heavily grounded in the folk traditions of his native country. His Lyric Pieces for solo piano reveals an impressionistic tone, and demonstrate how intimately connected Grieg’s musical language was to the wild mountain scenery and glistening fjords of the Norwegian landscape the composer enjoyed exploring. This preoccupation aligns Grieg with the composers Sibelius and Dvořák, whose music elevated their respective country’s cultural identity. The composer died in Bergen from heart failure in 1907 at the age of 64. Grieg’s musical output, drawing on the fairy stories and folk melodies of his homeland, means the composer is one of Norway’s most respected cultural exports.

First Performed by Birmingham Royal Ballet May 3, 2012 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet April 26, 2024

Elena Comendador COSTUME DESIGNER

A former dancer, dance educator, and an interdisciplinary artist, Ms. Comendador has had several design collaborations with choreographer Jessica Lang with companies such as Birmingham Royal Ballet (UK), Ballet West, Colorado Ballet, American Ballet Theater II, and Jessica Lang Dance.

Ms. Comendador also designed for such companies as Ailey II, Rioult Dance NY, Complexions, Philadanco Buglisi Dance Theatre, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, among others. She worked with distinguished choreographers such as Sidra Bell, Jacqlyn Buglisi, Shen Wei, Pascal Rioult, Troy Powell, Darrell Moultrie, Igal Perry, Ray Mercer, and many others.

As a dance educator, Ms. Comendador was appointed co-director of The Ailey School’s Junior Division Program in 1995-2002.

Subsequently, she joined Marymount Manhattan College’s Dance Department serving as Associate Professor/Assistant Chair until her retirement in 2021. She now resides in France.

Nicole Pearce

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Nicole Pearce is a multidisciplinary artist living in Queens, NY. Her work has been seen across the United States, Cuba, England, Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy, New Zealand, and Russia. Recent works include The Look of Love choreographed by Mark Morris with the Mark Morris Dance Group, Catch Me If You Can Directed by Molly Smith with Arena Stage, and Children’s Songs choreographed by Jessica Lang with American Ballet Theatre. Her installation of 1,000 paintings entitled Tiny Paintings for Big Hearts is open to doctors, nurses, staff, and patients of Elmhurst Hospital in Elmhurst, NY.

Birmingham Royal Ballet | Photography Roy Smiljanic

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Program 7 | Portraits of Expression | April 26 - 27, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Sinfonietta N

ot to be confused with Jiří Kylián’s later ballet to Janáček’s music with the same title, Ashton’s Sinfonietta is a late work, created specially for dancers of The Royal Ballet’s Touring Company, including Doreen Wells and the late David Wall. As with Monotones, another 1960s abstract ballet of Ashton’s maturity, Sinfonietta reveals the choreographer’s connection with the zeitgeist and consequent ability to surprise or innovate when least expected. For its décor, the original production offered moving projections by the Hornsey College of Art, echoing the colors of Peter Rice’s costumes. In 1967, that might have been expected of a Judson Church contemporary dance work, not a classical ballet!

Revivals since 1981 have abandoned the projected “set” in favor of a static design by Peter Rice.

Ashton’s musicality is also revealed in the plotless ballet, following closely the structure of Malcolm Williamson’s specially commissioned orchestral score in three movements. It is essentially a mood ballet, responding to the music, its changing moods expressed in the dancer’s movements and the colors of the costumes.

The first movement is a Toccata (from the Italian toccare, to touch) - a rapid, virtuoso musical item, traditionally for keyboard or plucked string instrument, to showcase deft finger work, often with fugal patterns. The form originated in the Italian Renaissance and is especially associated with J.S. Bach in the Baroque era, but has been used by Schumann, Liszt, Prokofiev, Ravel, Hindemith ,and – more recently – the minimalist composer John Adams. In dance, a toccata is usually the occasion for some fine precision footwork, as seen in Ashton’s first movement of Sinfonietta.

There follows a second movement Elegy, (traditionally a reflective lament) including a fine adagio for female soloist and a group of male partners, establishing a more somber deeply-felt emotion.

The ballet concludes with a third movement Tarantella, for the full company of dancers. The tarantella, a staple of the classic ballet vocabulary, is a spirited Southern Italian folk dance, usually for loosely-embraced couples, whose name is said to be derived from the frenzy resulting from the bite of the poisonous tarantula spider!

Choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton Music by Sir Malcolm Williamson Costume Design after Peter Rice Revival Staged by Lynn Wallis Staged by Margret Barbieri

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 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, and under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar (1968), 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. Tiggy-Winkle.

He was knighted in 1962.

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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.

Program 7 | Portraits of Expression | April 26 - 27, 2024 | Sarasota Opera House

Peter Rice

COSTUME DESIGNER

The prolific and respected British stage designer Peter Rice was born in 1928 in Simla, the high-altitude summer refuge of British Raj India.

He studied stage design at the Royal College of Art in London, where he met and married textile designer Pat Albeck. His first stage designs in 1951 led to a long and successful career designing sets and costumes for opera, ballet, and theater worldwide. A series of acclaimed 1950s designs for London’s Old Vic Theatre Company (Time Remembered, The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale, Much Ado About Nothing) was followed by major theater work including many West End productions, work with Greenwich Theatre Company, Royal Exchange Manchester, Chichester Festival Theatre, and many leading ballet and opera companies (Royal Opera, Sadler’s Wells and New Sadler’s Wells Opera, Scottish Opera, Handel Opera, etc.). Mr. Rice has also worked extensively internationally.

First Performed by The Royal Ballet Feb 10, 1967 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet January 31, 2014

Sir Malcolm Williamson COMPOSER

Malcolm Williamson studied piano and composition from the age of 11 in Sydney, moving to London in 1953 to complete his studies. After winning the Arnold Bax Memorial Prize in 1963, he became a full-time composer and performer of his own organ and piano works. Major influences were the great organist and composer Olivier Messiaen and the works of Benjamin Britten, which inspired his choral compositions.

He was also influenced by jazz and popular music. He wrote music for film and TV, composed two ballets, three operas and seven symphonies, and was Master of the Queen’s Music from 1975 until his death.

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The Fred Step Article by Alastair Macaulay

T

he triumph that the fifty five-year-old Frederick Ashton scored in 1960 with La Fille mal gardée was the greatest of his already long career. Later that year, the British publication Ballet Annual published a tribute to him. This contained entries by Arnold Haskell (the senior British critic), Marie Rambert (the founder of modern British ballet and of Ashton’s career as choreographer), George Balanchine (the great Russian-American choreographer and Ashton’s exact contemporary), the ballerina Margot Fonteyn, the ballet teacher Vera Volkova, and the leading dancer Michael Somes. These appreciations cover thirty-four years of choreography by Ashton, the larger reasons for his greatness as an artist, and the endearing qualities of his personality. But Somes, at the end of his appreciation, tucks in a note about a “signature step” that occurs in every Ashton ballet. “Not many people who have watched and loved his work over many years realise”, he wrote, that this step has become an Ashton tradition. “Even when a new work is completed, room must somewhere be found for it in one form or another…. (It) has become dear to all of us who have had the privilege of working with Frederick Ashton. For us, it is a symbol of the reverence and the high esteem that we have for him.”

Somes left it to his readers to discover what that step is, though.

Only when the critic David Vaughan wrote Frederick Ashton and his Ballets (1977), one of the most beloved of all ballet books, were the components of this step revealed in print. In technical terms, he gives the enchaînement as follows – posé en arabesque (i.e. a step onto pointe, or onto the ball of the foot, with the other leg stretched straight behind), coupé dessous (i.e. a small step back, transferring the weight onto the other foot, while picking up the first foot), small développé à la seconde (in which the raised foot is brought into the ankle of the supporting leg, is drawn up a little, and is then extended out to the side), pas de bourrée dessous (a series of four small steps, transferring the weight sideways in the direction of the développé), pas de chat (a sideways jump in which the knees are bent and which begins and ends with the feet closed together in fifth position). Vaughan also revealed that this step, or sequence of individual steps, is known by dancers as the “Fred Step”. Ashton often preferred his friends to call him Freddie, but Fred is the name that most dancers, even those close to him, tended to use; or “Sir Fred” as he became, two years after the premiere of Fille, in the Birthday Honours of 1962.

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Ashton himself, as Somes and Vaughan both knew, liked to insist that he thought of this step-cluster not as “Fred” but as “Pavlova”.

In an interview just before his eightieth birthday, he described it as a talisman. Anna Pavlova had been his introduction to ballet.

“She injected me with her poison”, he often said, “and there was an end of me”. And, even though he went on to work with several of the twentieth century’s other greatest ballerinas, he was seldom in any doubt that Pavlova had been not only his first but the finest. When, in the 1960s, he asked Bronislava Nijinska “Who was the greatest ballerina of them all?”, he was gratified when she, without hesitation, replied “Pavlova”. (When he asked “What about Karsavina?”, she answered merely “Belle femme, belle femme.”) He never ceased to draw inspiration from his many memories of Pavlova as he had watched her between 1917 and her death in 1931.

So what was the “poison” she had planted in his veins? A devotion to classical dance itself: classicism not as mere academicism but as an endlessly expressive river into which all other dance forms could pour their enriching streams. His old colleague Robert Helpmann, who had danced in Pavlova’s company, said to an interviewer in 1970: “Every ballet that Fred choreographed, one knew or one saw that the principal female role would have been ideal for Pavlova.

Next time you talk to him, ask him about it. Because I did and he said ‘Yes, of course she would have been wonderful. Because I think of her when I’m working all the time.’”

Sir Robert Helpmann, Sir Frederick Ashton, & Derek Rencher in Ashton’s Cinderella

Today, our prime evidence for how Pavlova danced are the several short films she made of various short dances in her repertor, and the many photographs taken of her. Ashton was adamant that the films gave a particularly poor, misleading impression of her.

He would describe the unsurpassed finesse of certain aspects of her allegro technique, and the tremendous control of her adagio technique; he would explain the stylistic fascination she exerted by showing steps at angles (“never boringly, flat-on to the audience”) ,or by ending pirouettes in non-formulaic positions. Above all, however, he would show – often by demonstrating - the heady perfume of her dance personality: the way she would crown a dance moment by the use of her eyes, the exoticism with which she would wreathe her arms around her head, the intensity with which she would bend her upper body while performing a grand port de bras, the little needlepoint steps with which she displayed her strikingly arched feet.

Over the decades, the renditions he gave to younger dancers over the decades seemed to catch the very essence of bygone dancers, but none more so than Pavlova. Today, many dance-goers derive their main idea of Pavlova from such Ashton dancers as the Thais pas de deux (1971). Antoinette Sibley, the ballerina upon whom he choreographed this, has said “Pavlova is almost all he talked about when he was making it.”

The talisman came from the Gavotte Pavlova that she often performed. Wearing mock-1800 costume, she danced it to winningly lowbrow music by Lincke called The Glow Worm. In his old age, Ashton, talking people through the lyrics, would show them how she phrased it: “Glow,” (posé en arabesque, the first quarter-phrase) “little glow-worm, (coupé dessous, small développé a la seconde, the second quarter-phrase) “glimmer” (pas de bourrée) “glimmer” (pas de chat) – and, running that concluding half-phrase together in a single flow, he would show how the tripping pas de chat arrived in a pounce on the first syllable of the second “glimmer”. When did he first place it in one of his ballets? In 1994, the ballerina Alicia Markova, speaking at the Ashton conference “Following Sir Fred’s Steps”, recalled the first time she worked with Ashton, in the short ballet that closed Nigel Playfair’s 1930 production of the play Mariage à la Mode.

“It was the first time we met, and we seemed to get along very well. He started to choreograph the dances, and in the pas de deux, I met for the first time what was later to become the ‘Fred Step’ at the time we both knew it was not Fred’s step, it was the step Anna Pavlova danced in her ‘Gavotte.’ He suddenly said to me, ‘You know that step she danced?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Let’s do it in the pas de deux.’ That was the very first time we had that step – it became the ‘Fred Step’. Perhaps that will put on record how that came about.” However, since the Fred Step seems not to occur in his enduring classic Façade (1931), it may well have been Pavlova’s death, later in 1931, that prompted him to start putting into the dances he went on to make, as if consecrating his art to hers. Certainly it’s there in contemporary film footage of his 1933 Rambert ballet Les Masques and in the ballet sequences he made for the 1935 movie Escape Me Never.

The Original Cast of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Enigma Variations

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Dame Merle Park & David Wall in The Walk to the Paradise Garden

Even in so simple a sequence, it’s possible to bring yet more analytical detail. For the 1994 Ashton conference Following Sir Fred’s Steps, the former Royal Ballet dancer, ballet-master, and notator Adrian Grater observed that the posé en arabesque is usually followed by a small fondu (i.e. in which the supporting leg bends at the knee), and that the small développé is executed en fondu. I might complicate the matter yet further by adding that a particular sequence of ports de bras often, not always, accompanies this sequence of lower-body steps. The terminology might tire the reader, though; more important, such specifics would still seem lifeless unless each part of the sequence is executed with an Ashtonian sense of upper-body style. The eyes should show the focus of each part of the phrase; the wrists and fingers should be fluently submerged into the body’s changing line. Today, the Royal Ballet conjugates the Fred Step (incorporating a change of ballet vocabulary from posé to piqué) as follows: 1.

Piquée arabesque ouverte. Step on to pointe, or onto the ball of the foot, with the other leg stretched out behind.

2.

Fondu. Bend knee of supporting leg.

3.

Coupé piqué, petit développé à la seconde, fondu. Close extended leg behind the supporting foot on full or half point, keeping it straight. Draw what was the supporting foot up the ankle of the supporting leg and extend it to the side (but not high), at the same time bending the supporting knee.

4.

Pas de bourrée dessous. A series of three small steps travelling sideways, first closing the extended foot behind, stepping sideways onto the other foot – both steps on full or half pointe – and closing the first foot to the front, bending both knees.

5.

Pas de chat. A sideways jump starting and finishing in fifth position, during which first the back foot and then the front foot are lifted to the knee.

One could go on defining and redefining here. For example, is the Royal Ballet’s definition of a pas de chat quite appropriate here? At the end of the Fred Step, this jump is usually so low and fast that the feet seldom reach the knee. On the other hand, I miss David Vaughan’s point that the développé was petit; I’m aware of only one instance where it becomes grand.

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But the point of this Pavlova/Ashton talisman is that the “signature” is hidden - different each time. By contrast, there are other characteristically Ashtonian choreographic strokes that are easy to recognise from one ballet to another. Many dance-goers will recognise the “There you have it” gesture, which occurs in a number of ballets from 1934 to 1980, the “walking-on-air” lifts that he invented in 1939 and went on using in pas de deux as late as 1977, and the “Margot” arabesque (in which the downward diagonal lines of the woman’s arms continue those of her shoulders and in turn are paralleled by that of her raised leg), which is to be found especially in Symphonic Variations, Scènes de ballet, and Cinderella. But the Fred Step is often tucked away. He may give it to the ballerina (Antoinette Sibley as La Capricciosa in Varii Capricci, 1983) or to supporting dancers (Symphonic Variations, 1946). He may give it to a corps de ballet of peasants (Sylvia, 1952), to junior dancers (a pair of dancing artichokes in the Princess Ida vegetable ballet he made for the 1979 film Stories from a Flying Trunk), or to a minor character (Moth in The Dream, 1964). Often the eye is distracted from it by action elsewhere onstage. In each instance, it is changed in some aspect (particularly its conclusion), so that the entire step seems metamorphosed.

Perhaps its most archetypal setting occurs in Act One of Cinderella (1948). As the music sounds a gavotte, the Dancing Master teaches – of course! - the Gavotte Pavlova step to one Ugly Sister. But such is the fun of the situation that the audience is led to notice less their steps than this Stepsister’s timorous awkwardness - and the jealous pushiness with which the other sister forces her way in on the act.

Left alone a little later, Cinderella recalls her sisters’ efforts to dance.

When the music recalls that gavotte, she then shows, perfectly, how the Fred Step should have gone. She is at once so much the step’s mistress that she doesn’t end with its ending, she carries straight on, elongating the phrase into a quick series of relevés petits développés. Dancing it a second time to the other side, she embellishes its pas de chat into a less conventional jump.

Ashton choreographs the way that Haydn composed: he takes a motif, adds to it, plays with it, changes its dynamics, sets it against something dissimilar, turns it inside out, extends it, transforms it.

The Fred Step seldom occurs once alone in any place; usually, it is reiterated. If so, it may become a travelling step; or it may be danced to one side and then, mirror-fashion, to the other; or it may be cut up and reassembled in new form. An object-lesson in the latter occurs in Act One of The Two Pigeons (1961): when the female neighbour arrives, the heroine’s eight friends and then the heroine herself take turns to hold her hands by way of greeting, and each one, while doing so, performs a different chunk of the Fred Step, so that, by the end of this little social politesse, the young women have fragmented the old step and put it together again. When it arrives in The Dream (1964), it occurs top speed and back to front, first step last and vice versa. It is danced, nervously, at the end of the Scherzo,

by Moth - the last fairy left onstage. She is hovering on pointe in that piquée arabesque ouverte when Oberon comes up behind her and sends her packing. By contrast with that presto rendition, in Rhapsody (1980) it is danced largo by the corps de ballet. One ring of six men intersecting another ring of six women, the two circles moving slowly and smoothly in and out of each other, all the dancers enounce the phrase in solemn unison, like some sacred ritual. This effect is ideal for the music: these twelve, in variation VII of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, are dancing to his introduction of his counter-theme - the Dies Irae.

When members of the audience spot the Fred Step, it is usually by the swaying change of direction that marks its opening half-phrase.

The dancer seems to set forth in one direction, then to step back and to move in another. How Ashtonian this is: I’ll go left – no, I’ll go right. The humanity lies in the self-contradiction. And not just humanity. You can see a hedgehog doing it: Ashton himself as Mrs Tiggywinkle in the 1971 film The Tales of Beatrix Potter.

Some of its most recognizable uses have occurred when Ashton set it as an exit step, repeating it gently in a straight line until it takes the dancer into the wings. In his two last dances for Margot Fonteyn, Salut d’amour (1979) and Acte de presence (1984), Ashton himself joined the ballerina onstage and led her gently offstage, dancing the talisman as they went. In A Month in the Country (1976), Natalia Petrovna, after a brief scene with her loyal admirer Rakitin, takes his arm and leaves the stage with him: their backs are to the audience as they dance the Fred Step, letting it lead them in a gentle zigzag path, as if it were the easy this-and-that conversation that these two old friends are having. In Ashton’s 1955 Romeo and Juliet, by contrast, it is an entry step: the Nurse does it as she comes into the square with her page Peter. Likewise the seven ballerinas of Birthday Offering (1956) do it during the opening ensemble that brings them sweeping onto the stage.

Sometimes it is easy to miss the “Fred Step” even when it is happening centre stage. Some artists involved in the Royal Ballet’s most recent revival of A Wedding Bouquet (1937) remarked that it seemed not to occur in that ballet. In fact, the housekeeper Webster (a role created on Ninette de Valois, and danced for many years by Monica Mason) does it in her opening solo. If we don’t notice it, there are good reasons why. Ashton has changed the pas de chat ending into a non-jumping step (one that’s yet more like elaborate needlework,

Dame Margot Fonteyn & Sir Frederick Ashton

pas de bourrée piqué sur les pointes); the sequence is phrased as part of an ongoing dance; and the mind is drawn principally to Webster’s bossy character, to the brusque way she pulls up her skirts, and to the fussy way she holds her head. Likewise it’s simple to overlook the talisman in Scenes de ballet (1948) - even though it’s the ballerina who dances it, in her entrance solo, and just as she reaches centre stage. Ashton here, again, changes the signature step’s end, with an unusual version of tour jeté replacing the pas de chat; and anyway her dance contains so much else that it’s easy not to notice this only partly familiar component. And it has often gone unnoticed in Enigma Variations (1968), even though Ashton there does several little variations upon its theme during the duet for Isabel Fitton and Richard Arnold. For, while they are dancing it stage right, Elgar’s wife enters on the other side. Finding one of her husband’s scores on the table, she picks it up, turns a page, and then tenderly presses the script to her breast: all of which proves an eloquent counterpoint to the serene Isabel-Richard romance.

No wonder that many forget to look at what their feet are doing.

Sir Robert Helpmann, June Brae, Sir Frederick Ashton & Joan Sheldon in Ashton’s Façade

When Michael Somes stopped dancing, he became Ashton’s devoted régisseur. Anthony Dowell once recalled how sometimes, in rehearsals, Ashton would just be finishing his choreography when Somes would exclaim “We haven’t had a Fred Step yet - you’d better put one in.” Back in 1950, Ashton, when making Illuminations on New York City Ballet in 1950 (with no Somes on the scene), forgot to include his signature. Actually, there were a few occasions in later years, even with Somes present in rehearsals, when the Fred Step was omitted: such as the Thaïs pas de deux (1971), and The Walk to the Paradise Garden (1972). (The Pavlova step, of course, would be out of place in Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan (1975-76).)

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All these ballets were successes without any Fred Step in them.

Yet Ashton and Somes remained generally superstitious in their efforts to include it. In 1981, when reviving Illuminations for the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, Ashton made sure to add it this time.

The same year, when making new choreography for the Stravinsky opera-ballet Le Chant du Rossignol, the seventy-seven-year-old Ashton made one of his most radical transformations of the sequence, as danced by Dowell as the Fisherman. Here, the dancer leans more forward than usual in the opening arabesque, and raises his leg higher than usual; then he arches further back, while making the développé for once not small but large. Next, instead of a pas de chat, his legs explode in a temps de flêche. Whereas often the Fred Step looks like crochet, here the Fisherman takes it skimming over a great deal of stage space; and it’s performed in a zigzag that sweeps from side to side of the stage. As the musicdance scholar Stephanie Jordan has recently observed, the legato phrasing is so fluent that it fits a four-bar musical phrase the first two times (at its most orthodox, the Fred Step has eight counts), and then fits a five-bar phrase without any apparent strain.

Ashton remembered to include it in 1955, when making Romeo and Juliet in Copenhagen on the Royal Danish Ballet. Nonetheless, in 1985, when he revived that on London Festival Ballet (later English National Ballet), his new staging demonstrated three other Fred Steps. Possibly they were newly inserted for this later staging: better safe than sorry. One for Juliet and Romeo in the ballroom; one for the courtiers in the same scene; and one (very well hidden) for the townsfolk of Verona in Act II, usually overlooked because in the foreground Livia is dancing brilliantly.

The 1985 version of Romeo and Juliet is not the only ballet in which it occurs twice. Though the short Voices of Spring pas de deux

(1977) is short, the sequence happens twice in it. The first time is an especially neat display of Ashton’s craftsmanship: the ballerina and her partner dance it at the same time - she (in front) as the conclusion of her little solo, he (behind) as the opening step of his.

Both times, they dance it in opposite directions – one to the right as the other does it the left. Likewise there are story ballets in which it is to be found in more than one scene – for examples, Scenes One and Three of Daphnis and Chloe. In Scene One, it is rearranged to fit a seven-beat musical phrase; in Scene Three, when the finale has five beats to a bar, Ashton fits in the opening three-quarters of his signature - and then, as the music erupts into its last calls of joy, all the dancers (instead of skipping sideways in pas de chat) leap up and down in high changements on the spot – perhaps the most ebullient conclusion of any ballet.

And in La Fille mal gardée the Pavlova talisman crops up in all three of the ballet’s main scenes. Each of them, however, is tricky for the layman to spot. In Scene One, it’s the peasants (as in Sylvia) who do it. Although these smocked farm-workers do bending, beaten jumps to and fro that make them instantly heartcatching, Ashton also brings them right down to earth in the Fred Step, making them bend the supporting knee almost throughout. In Scene Two, by contrast, one of Lise’s friends dances a light, bright variation on the Fred Step as she starts to dance the flute dance. Then, as she summons her friends to join in, she and two others do a further variation on it, half in reverse. (Later, when Alain tries to play the flute himself, these friends respond by starting to dance the Fred Step very slowly and awkwardly. They just can’t complete it.)

The most recognisable Fred Step comes in the finale of Act Two: Lise does it, first alone, then with her friends. This too has a new twist, though. It substitutes, for the pas de chat, something that looks like an inversion of it: a pair of relevés assemblés - pulling up onto pointe just where the pas de chat would have arrived down on flat foot.

Ashton was rightly proud of his craftsmanship. There are rare works – the endlessly intricate Scènes de ballet is the main ultimate example – where he calls some attention to this. As a rule, though, his is the art that conceals art, so that those who love his works tend to do so for reasons other than that they are brilliantly constructed.

But he was an Old Master, even when young, and there is no choreographer whose work repays multiple viewings more. The Fred Step is just one of his choreography’s many secretions. To study the way he kept changing it and hiding it is to see in detail just how he handled his classical mastery of dance language. For all that this talisman may be broken down into individual steps, it’s right to call it a step as a whole. It is a unit; it has its own flow, its own vigour. With it, he took Pavlova’s poison and alchemically transformed it into the serum that would make his ballets grow.

Dame Margot Fonteyn in Ashton’s Apparitions

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Choreographers and Choreographic 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 are 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 Emeralds, Theme and Variations, and Who Cares? 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 Las Hermanas is performed by kind permission of Deborah, Lady MacMillan.

Paul Taylor’s Company B is performed with kind permission of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation, Inc. Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room TM, Choreography © Twyla Tharp.

The Sarasota Ballet offers special thanks to choreographers Gemma Bond, Ricardo Graziano, Johan Kobborg, Jessica Lang, Edwaard Liang, and Christopher Wheeldon.

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DIRECTOR

IAIN WEBB 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 fulltime 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. TiggyWinkle 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 183 ballets and divertissements by the end of the 2023 2024 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 seven 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.

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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

JOSEPH VOLPE 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 behindthe-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 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.

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.

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ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

MARGARET BARBIERI 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 19942000 and participated as an External Assessor for the Arts Council of England from 1995 - 2001.

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.

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 11 years at The Sarasota Ballet she has staged Wright’s

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ARTISTIC STAFF Victoria Hulland

ARTISTIC ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTORS

Originally from Upstate New York, Victoria studied ballet at Ellison Professional Training Program in New York City and then later at Boston Ballet School. She then went on to start her professional career with Sarasota Ballet in 2007 under director Iain Webb. In 2009, Victoria was promoted to the rank of Principal dancer and enjoyed a fifteen year career dancing numerous lead roles in works by Ashton, Balanchine, and MacMillan, to name a few. Throughout her time with Sarasota Ballet, Victoria had the privilege of being coached by world renowned figures in the ballet world including Margaret Barbieri, Sir Peter Wright, Sir Anthony Dowell, and Johan Kobborg. In 2023, Victoria joined the Sarasota Ballet artistic staff as Assistant to the Artistic Directors and works closely alongside Margaret Barbieri and Iain Webb with rehearsing the company repertoire.

Octavio Martin 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 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.

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.

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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.

Jessica Lang

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

The Sarasota Ballet is thrilled to welcome Jessica Lang this Season for a three year position as Artist in Residence.

Jessica Lang is an American director and choreographer with a prolific career spanning over two decades. A Juilliard graduate and former member of Twyla Tharp’s company, THARP!, she has created over 100 original works on renowned companies worldwide like American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Lang’s versatility is demonstrated through commissions for the Kennedy Center, Chicago Architectural Biennial, Dallas Museum of Art, and more. Accolades she has earned include the 2018 Martha Hill Mid-Career Award, 2017 Arison Award, 2014 Bessie Award, and in 2019 named Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence at Princeton University.

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PRINCIPALS

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From left to right: Ricki Bertoni Maximiliano Iglesias Macarena Gimenez Luke Schaufuss

From left to right: Ricardo Graziano Marijana Dominis Jennifer Hackbarth Ricardo Rhodes

PRINCIPALS

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PRINCIPALS

Marijana Dominis Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Promoted to Soloist in 2021 and Principal in 2022

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Dante Sonata, Façade, Les Patineurs, The Sleeping Beauty Vision Solo, Valses nobles et sentimentales; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, Donizetti Variations, The Four Temperaments, Serenade, Theme and Variations, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Bond’s Excursions; Broad’s Frequency Hurtz; Graziano’s En Las Calles de Murcia, The Pilgrimage, Shostakovich Suite, Sonatina; Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker; House’s Living Ghosts; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; 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; Robbins’ In The Night

Macarena Gimenez

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 as a Principal

Previous Company: Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Patineurs, Rhapsody, Varii Capricci; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony; Bond’s Excursions; Broad’s Frequency Hurtz; Graziano’s The Pilgrimage; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; Petipa’s Swan Lake Act III Black Swan Pas de Deux; Robbins’ Fancy Free, In The Night Lead and Featured Roles in previous 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.

Ricardo Graziano Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2010 Promoted to Principal in 2011

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Dante Sonata, Enigma Variations, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Illuminations, Jazz Calendar, Marguerite and Armand, Méditation from Thaïs, Monotones II, Symphonic Variations, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Les Patineurs, 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; House’s Living Ghosts; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes, Elite Syncopations, Las Hermanas; Nijinsky’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Robbins’ The Concert, Fancy Free, In The Night; 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.

T H E S A R A S OTA B A L L E T CO M PA N Y M E M B

Jennifer Hackbarth

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 as a Principal

Previous Company: Dresden Semperoper Ballet, New York City Ballet Lead and Featured Roles in previous companies include: Watkin’s Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadere; Forsythe’s Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, The Second Detail, Impressing the Czar; Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, The Nutcracker; Dawson’s Romeo and Juliet, Giselle; Berisov’s La Esmeralda; Peck’s Heatscape

Maximiliano Iglesias Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022

Previous Company: Ballet Estable del Teatro Colón Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Les Patineurs; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony; Bond’s Excursions; Graziano’s The Pilgrimage; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes; Petipa’s Swan Lake Act III Black Swan Pas de Deux; Robbins’ In The Night, Fancy Free Lead and Featured Roles in previous 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.

Ricardo Rhodes 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, Divertimento No.15, 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 La Sylphide, 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

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Luke Schaufuss

PRINCIPALS

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019

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

Ricki Bertoni Character Principal

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2010 Promoted to Character Principal in 2014

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Dante Sonata, Façade, Les Rendezvous; Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Bond’s Excursions; Broad’s Frequency Hurtz; Graziano’s En las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness, The Pilgrimage, Shostakovich Suite, Sonatina; Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker; House’s Living Ghosts; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations; Morris’s The Letter V; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Schaufuss’ La Sylphide pas de deux; Walsh’s I Napoletani; Wright’s Giselle, Mirror Walkers, Summertide

Daniel Pratt First Soloist

SOLOISTS

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

Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, Enigma Variations, Façade, Jazz Calendar, Monotones II, Sinfonietta, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci, A Wedding Bouquet; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Serenade, Western Symphony; Bond’s Excursions; Broad’s Frequency Hurtz; Darrell’s Othello; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia, Sonatina; House’s Living Ghosts; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes; Morris’s The Letter V; Robbins’ Fancy Free; 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

Anna Pellegrino First Soloist

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Soloist in 2022

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Dante Sonata, Façade, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, Donizetti Variations, The Four Temperaments, Serenade, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Broad’s Frequency Hurtz; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; Graziano’s The Pilgrimage, House’s Living Ghosts; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes, Las Hermanas; Taylor’s Company B; Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Walsh’s I Napoletani

Yuki Nonaka Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Promoted to Soloist in 2022

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Façade, Les Patineurs, Rhapsody, 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; Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty Act III Blue Bird Pas de Deux; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

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

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Dante Sonata, Façade, Les Patineurs; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, The Four Temperaments, 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, The Pilgrimage, Shostakovich Suite; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Taylor’s Company B; Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs; Wright’s Giselle

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

Evan Gorbell Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Promoted to Coryphée and Soloist in 2023

Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Patineurs, Varii Capricci; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Broad’s Frequency Hurtz; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; House’s Living Ghosts; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes; Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty Act III Pas de Quatre; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

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CORYPHÉE 100

Sierra Abelardo

Willa Frantz

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Promoted to Coryphée in 2023

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (21/22) Promoted to Coryphée 2023

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Patineurs, Varii Capricci; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony; Bond’s Excursions; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes; Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty Act III Blue Bird Pas de Deux

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Dante Sonata, Façade, Les Patineurs; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, Serenade, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Bond’s Excursions; House’s Living Ghosts; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes, Elite Syncopations; Wright’s Giselle

Samuel Gest

Dominique Jenkins

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Promoted to Coryphée in 2023

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Promoted to Coryphée in 2022

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Valse nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; House’s Living Ghosts; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes; Morris’ The Letter V; Wright’s Summertide

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Patineurs, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Rhapsody; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Graziano’s Sonatina; House’s Living Ghosts; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations; Morris’s The Letter V; Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty Act III Pas de Quatre; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide

Emelia Perkins

Paige Young

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Promoted to Coryphée in 2022

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Coryphée in 2023

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Patineurs, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, The Four Temperaments; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; Graziano’s The Pilgrimage; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; Lang’s Shades of Spring; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes; Morris’s The Letter V; Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty Act III Pas de Quatre; Taylor’s Brandenburgs; Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs; Walsh’s I Napoletani

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Patineurs, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Rhapsody, Varii Capricci ; Balanchine’s Divertimento No.15, Serenade,The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony; Bintley’s A Comedy of Errors; Bond’s Excursions; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; Graziano’s Amorosa, Sonatina; Kobborg’s La Sylphide; MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes, Elite Syncopations; Morris’s The Letter V; Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs;Wright’s Giselle,

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CORPS DE BALLET 102

Isabella Benton

Cooper Blankenburg

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at Charlotte Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 Trained at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Graduate Program, The Rochester School of Dance, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

Kennedy Falyn Cassaday

Mihai Costache

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

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

Olivia Dugan

Israel Ellis

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 Trained at San Francisco Ballet School, The Washington School of Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Apprentice at The Sarasota Ballet, promoted in 2023.

Joshua Fickling

Josh Fisk

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 Trained at Royal Ballet School, Moorland international Ballet Academy

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

Javier Gutierrez Cuervo

Mark Hare

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

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 Trained at English National Ballet School

Lucia Hartvig

Andrea Marcelletti

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 Trained at Fundación Julio Bocca, Instituto Superior de Arte del Teatro Colón

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

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CORPS DE BALLET 104

Jordan Micallef

Alessandra Nova

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 Trained at English National Ballet School

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Trained at Pacific Northwest Ballet

Bel Pickering

Gabriella Schultze

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

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022 Previous Company: Ballet West II

Samantha Stillwell Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2023 Previous Company: Washington School of Ballet

Juliano Weber Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019

Previous Company: Intuição Companhia de Ballet

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APPRENTICES

Joseph Boswell

Anna Victoria Camacho

Trained at Boston Ballet School

Trained at English National Ballet School

Savannah Campbell

Nina Reis

Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (20/21) and The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory

Trained at Dutch National Ballet Academy

Hailey Stinchcomb

Jessica Templeton

Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (20/21) and The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory

Trained at The Royal Ballet School

Emmanuelle Watkins Trained at The Royal Ballet School

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Serving the Bay Area with Print Marketing Solutions Since

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1500 N. Washington Blvd., Sarasota, Florida 34236 941-366-0755 | 800-282-6192 Xerox Premier Lakewood Ranch CAI – Community Partner Association Institute Business Alliance Manatee Chamber SAGE Siesta Key The Greater Sarasota of Commerce PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS Chamber of Commerce Chamber of Commerce 107

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.

They also take leading roles in The Sarasota Ballet School’s production of The Nutcracker and the annual Images of Dance performance. Seventy-three percent of the 2023 - 2024 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. Each year the Studio Company performs in an annual collaboration with Key Chorale, at Marie Selby Gardens, and at retirement communities such as Plymouth Harbor and Sarasota Bay Club.

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

2023 – 2024 Studio Company: Tricia Carmody Haley Dale Wyatt Dodd Stephanie Drenckhahn

Joe Huberty Ella Lau Riley Putnal Noah Rodenberger

Cameron Smith Pearl Smith Tia Wenkman

(Back Row) Haley Dale, Noah Rodenberger, Tricia Carmody, Wyatt Dodd, Riley Putnal, Joe Huberty, Tia Wenkman (Front Row) Pearl Smith, Cameron Smith, Ella Lau, Stephanie Drenckhahn

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Thank You We extend our great appreciation to our loyal subscribers for joining us each Season and for being such an important member of The Sarasota Ballet family.

Your long-term support and commitment to this mission plays a vital role in the sustainability of this mission and to ensuring the experience and beauty of dance continues, from the stage and into the community.

As the 2023 - 2024 Season begins, we take note and send a heartfelt THANK YOU to the many subscribers who have been joining us for 10+ years.

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Luminary Circle $100,000 +

Our Special Angel

Jean Weidner Goldstein

Sydney Goldstein

Patricia Golemme and Timothy Fullum

Program 6

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Ernie Kretzmer

In Loving Memory of Alisa Kretzmer The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory

Paul and Sharon Steinwachs Program 3, Live Music

Jean Weiller Program 2 111

Benefactor Circle $75,000 - $99,999

Mark Famiglio Panoramic Score

Pat and Ann Kenny In a State of Weightlessness

In Loving Memory of Robert and Jeanne Zabelle Bob and Jeanne Zabelle Endowment Fund for The Sarasota Ballet at Gulf Coast Community Foundation

Las Hermanas

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Guardian Circle $50,000 - $74,999

Sandra and Neil DeFeo Varii Capricci

Jan and Bill Farber Varii Capricci

Karol Foss The American

Julie A. Harris Emeralds

Harry Leopold and Audrey Robbins Graziano World Premiere

Phil and Kim Lombardo Lyric Pieces

Frank and Katherine Martucci Sonatina

Bill and Linda Mitchell Theme and Variations

Rosemary and Lou Oberndorf Who Cares?

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Guardian Circle $50,000 - $74,999

Mercedita OConnor Emeralds

Eleanor Schmidt

In Loving Memory of Bert Schweigaard-Olsen

Bud and Betty Shapiro Company B

Theme and Variations

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Connoisseur Circle $25,000 - $49,999

Bob and Ginger Cannon Bailey In a State of Weightlessness

Isabel Anchin Becker Dante Sonata

Wendy and Jim Cox In the Upper Room

Linda A. Fiorelli Varii Capricci

Robin and Roy Grossman Who Cares?

Sherry and Mike Guthrie In the Upper Room

Dr. Amy L. Harding The American

Joe and Mary Kay Henson Ballet Hispánico

Huisking Family Fund

of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County

The Art of War

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Connoisseur Circle $25,000 - $49,999

Richard March

Graziano World Premiere

Robin Klein-Strauss and Michael Strauss In a State of Weightlessness

Richard and Cornelia Matson Emeralds

Claudia McCorkle and BEAU Salute

Peter B. Miller and Dr. Martha Harrison Sinfonietta

Kimberley Anne Pelyk Ballet Hispánico

Dr. Bart Price Panoramic Score

Rosemary Reinhardt and David Welle Sonatina

Richard S. Johnson

In Loving Memory of Marsha Johnson

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In Loving Memory of Helen March

Emeralds

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Connoisseur Circle $25,000 - $49,999

Noel and Toby Siegel Salute

Hillary Steele Company B

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Aficionado Circle $15,000 - $24,999

James and Maryann Armour Family Foundation The Art of War

Shari and Steve Ashman In a State of Weightlessness

Kay Delaney and Murray Bring Graziano World Premiere

Darlene J. and Richard P. Carroll, M.D. Varii Capricci

Bonnie and William Chapman The Art of War

Fred and Lynda Doery Varii Capricci

Pam and Duncan Golde-Morrison

JoAnn Heffernan Heisen

Barbara Jacob Graziano World Premiere

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Aficionado Circle $15,000 - $24,999

Tina and Rick Lieberman In the Upper Room

Joan Mathews Sinfonietta

Donna Maytham

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Stu and Gini Peltz Emeralds

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Judy Rudges

Micki Sellman

In a State of Weightlessness

Sonatina

In Loving Memory of Stan Katz

In Loving Memory of Walter Maytham

Who Cares?

In Loving Memory of Jerry Sellman

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Aficionado Circle $15,000 - $24,999

Alison Gardner and Jan Sirota Company B

Tom and Maureen Steiner Who Cares?

Lois Stulberg Live Music

Melliss Kenworthy Swenson

Susan and Charles Wilson The American

Jared Winters Lyric Pieces

In Loving Memory of Curt Swenson

Salute

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Robert and Sara Arthur Las Hermanas

Patricia Belote Panoramic Score

Jonathan Strickland Coleman and Rick Kerby Salute

Bruce Ensinger and Clark Denham Emeralds

Laura A. Feder Graziano World Premiere

Frances D. Fergusson and John Bradbury Las Hermanas

Cami and Brad Hunter

Elaine Keating

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In Loving Memory of Dr. Sidney Katz

Sinfonietta

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Patrons Circle $10,000 - $14,999

Waldron Kraemer and Joan Lovell The American

Michael Paul Landy

Rose Marie Proietti Theme and Variations

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In Loving Memory of Masayasu Tamatani In the Upper Room

Marcia Jean Taub and Peter Swain

Sallie Carter Tyler Graziano World Premiere

Thomas and Gwendolyn Watson Sonatina

In Loving Memory of Ethel and Ron Taub

In a State of Weightlessness

Marilynn Petrillo

In Loving Memory of Marsha Johnson

Sinfonietta

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David Beliles In Loving Memory of Ruth Beliles & for Kate

Helga and Jerry Bilik

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Georgia Court

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The Fletcher Family Charitable Foundation

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Devotee Circle $5,000 - $9,999

Ellen Goldman

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Dr. Alastair HunterHenderson and Dr. Noralyn Marshall

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Devotee Circle $5,000 - $9,999

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In Honor of Emily Walsh

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Devotee Circle

$5,000 - $9,999

Florence Wildner

Richard Wires

Fremajane Wolfson In Loving Memory of Blair Wolfson

Sheila and Merrill Wynne

Sora Yelin In Loving Memory of Cary F. Yelin

Charles O. Wood, III and Miriam M. Wood Foundation

Anonymous (3)

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Golden Circle $2,500 - $4,999 Kay Aidlin

In Loving Memory of Stephen Aidlin

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In Memory of Jerry McCoy

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In Memory of Lynnette Bennett

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In Memory of Satwant Chowdhry

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Silver Circle $1,000 - $2,499

Janette Albrecht Caroline C. Amory and Marjorie A. Floyd Patricia Anderson In Loving Memory of Richard Anderson

Henry Anthony and Carol Geiger Ronelle Ashby Mairian and Gordon Beattie Meg Bell Jon and Kris Berg Ellen Berman Barbara Blumfield Linda and Glen Bodzy Ina and Carl Born Barbara Brizdle James W. Brooks Diana Cable Judy Cahn In Loving Memory of Charles Cahn

Stephanie and Russell Campbell Paul Cantor and Michelle Roy Laura and Bill Carnes Barbara J. Chin In Loving Memory of Joseph B. Chin

Stephanie and David Citron Alan Cohen

In Loving Memory of Natalie Cohen

Stanley and Norma Cohen Neal Colton and Sharon Prizant Katie Couchot Chris and Bruce Crawford Terrence Cronin Robin and Chase Curtis David Darrin Sona and David Degann Norbert and Ann Winslow Donelly Murray V. Duffin John and Patricia Dupps Rosalyn and Joel Ehrenpreis Annette and Edward Eliasberg Marge and Leon Ellin Cheryl and Scott Elsbree Jonathan Elsner Barbara and Bill Epperson Ronald and Sharon Erickson Steve and Wendy Fisk Donald Fosselman Michael and Jean Freed Suzan Friedman Barbara Vanderkolk Gardner Alfred and Anne Garrett Adela and Anthony Glover Carol and James Gosart Charles and Bonnie Granatir Helen and John Habbert D’Anne Hurd and George Forsythe 130 130

Ann and Robert Jackson Elizabeth M. Johnston Charitable Fund Anne F. Roberts Sara and Benjamin Robinson Alison Jones In Loving Memory of Thomas H.W. Jones Susan L. Robinson Anne E. Jones Susan Robinson Joseph and Teresa Kadow Wylie and Nancy Royce Chelle Stoner and Warren Kelly Jeremy Schwimmer and Sarah Lyons Richard Kemmler Abby Sherry In Loving Memory of Murray Sherry Terri and Michael Klauber Marion and Jeff Shields Susie Klingeman Barbara B. and Jeffrey C. Shivers Ronald Kluck and Joan Volpe Steven and Frances Siegler Vivian Kouvant Ira and Carole Singer Randi and Donald Kreiss Dawn Spencer Swanson and Kutner Family Fund Noreene Storrie Dorothy Lawrence Hadassah Strobel Melvy Erman Lewis In Loving Memory of Martin Strobel Holly and Jay Logan Lance Stubbs Nancy and Edward Loke Diran and Virginia Tashian Gerda Maceikonis Michael Thompson Guy and Maria Mandler James Triant Dr. James and Nicholan Martin Charlotte Stewart and Carl Troiano Margaret Melun and Lt. Col. Ky L. Anna Maria Troiano Thompson Candyce and Peter Widness Catherine and C. David Moll Ron and Geri Yonover Michael and Michelle Morris Marsha Zapson Keith F. Nelson and Judith K. Marquis Anonymous Howard and Barbara Noble, Jr. Paula Norwood Conrad and Lenée Owens Susan M. Palmer Kathleen and John Polanowicz Megan Powers Pamela Revels

Gifts are current as of September 28, 12, 2023.

2022. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Enthusiasts $500 - $999

Kyuran Ann Choe-Albano, MD William Anderson and Gary Satterfield Begay Atkinson Billie Baren Joan W Bauerlein Lenore Shapiro and Glen Behrendt Marc Behrendt Barbara Blackburn Jan and Simon Braun Cynthia Edstrom Byce Elizabeth Catanzano Michelle and Joseph Caulkins Naomi and Saul Cohen Nicole Converse Patricia Corson and Martin Goldstein Kristie Cox Dr. and Mrs. Robert E. Crootof Charitable Foundation Linda and Dick Dickinson Sandy Fink Cherie and Jeff Finn Barbara Fisk Elaine Foster Donald Friedman Martha and Thomas Galek Hermione Gilpin Bonnie and David Goldmann John Andrew Hamilton and Michael Petersen Beverly A. Harms John and Nancy Harris Elizabeth Hazeltine

Meg Maguire Barbara and Stephen Mason Peter and Teresa Masterson Lynn Marie McBrier Melissa McCoy Bonnie McIntyre Tom Metz Nancy Milbauer In Memory of Alan Milbauer

Don Millen Dean and Patty Miller Sandra Miranda Betsy Mitchell Leone Modestino Linda Kiechlin Mohanty Pamela and John Mousseau Suzan Nahas Eric and Mafalda Neikrug Wiley and Fran Osborn Douglas Owen and Suzanne Grant Lee and Jan Peakes Lynne Pettigrew and Jay Plager Julie Planck Elizabeth Reese Barbara and Peter Rittner

Karen Roosen Dr. Jack and Nancy Rozance John Rufer In Memory of Joan Lappin

Sidney and Marcia Rutberg Tobi Schneider Rhona and Steven Schnoll James and Kathleen Scholler Marilyn and Ron Shapo Jane Sheridan Victoria Sterling Joan Tatum Jacqueline and John Thompson Dr. Martin Tucker Philip and Helene Tucker Mario Vasquez Jason Volpe Martha and Bill Wallace Jayne Weiss Renee and Tom West Dorothy P. Williams Lynn and Alan Winslow Jane Woods Anonymous

In Loving Memory of Gladys A. Hazeltine

Dr. Audrey Heimler Bob Hemingway Janet Hyman James W. and Mary R. Heslin Dr. Terry Hynes Sue Jacobson Marvin Kadesh and Marie Monsky Deborah Kalb Ronald and Rita Karns Jerry Kauff Bruce and Barbara Keltz Robert Kloss Donna Koffman Carla and TK Kortendick Judith and Ike Koziol Horace and Lorrie Liang Evie and Allen Lichter Peggy Lichter and David DiDomenico John Lindsey Sheri Lublin

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

SNN Congratulates The Sarasota Ballet on 32 Years of Beautiful Performances

THE SUNCOAST NEWS NETWORK

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Admirers $250 - $499

Mira Akins Kathleen A. Fischer and Chuck Angulo Amy Barkin Gaele Barthold Greg and Donna Bergamo Aimee Choinard Laura Denault Marsha and Joseph Dick Michael Dukes and Belle Bulwinkle Douglas Endicott Carole Fox

Rhoda and Stuart Friedman Wanda Garofalo Eugenia K. Glasser Rita Glosser Barry Golin Anothony Grasso and John Garisto Joelle R. Hamovit Meg and Mark Hausberg Robert T. Hildebrand Jean and Peter Huber Sandra Jennings Eshima Cynthia A. Kalnow Bruce Kalt

Richard Kiegler and Ruthann Sturtevant-Kiegler Marlene Kitchell Philippe Koenig and Jan Wallace Anthony and Dorid Lamb Gail Landry Jessica Lang-Segawa Pamela Akins and Barry Levinson John Hargraves Lewis Andrea Lieberman Kathleen and Erin Long Judy Love Donald and Judith Markstein Jeanne and Andrew Marlowe Virginia Marsten Jacqueline Massari Jane McCormack David Morriss Phyllis Myers Jon O. Newman Jeannette Paladino Phillip Parham and Nettie Pepe Parham Charlotte and Charles Perret Michael Pesce Dr. Richard L. Prager Robin Reif and Donald Friedman Ronald and Marci Rhodes Andrew Rief Sandra and Bill Ripberger Nancy and Richard Robb Francine Rosenberg Sue Shepard In Loving Memory of Don Helgeson

Joel Herman and Milt Sleeter Douglas J. Smith Judi Stern Krista Varady Alison Vesco Michael Vlaisavljevich and Stephanie Arthur Daniel Walcott Jenny Aldrich Walker Carolyn K. Warren Carol Wolf Anonymous

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Advocates $100 - $249

Cecile Adams Priscilla Adams Francine Alexander Claire Arbour Sorcha Augustine Rachel Azzarelli Denise Barker Nicholas and Jocelyn Baskey Jalina Beck Linda Berliner Gregory Blake Suzanne Bralow Leanna Breese and Alec Vance James and Janet Breidster Judy Brody Mary Buckley Stuart S. Burstein Karen Bush Deborah Butt Kim Azar-Calka and Brian Calka Barbara Callahan Colette Canavan

Joseph Carey Julie Carmody Lisa Charles Colman Family In Memory of Vielka Sheppard Kevin Comer Elsbeth M. Connors Glenn and Evelyn Cooper Stevie and John Coppin-Polking Cheri Coryea Renee Crames Joanne and Warren Crowell Barbara Cruikshank Christopher Curtis Jacqueline and Harold D’Alessio Susan Loren Davidson Maria and Dennis Day Jennifer DeStefano In Loving Memory of Clara DiClemente Kathi Doepfner Shelly Dorfman William Draeger Jr. Barbara and Les Dubitsky

Autumn O. Mathisen Edoff Barbara and Gary Eisenberg Judy Elson Virginia Everett and Bob Rose Nancy Michael Facchiano Dona Harmes Betty Ferguson Barry and Judy Fireman Nora and Don Fischer Kathleen Foley David and Carol Furer Susan Girese In Memory of Anthony Girese Sheila Gleason Elizabeth and Thomas Glembocki Faith and Michael Goldman Marjorie and Bruce Goldstein Lydia Gracing Judy Green and Tara Lamb Team Marshall Greenwald and Catherine Cooper Sara and Don Grivetti Sean Guerrasio

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Advocates Continued $100 - $249

Thomas Hackett Ann E. Hall Jan Hartman William Hatz Alisa Heedy Louise Heibner Lydia Hellmann Marcia Hendler Angel Henson Elaine C. Herda Dr. Gregory P. Hetter and Ms. Anita Pihl Hon. John Schultz & Mr. Gary L. Hill Christopher Hird Anne and Carl Hirsch John and Nina Hockenberry Matthew D. Holler

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Stephanie Horeis Barbara Horowitz Pamela Huelster Daniel Idzik and Kathleen Osborne Idzik Gail Jackson Barbara Jacoby James A. Johnson and Paul D. Dobrea Ron D. Johnson and Dr. Nancy Fogg-Johnson Susan K. Johnson Lyn and Ed Kahn Risa and Alan Kaplowitz Roger and Kristin Kaufman Valda Kaye Sean and Cara Keenan Carolyn Keidel Margaret Kelly John and Barbara Kerwin Ahita Keshmirian Phillip King

Thomas I. and Linda Z. Klein Philanthropic Fund Sarah B. Kling Katherine Knowles Carol Kopeck Lois Kourlas Margret Krakowiak Nancy J. Laird Susan Landsman Jo Ann White Lawall Sara LeFloch Alan Lenowitz and Terri Glasser Carolee K. Lesyk Arthur and Marcella Levin Leone Levy Joyce Locklear Jan Loomis Barbara Lorry Jacqueline V. LoRusso David Lough Dorothy L. Lutter Richard Mace Seth Marcantel Albert and Marita Marsh Carol Mathias Kathleen and Craig McCoy Jennifer McCreadie Drs. Gordon and Antigone Merritt Kathleen M. Mlotok Carolyn Montgomery Lovella Naylor Dorothy Yeoman Neuhauser Susan and Stephen Neumer George G. Nimick Regina Noonan Marilyn Nordby Jared Oaks Leslie Ohl Vickie Oldham Mary Olha Joanne Olian

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Margaret H. Opp Theron Palmer Laura and Fred Pardee Lorelei A. Paster Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Perkins Sally W. Peterson Barbara and Frank Posa Michele Glazer DJ Arnold and Richard Prescott Kelley Rea W. Lawrence Ream Michéle D. Redwine Felice Schulaner and Dennis Rees Jerry and Carole Reid Natasha and Colin Reisner Pamela Reiter Brenda Griffiths and Richard Reston Janet Rivera Robert and Adam Rodenberger Beverly Root Sally Ross Jodi Ruberg Bruce E. Rodgers Oscar Cecil Russell Joyce Russo Ellen Safian In Memory of Joan Lappin Sharon Sakson Sara Sardelli-Rachon and Kenny Rachon Thomas J. Savage Gail Schaeffer Julie Schechter Bernstein Irwin and Denise Scheineson Steven Schnoll Marcella Schuyler Mikhail Scott Patricia Seftel Erwin and Carol Segal Susan Serling and David Kessler Carol Shapiro Linda R. Simons

David and Linda Sischy David Smith and Carlton Johnson Beverly and James Smith Nancy and Richard Sneed Sandra Sosinski Alfredo Sotomayor Christopher W. Soule Susan Spencer Dale Sprintz Kim Stadlin Irene J. Stankevics Jaclyn Stapleton Andrea Steinacker Dee and Charles Stottlemyer Leslie and Ted Sugarman Lesley Svenson Peggy Sweeney Patricia Sweet Edward Swindell Lauren Taylor Judith G. Taylor Sondra J. Thorson

Carol and Terry Thorstenson Willie Deaton Daniel Turk Walt and Carole Ulin Kathleen Ulman Linda and Gary Ulrich Jacob and Patricia Van Der Vorm Susan and Bruce Vermette Stanley Vickers Bernard and Lauren Walsh Marcia Ward Michele T. Ward Carolyn Warner Sandra W. Warner Gisela Weinland Wendy and Chad Weiss Alix Wexler Kim Wheeler Jo Ann White Lawall Drs. George and Norma Wohl Stanley Zielinski Anonymous (4)

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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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.

Toni Armstrong

David Ian Bavar

Stephen Cease

Christina Cowell

Lisa Walsh

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.

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Foundations and Public Support Corporate, Foundation & Public Support contributes immeasurably to the mission of The Sarasota Ballet. We invite you to learn more about the ways in which you, your business, employer, or a Foundation can provide support and make a lasting impact on the Company, education, and community engagement programs.

For additional opportunities throughout the Season, please contact Melissa McCoy, Chief Strategy & Advancement Officer at 941.225.6504 or mmccoy@sarasotaballet.org.

$100,000+ Public Support

$100,000+ Foundation Support

PHILLIP & JANICE LEVIN FOUNDATION William A. Farber, Trustee

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Foundations and Public Support $50,000 - $99,999 Foundation Support ALFRED & ANN

GOLDSTEIN FOUNDATION Jean Allenby Goldstein Touring Fund

VIRGINIA B. TOULMIN FOUNDATION

$25,000 - $49,999 Foundation Support

BANK OF AMERICA CLIENT FOUNDATION

CORNELIA T. BAILEY FOUNDATION

LELA D. JACKSON

FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023.

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Foundations and Public Support $10,000 - $19,999 Foundation Support CHARLES HENRY LEACH II FUND

CORDELIA LEE BEATTIE FOUNDATION

At Duquesne University

$5,000 - $9,999 Foundation Support

THE MURIEL O’NEIL FUND FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

At the Community Foundation of Sarasota County

$1,000 - $4,999 Foundation Support

ANNETTE J. HAGENS

MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

FAY A. SCHWEIM

MEMORIAL CHILDREN’S DANCE FUND

JOAN ARMOUR MENDELL FOUNDATION 142

GILBERT WATERS CHARITABLE FUND

WOMEN’S OUTREACH MINISTRY

CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER

Corporate Support $10,000 - $19,999

$5,000 - $9,999

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023.

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Corporate Support $1,000 - $9,999

GULF COAST ITALIAN CULTURE SOCIETY GOLDMAN, BABBONI, FERNANDEZ & WALSH

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Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023.

Corporate Support Our appreciation for the additional support from the following community partners: 99 Bottles Taproom & Bottle Shop All Faiths Food Bank The Benevity Community Impact Fund Coca-Cola Foundation Cyber Grants Designing Women Boutique and Estate Services Florida State University Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital The Leda Freedman Fund Neuro-Challenge Foundation for Parkinson’s PLANit Sarasota The Society Inc. of Suncoast Visit Sarasota County

Gifts are current as of September 28, 2023.

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Media Sponsors Our sincere appreciation to our Media Partners for supporting the mission of The Sarasota Ballet and ensuring our community is enriched and engaged to the beauty of dance.

Season Sponsor

Program Sponsor

The Nutcracker Sponsor The Nutcracker: Sarasota

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The Nutcracker: Venice

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The Sarasota Ballet Today MISSON AND VISION MISSION – We enrich lives, captivate emotions, and strengthen, and the community through the art of dance.

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

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 55 world premieres and 61 internationally renowned choreographers, The Company has achieved national and international acclaim. Next summer, The Sarasota Ballet will perform in London at the invitation of the worldrenowned Royal Ballet, a coup for our Company and our community.

Our reputation extends offstage as well with the Margaret Barbieri Conservatory, which provides instruction for talented pre-professional students from across the globe.

This past summer, we welcomed 199 students from across the United States who chose The Sarasota Ballet for their Summer Intensive experience. To serve our community, the Sarasota Ballet School separately provides quality dance education for all ages at all levels, including presenting a full-length student production of The Nutcracker. The performances were sold-out in 2022. We will once again have two performances in Venice and have increased to two performances in Sarasota.

We also take pride in our Community Engagement Programs and the many community partnerships we’ve forged that make them possible. Our expanding Dance – The Next Generation programs combine dance instruction with educational enrichment to help underserved children develop personal skills and confidence. Our Dance for All programs such as Silver Swans® and Joyful Movement through Parkinson’s, as well as free lectures, discount tickets, and tours help bring the joy of dance to everyone in our community.

As we look ahead, we are supported by our remarkable leadership, staff, students, patrons, corporate sponsors, community partners, and you, our audience. The Sarasota Ballet will continue to be mission-focused and look for new ways to increase our impact in our community and in the world of professional dance.

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The Martucci Legacy Society Love The Sarasota Ballet?

Consider a planned gift to support the future of dance.

”

Joy, enrichment, balance – friendship, community, diversity – life skills, self-confidence, perseverance! And always beauty!

These are just a few of the benefits ballet has brought to my life both as an audience member and as an amateur (wanna-be) ballerina! As I reflect on my own life, I look back on my career, but also note the richness that ballet has provided from early childhood to the present.

During the hardest and most stressful times ballet brought beauty and joy, restored perspective, and inspired me to persevere.

Now, when pop culture provides an easier path for artistic expression, The Sarasota Ballet supports and educates the young people who will keep the beauty of classical ballet alive and well. As a student in the adult program, I see the joy and camaraderie of returning students as well as adults who are discovering ballet for the first time. As a survivor of traumatic brain injury, I see the improvements in my own cognitive and physical deficits while witnessing the restorative benefits in other adults recovering from stroke, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s.

Meet Elaine Herda Adult Student in The Sarasota Ballet School and Legacy Society Member Since 2022

The Sarasota Ballet is a community treasure! My legacy gift is the best way to ensure that classical ballet will continue despite the easier path presented by pop culture. The artistry of our company dancers and support staff makes Sarasota residents proud to be part of an international community of classical ballet. I hope my gift provides young people with opportunities that I did not have and adults with the dream that came true for me in December when I danced in the Nutcracker for the first time at age 72.”

”

Scan here to download our Planned Giving Brochure 150

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 Chuck Angulo and Kathleen Fischer 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 Bonnie and William Chapman Lynn Chancer Alan Cohen Jonathan Strickland Coleman and Rick Kerby Edward N. Cooke Douglas Endicott Laura Feder Frances D. Fergusson Micki H. Gamer Alfred and Anne Garrett Ellen Goldman Jean Weidner Goldstein* Patricia A. Golemme Gudrun Graugaard Gerald and Deborah Hamburg Julie A. Harris* JoAnn Heffernan Heisen Elaine C. Herda Richard S. Johnson Deborah Kalb Richard Kemmler Pat and Ann Kenny

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* Kim Wheeler Charles and Susan Wilson Richard Wires *Denotes Leadership Gift

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GOLDMAN BABBONI FERNANDEZ MURPHY & WALSH

The Sarasota Ballet

Endowment Fund Established during the 2020 - 2021 Season with an inital $2 million dollar gift thanks to an anonymous patron, The Sarasota Ballet Endowment fund 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 this fund, The Sarasota Ballet operates endowed funds for Live Music and for Dance – The Next Generation.

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

Dance – The Next Generation 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 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.

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2023 - 2024 Season Patron Experiences Our patrons play an integral role in ensuring the performance, education, and community programs of The Sarasota Ballet continue to thrive. Annual contributions from individuals like you represent one of the most important sources of income for our organization. In appreciation for this generous support, The Sarasota Ballet offers appreciation events and customized experiences centered around the work of The Company, designed to bring you even closer to the art form.

Patron Experiences include: • The opportunity to sit in on Company rehearsals and Company classes • Invitations to attend appreciation events with Company dancers and special guest artists • Backstage tours • And more!

Patrons also receive special recognition in publications throughout the Season.

Patron Recognition includes: • Season Program Book • Performance Programs • Encore Annual Magazine • And more!

We invite you to be part of the patron experience and celebrate the upcoming Season onstage, behind the scenes, and in the community.

For more information on Patron Experiences, please scan below or visit our website at SarasotaBallet.org.

Contact Us Melissa McCoy CFRE, CFRM Chief Strategy & Advancement Officer 941.225.6504 | mmccoy@sarasotaballet.org

Lauren Stroman, CFRE Development Director 941.225.6510 | lstroman@sarasotaballet.org

Rachael Fisk Board & Patron Engagement Manager 941.225.6519 | rfisk@sarasotaballet.org

Amy Wensley Development Associate 941.225.6513 | awensley@sarasotaballet.org

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FLORIDA CHIROPRACTIC & REHABILITATION CLINICS 1918 Robinhood Street Sarasota, FL 34231 941-955-3272

Neuro Challenge is here to help you on your

with Parkinson’s Neuro Challenge Foundation offers a variety of programs to support you on your Parkinson's journey, including Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s in partnership with the Sarasota Ballet. This therapeutic movement program is designed especially for people with Parkinson's and their care partners to improve range of motion, coordination and mobility while learning more about the movements, music, and history connected to The Sarasota Ballet.

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.

Get connected with a community of caring and support today!

(941) 926-6413 • NeuroChallenge.org

A Society and Network of Emerging Ballet Enthusiasts

Relevé welcomes patrons, ages 21-45, to a unique network of emerging ballet enthusiasts who act as advocates for the performing arts in the greater Sarasota Community. Relevé members gain exclusive access to The Sarasota Ballet through special Relevé price tickets and engaging social and educational programming, bringing them even closer to the art form.

The Relevé Experience Performance Meetups Saturday evening’s performances are Relevé’s night at The Ballet! Specialized meetups are held for Relevé members in collaboration with each Program featuring social networking events, talk-backs with creatives and choreographers, and post-performance after-parties in the community.

Special Relevé Price Ticketing Do not miss a single step of the 2023 – 2024 Season!

Become a Relevé Member to receive access to special Relevé priced Flex Subscriptions and Single Tickets.

ELEVATE The Relevé Society invites members, guests, and Company Dancers of The Sarasota Ballet to exclusive rooftop cocktail parties throughout the Season. Join Relevé at an upcoming ELEVATE event to sip cocktails, network with fellow Ballet enthusiasts, and connect with The Ballet’s artists.

For more information on the Relevé Society, please contact Rachael Fisk, Board & Patron Engagement Manager at 941.225.6519 or rfisk@sarasotaballet.org.

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Join the Relevé Society Today!

Membership Opportunities: RELEVÉ MEMBER $50 Annual Fee • Invitation Relevé Performance Meet-Ups and Insider Access Presentations • Special Priced Relevé Performance, Subscriptions, and Event Ticketing • One (1) Guest Pass to an offsite Relevé Meet-Up RELEVÉ SOCIETY $250 Annual Fee All the above plus: • Donor Listing Recognition • Complimentary Ticket to a Backstage Tour • Additional Behind-the-Scenes Experiences as available RELEVÉ CORPORATE $500 Annual Fee Package includes two (2) Relevé Memberships • All the above plus: • Print and Digital Branding Recognition Opportunities • Included mention at all Relevé Season Events • Invitation to Dancer Q & A with Company Dancers

THANK YOU TO OUR 2023 - 2024 RELEVÉ SEASON SPONSORS

SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR RELEVÉ CORPORATE MEMBERS MARIA BECK & JALINA BECK

T. GEORGIANO’S BOUTIQUE

CHIC SPA SARASOTA

Tatyana Stewart

Kimberly Broder

S.LY ARCHITECTURE

2023 – 2024 SEASON RELEVÉ SOCIETY LEADERSHIP COUNCIL Jorge Aguilar Eduardo Anaya Amanda Elsbree Alisa Heedy Matthew Holler Micki Kastel Sara Rachon Friends of The Sarasota Ballet Liaison Tatyana Stewart David Welle Board of Trustees Liaison

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2023-24 SEASON VICTOR DeRENZI, Artistic Director • RICHARD RUSSELL, General Director

2023 FALL SEASON

THE LITTLE SWEEP

by Benjamin Britten (Sarasota Youth Opera)

Nov. 4 & 5, 2023

THE MUSIC OF GIACOMO PUCCINI THE LITTLE SWEEP (Sarasota Youth Opera)

Featuring singers, Victor DeRenzi and the Sarasota Orchestra.

Nov. 10 & 12, 2023

THE MUSIC OF GIACOMO PUCCINI

2024 WINTER OPERA FESTIVAL

CARMEN

by Georges Bizet

Feb. 17 - Mar. 22, 2024

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR CARMEN

by Gaetano Donizetti

Feb. 24 - Mar. 23, 2024

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

LUISA MILLER

by Giuseppe Verdi

Mar. 9 - 24, 2024

DECEIT OUTWITTED (L’infedeltà delusa)

by Joseph Haydn

Mar. 15 - 23, 2024 LUISA MILLER

All operas performed in the original language with translations above the stage.

DECEIT OUTWITTED (L’infedeltà delusa)

SUBSCRIPTIONS AND SINGLE TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

(941) 328-1300 • SARASOTAOPERA.ORG 158

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S R SOT

CONCERT

SSOCI TION

Presenting world-renowned orchestras, chamber ensembles and acclaimed soloists

2023-24 Season CANADIAN BRASS HOLIDAY CONCERT

Dec 4, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House Holiday favorites, from Carol of the Bells, to A Charlie Brown Christmas, swinging Glenn Miller tunes, and more.

SOFIA PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA with VIOLINIST LIYA PETROVA

Nayden Todorov, conductor | Jan 15, 7:30 pm | Van Wezel Beethoven’s beloved Symphony No. 7 and Brahms’ romantic Violin Concerto featuring violinist Liya Petrova.

HARLEM QUARTET

Jan 24, 7:30 pm | Riverview Performing Arts Center The Grammy Award-winning quartet performs Mendelssohn, Britten, and jazz standards.

DETROIT SYMPHONY with CELLIST ALISA WEILERSTEIN

Jader Bignamini, conductor | Feb 19, 7:30 pm | Van Wezel Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Michael Abels’ Emerge and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

ROTTERDAM PHILHARMONIC with PIANIST DANIIL TRIFONOV

Lahav Shani, conductor | March 3, 7:30 pm | Van Wezel Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Arvo Pärt’s Swansong and excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.

PIANIST BRUCE LIU

March 29, 7:30 pm Riverview Performing Arts Center International piano competition winner performs Ravel, Chopin, and Liszt.

SINGLE TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

SCAsarasota.org | 941-966-6161 160

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

Welcome! It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to the 2023 - 2024 Season! The Sarasota Ballet is delighted to be presenting an exceptional Season of premieres, renowned repertoire, and welcoming you to the theatre. Whether it is your first performance at The Sarasota Ballet, or you are returning to enjoy another Season, our commitment to you is to deliver an exceptional dance experience which is welcoming and inspiring.

During my first Season at The Sarasota Ballet, I had the privilege to work alongside a team of talented administrative professionals committed to strengthening the impact of the mission through world-class Season programming, dance education, and to furthering its engagement within our communities. With the steadfast commitment and leadership of the Board of Trustees, Advisory Board, committed volunteers of the Friends of The Sarasota Ballet, ushers, and Community Partners, The Sarasota Ballet ensures the community will continue to benefit from a progressive and professional arts experience.

Each year, The Sarasota Ballet presents a diverse offering of dance programming within our communities. From the companies world-class Season in the theatre, community presentations by The Studio Company, a full-length production of The Nutcracker

by The Sarasota Ballet School, dance education at the Margaret Barbieri Conservatory, and Summer Intensive, or in collaboration with our Community Partners through Dance for All, The Sarasota Ballet ensures our mission is always at the forefront – to enrich lives, captivating emotions, and strengthen the community through the art of dance. In June 2024, the mission of The Sarasota Ballet will be on tour in London, England at the invitation of The Royal Ballet. It is a most exceptional opportunity for the company and showcases the world-class dance available here in Sarasota.

Everything you will experience this Season is a direct effect of the commitment of an incredibly generous and supportive community. Our Board, Advisory Council, Friends of The Sarasota Ballet, Patrons, Foundations, Corporate Partners, Season Subscribers, and each of you play a role in the success and sustainability of The Sarasota Ballet. We extend our sincere appreciation for including The Sarasota Ballet in your Annual Giving, Planned Giving, or in support of the 2024 London Tour. Together, we can ensure The Sarasota Ballet is poised for continued growth and continued impact as both a performing arts organization and significant contributor to arts education in communities both regionally, nationally, and internationally.

ABOUT MELISSA L. MCCOY Melissa McCoy joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2022-2023 Season as its Chief Strategy & Advancement Officer. McCoy lead strategies for Philanthropic initiatives, Marketing, Box Office, and Community Engagement for The Sarasota Ballet 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 professionally, which she finds is instrumental to an organizations successful alignment to the community they serve.

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

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Company Staff SENIOR MANAGEMENT

Melissa L. McCoy Chief Strategy & Advancement Officer

Kristie Cox

Jason W. Ettore

Rachael Fisk

Katherine Knowles

Amy Wensley

Meybis Chavarria

Heyckal Taveras

Mikenna Bowers

Finance & HR Director

General Manager

DEVELOPMENT

Lauren Stroman

Development Director

Board and Patron Manager

Grants Manager

Development Associate

MARKETING

Jeanne Leo

Marketing Director

Video & Graphic Designer

BOX OFFICE

Rod Kelly

Box Office & House Manager

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Bryan Lewis

Box Office Associate

Graphic Designer

Marketing Coordinator

ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE

Leslie Van Brink

Amy Miller

Barbara Epperson

Company Manager

Finance / Office Manager

Administrative Assistant

Jerry Wolf

Brienne Cooper

Glen Edwards

Head of Wardrobe

Wardrobe Assistant

Facilities Coordinator

Doug Nicholson

Zara Baroyan

Carl Haan

Production Consultant

Class Pianist

Class Pianist

Will Ingramm IT & Database Officer

John Johnson IT & Database Officer

PRODUCTION

Ethan Vail

Production Manager & Resident Lighting Designer

Diana Childs Stage Manager

Photography used throughout this book was provided by Matthew Holler and Frank Atura.

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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 Education Director 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 and The Royal Danish Ballet. In addition, Hird oversees Community Engagement, The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company, and has developed the Adult Program to offer more engagement opportunities.

Dierdre Miles Burger Assistant Education Director

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, 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, 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, Miles Burger was appointed Assistant Education Director at The Sarasota Ballet.

Jennifer Welch Cudnik Principal of The Sarasota Ballet School

Originally from St. Louis, Jennifer Welch Cudnik trained on full scholarship at the School of American Ballet; training under master teachers Stanley Williams, Hèléne Dudin, Elise Reiman, Antonina Tumkovsky, Suki Schorer, Kay Mazzo, and Suzy Pilarre, among others. Welch Cudnik danced professionally with Pennsylvania Ballet and Saint Louis Ballet for a decade. She had the honor of performing soloist and principal roles in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, Serenade, Allegro Brillante, Who Cares? and Divertimento No. 15, as well as in classical ballets such as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Coppélia, and the title role of Giselle.

A dance educator for twenty-five years, Welch Cudnik was most recently on faculty at Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis and has taught in universities, charter and public schools and directed and co-founded the nonprofit, Ballet Initiative. She is a commissioned choreographer, a career consultant for dancers, an adjudicator for dance and choreography competitions, and a curator for dance festivals and productions. She is certified with the American Ballet Theatre® National Training Curriculum through Level 5 and holds an MFA in Dance from Hollins University. As an educator who teaches future generations of dance advocates, Jennifer passes on her love of dance with compassion and empathy, ensuring technique and artistry are instilled and achieved with pride and prowess. Welch Cudnik was appointed Principal of The Sarasota Ballet School in June 2023.

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ADMINISTRATION AND FULL-TIME FACULTY

Lauren Taylor

Education Administrative Manager

Ashley Baszto

Alberto Blanco

Addul Manzano

Bradley Shoemaker-Webster

Full-Time Faculty

Full-Time Faculty

Full-Time Faculty

Risa Kaplowitz Full-Time Faculty

School Administrative Assistant

GUEST AND PART-TIME FACULTY

Jean Volpe

Guest Faculty

Kaylin Dalton

Part-Time Faculty

Yseult Leger

Part-Time Faculty

Drew Robinson Part-Time Faculty

Amy Wensley

Part-Time Faculty

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The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory The Conservatory is overseen by Margaret Barbieri, The Sarasota Ballet’s Assistant Director and former ballerina with The Royal Ballet. Led by Education Director Christopher Hird and Assistant Education Director Dierdre Miles Burger, the exceptional faculty is committed to excellence by providing the highest quality dance education.

CONSERVATORY PROGRAM Students ages 12 and above audition for a place in our preprofessional program. The curriculum includes classical technique, pointe, contemporary, variations, repertoire ,and conditioning. Students in the Conservatory Program are also an integral part of The Sarasota Ballet School’s production of The Nutcracker.

Select students are chosen to be part of our renowned Trainee Program. As the program’s reputation has grown, we now receive interest from around the USA with the majority of students coming from out of state. Offering two levels, the curriculum is designed to prepare students for a place in The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company, other second companies around the USA, or dance programs at major universities. Trainees have extensive performing opportunities including the end of year Images of Dance, our annual collaboration with Key Chorale as well as bringing dance to the local community. Some students are also given the opportunity to understudy main Company roles.

EXCHANGE PROGRAM/YOUTH AMERICA GRAND PRIX The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory is thrilled to offer an exchange program with Canada’s National Ballet School and The Royal Danish Ballet. Each summer students get to experience not only different training but a different culture in Canada and Denmark.

The opportunities that I have been given in the Trainee Program have helped me as a dancer immensely. I want to thank you for being a constant example of a teacher who cares for their students – you never fail to make sure that every dancer feels pushed and invested in and truly cared for by all of the staff.

We are also a Youth America Grand Prix partner school, and each year we prepare students for YAGP, as well as find future students from the competition to join the Conservatory.

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- Juliana Utzinger Former Trainee

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TRAINEE PROGRAM

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Events Key Chorale - Sunday, November 26th, 2023 - Sarasota Opera House Images of Dance - Tuesday, April 30th, 2024 - Sarasota Opera House Marie Selby Botanical Gardens - Wednesday May 15th, 2024

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The Sarasota Ballet School The Sarasota Ballet School offers a high quality dance education for children ages 3 and above. We foster an environment that enables children to learn ballet correctly and safely, develop confidence and we pride ourselves on celebrating each student’s individuality.

NEW PRINCIPAL AND FACULTY This year we are thrilled to welcome Jennifer Welch Cudnik as the new Principal of The Sarasota Ballet School. Jennifer was a former professional dancer with Pennsylvania Ballet and St. Louis Ballet and has over 20 years of teaching experience, most recently with the Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis. We also welcome Ashley Baszto, Alberto Blanco, and Amy Wensley.

I am deeply honored to The Sarasota Ballet as the Principal of the School.

I look forward to helping the School grow while supporting, and learning from colleagues, students and families.

I am excited to join the vibrant Sarasota arts scene, while sharing my love of ballet with the community.

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AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE NATIONAL TRAINING CURRICULUM We now teach the internationally recognized American Ballet Theatre® National Training Curriculum. American Ballet Theatre was designated America’s National Ballet Company by an Act of Congress in 2006. The Sarasota Ballet School faculty are officially certified to teach this wonderful curriculum.

THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE Our end of year performance in April 2024 will be C.S. Lewis’s magical tale of a family who discover the wonderful world of Narnia. Featuring all our Sarasota Ballet School students ages three and up, it will be a celebratory end to a fantastic school year.

Jennifer Welch Cudnik

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Principal of The Sarasota Ballet School

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Sarasota Media Sponsor

Venice Media Sponsor

Following on the success of last year’s premiere production of The Nutcracker, this year we are thrilled to be the only school in Sarasota to offer four performances. Continuing our partnership with Venice Symphony and the Venice Performing Arts Center, we will have two performances in Venice on December 8 and 9. Due to our Sarasota performance selling out last year, we are adding a second performance at the Opera House on December 18.

Directed by Risa Kaplowitz, our production of The Nutcracker features students from age 4 - 73 from all our education programs and local schools. This annual tradition is our holiday gift to the Sarasota and Venice communities and truly offers an evening out for the entire family.

Events The Holiday Festival - December 2nd, 2023 | Rosemary Square The Nutcracker - December 8th and 9th, 2023 | Venice Performing Arts Center The Nutcracker - December 17th and 18th, 2023 | Sarasota Opera House The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - May 11th, 2024 | Riverview High School

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Summer Intensive SUMMER INTENSIVE

Residential Life

The Sarasota Ballet’s Summer Intensive is specially designed to develop young dancers technique alongside artistry. Through a series of auditions, students ages 1121 are selected to spend up to five weeks dancing in Sarasota each summer.

Students enjoy a wonderful home away from home experience outside the studio. We ensure all students feel safe with a strong and supportive residential staff.

Weekend excursions include Disney World, Ringling Museum, and of course, the beach!

We are proud to be part of NSIA (National Summer Intensive Audition Tour) – a collective of professional schools around the country that enables students to be seen by experts in their field. In addition, students are chosen from competitions such as Youth America Grand Prix and ADC/IBC as well as national dance organizations such as Regional Dance America.

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Performance The program culminates in performances at the beautiful Mertz Theatre at Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts. The program has included both classical and contemporary works, and students have had the opportunity to work with The Sarasota Ballet’s Resident Choreographer, Ricardo Graziano.

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Adult Program

ADULT PROGRAM

Adult Weekend Workshops

We offer a continuing education program for adults of all ages and experiences levels with both morning and evening classes, we have something for everyone. Adult classes are taught by our fantastic Education faculty as we believe that adult students deserve the best in dance education.

Twice a year we hold a two-day workshop that enables adult dance lovers to immerse themselves. As well as traditional technique classes, the Workshop includes variations, repertoire, and an opportunity to see The Sarasota Ballet perform. Students join us from around the country and make new friends as part of the rich adult dance community.

I so appreciate the high-caliber, high-quality instructors you provide.

And, they are enthusiastic - giving 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

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Community Engagement Department Doricha Sales

Community Engagement Program Director Raised in Burlington, Massachusetts, Doricha Sales began her dance training with the Boston Ballet School at the age of four where she remained for 12 years training with E. Virigina Williams, Ron Cunningham, Syndney Leonard, Bruce Wells, and Violette Verdy. Sales also trained at School of American Ballet and graduated from Walnut Hill School of the Performing Arts before receiving her Bachelor of Science in Ballet Performance and History from Indiana University. Her performing career included regional companies such as Ballet Internationale, Indianapolis Ballet Theatre, and Dance Theatre of Florida.

After her stage career, she directed and developed dance programs within public schools, private studios, and arts institutions before returning to Indiana University to study links between psycho-social and cognitive development when paired with progressive dance training. Upon receiving her Master of Science in Ballet Pedagogy and Educational Psychology, Sales remained as faculty in the IU Jacobs School of Music for 13 years, directing the Ballet Elective and Pre-College Programs, as well as serving as Administrative Director and Ballet Mistress of the IU Ballet Theater.

Sales returned to Florida in 2014, where she led the ballet program at Pinellas County Center for the Arts and developed dance curriculum for the state of Florida. In addition, she directed a small youth ballet company, Brandon Ballet, and served as adjunct faculty at Florida Southern College. Since joining The Sarasota Ballet in 2022, Sales has been awarded Sarasota Magazine’s Unity Award, been voted Sarasota’s Best Arts Hire 2023, and has been featured as an Amazing Woman of the Gulf Coast by WABC-7.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT STAFF Hillary Reiter

Sabrina Ortiz

Community Engagement Program Administrator

Dance – The Next Generation Program Coordinator

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FACULTY

Ashley Baszto

Kaylin Dalton

Baylie Dockins

Christopher Hird

Sabrina Ortiz

Dance – The Next Generation, Joyful Movement Through Parkinsons , and Silver Swans ®

Dance – The Next Generation

Dance – The Next Generation

Silver Swans ®

Dance – The Next Generation

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Hillary Reiter

Drew Robinson

Nicole Robinson

Flor Urbina Uriarte

Dance – The Next Generation, Joyful Movement through Parkinsons, and Silver Swans ®

Dance – The Next Generation

Dance – The Next Generation

Dance – The Next Generation

Community Engagement The Sarasota Ballet believes dance is for everyone and takes pride in making dance accessible to all. For over 30 years, The Sarasota Ballet has been committed to its mission of “strengthening community through the art of dance”. The Sarasota Ballet’s Community Engagement Department of offers complimentary or low-cost programs reaching thousands each season allowing The Sarasota Ballet to engage new audiences, revitalize communities, and continue broadening opportunities for all to value the beauty and inspiration of dance

DANCE – THE NEXT GENERATION

DANCE FOR ALL

Began in 1991 by The Sarasota Ballet’s founder, Jean Weidner Goldstein, Dance – The Next Generation (DNG) is The Sarasota Ballet’s flagship community engagement program proudly serving our community youth for over 30 years.

Debuting in 2022, Dance For All gathers and highlights the ways The Sarasota Ballet serves the community each season reaching thousands often underserved in the performing arts. Dance For All provides access and opportunity for those five to 95 to explore and experience the world of dance.

DNG, devoted to nurturing the whole child through the art of dance for the past 33 years.

Dance For All serves over 5,000 community members each season through focus on Youth engagement, Adaptive dance, and Community experiences.

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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 33rd year, The Sarasota Ballet is excited to expand upon this program’s successes with plans to reach further into Sarasota and Manatee Counties.

DNG’S MISSION: DNG provides equitable access to quality dance education by offering a comprehensive tuition-free dance program to 3-12 graders from underrepresented areas with eligibility for free or reduced lunch. Through diversified dance offerings, progressing enrichment activities, and ever-increasing community partnerships, DNG students receive a complete 10year dance experience that supports education, community, and academic excellence for each student.

DNG’S GOALS: 1.

To provide a progressive dance education to foster long-term appreciation for dance.

2.

To enable students to achieve academic and personal goals while fostering skills leading to high school graduation and post-secondary success.

3.

To enhance the research-proven behavioral and social skills gained through long-term engagement in dance education.

DNG – MORE THAN AN AFTER-SCHOOL DANCE PROGRAM 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 The Sarasota Ballet vans.

All Faiths Food Banks assists students by providing healthy after-school snacks while volunteer tutors provide academic support in DNG classrooms or in the DNG computer lab. Enrichment opportunities include arts and academic mentors, college and career planning, health and wellness classes, dance history, and community performances to round out opportunities toward success.

The Sarasota Ballet covers the cost of a complete dance education for each DNG student including class tuition, dance attire and shoes, transportation, performance costs, field trips, and activities. Each year, approximately 150 Sarasota and Manatee County students enjoy dance training across a variety of techniques including annual ballet along with jazz, contemporary, Latin, African, and musical theater to name a few.

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DNG Expansion As DNG moves into its third decade of program offerings, opportunities arise to expand DNG further into Sarasota and Manatee Counties with the intent of impacting more students through the discipline, structure, and the innate inclusivity of dance.

Starting Fall 2023, DNG welcomes three divisions to its program: DNG Workshops, DNG On Location, and DNG @Tallevast. These three offerings will allow expansion of DNG programming and impact while also utilizing spaces within communities DNG has served for the past 33 years. Both DNG On Location and DNG Workshops allow The Sarasota Ballet to reach further into Sarasota and well into Manatee Counties, while traditional DNG programming continues at Tallevast Studios.

DNG Workshops are held at sites within the community where DNG faculty travel to locations providing a DNG experience including after-school snack, free dance attire, and dance classes. Workshops meet for three to six sessions and culminate in an informal in-studio presentation for family and friends.

DNG On Location offers the same benefits as a Workshop but for an entire semester or academic year.

DNG At Tallevast is DNG in its traditional format, held at The Sarasota Ballet’s Tallevast Studios.

THE DNG DIFFERENCE – MENTORS, ACADEMICS, AND HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION When students complete DNG’s 10-year program and graduate from high school, those who are academically eligible may apply for a dedicated college scholarship from State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota or to receive special financial assistance from the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. To foster academic excellence, DNG students have access to mentors, volunteer tutors, and collegiate and career planning. Starting in elementary years, students work with mentors to foster academic excellence, then in middle school have access to further collegiate scholarships and inschool mentoring through Take Stock in Children Sarasota. By high school, students add individualized college and career planning and on-site mentors through PLANit Sarasota and Education Foundation of Sarasota.

In May 2023, Dance – The Next Generation’s first 10-year graduate, Adriana Evans, was celebrated during our end of year performance. Entering DNG in 2013 as a third grader from Bay Haven Elementary School, Adriana remained connected to DNG for 10 years graduating from Booker High School in May of 2023. Adriana will attend University of West Florida starting Fall 2023 on a partial scholarship through Take Stock in Children.

When I first walked through the doors of the studio all those years ago, I was a young girl with dreams and a love for dance. Little did I know that this program would become the pillar for my growth, both as a dancer and as an individual.

Through the guidance, support, and unwavering belief of my mentors and instructors, I have been pushed to my limits and explored a creativity that I never knew I had. It has taught me the importance of teamwork, collaboration, and supporting one another through both the successes and the setbacks. It has taught me to embrace vulnerability, to express myself authentically, and to find strength in my own voice.

- Adriana Evans

Adriana Evans, 2023 DNG Graduate

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Dance For All Dance For All provides access and opportunity for those five to 95 to explore and experience the world of dance.

Focusing on Youth, Adaptive, and Community, Dance For All offers complimentary and low-cost programs serving thousands each season while allowing The Sarasota Ballet to engage new audiences, revitalize communities, and continue broadening opportunities for all to value the beauty and inspiration of dance.

THE 3 PILLARS OF DANCE FOR ALL PILLAR 1: YOUTH Programs: School Performances & Programs The Sarasota Ballet appreciates the opportunity to engage our community’s children in what is often their first introduction to live, classical ballet. Through this pillar, we aim to help youth develop appreciation for dance by increasing the reach of quality dance experiences for students in their school and at the theatre. For those wishing to expand their interest, they can progress into Dance – The Next Generation, our tuition-free training program for underserved students, or The Sarasota Ballet School.

Through School Performances and Programs The Sarasota Ballet engages 2,500 students each season bringing them to the theater for special matinee performances as well as going into their schools offering interactive workshops, inschool performances as well as instructional masterclasses.

PILLAR 2: ADAPTIVE Programs: Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s Silver Swans ® The Sarasota Ballet is honored to offer adaptive dance classes to community members wishing to enjoy dance in a modified yet structured manner. Through this pillar, we strive to provide enjoyable, inclusive, and safe dance environments for those living with long-term or lifelong physical, social, cognitive, or social disabilities.

Under the Adaptive Pillar, Dance For All offers two adaptive dance programs: Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s and Silver Swans ®. Joyful Movement offers dance classes for disabled populations including Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s with aim to expand these offering to additional disabled populations. Silver Swans® offers opportunities for those 55+ plus to dance with The Sarasota Ballet within their retirement communities in recurring classes which combine movement, history, and music.

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PILLAR 3: COMMUNITY Programs: Community Experiences The Sarasota Ballet appreciates the opportunity to engage the community in a variety of ways. Under this pillar, we aim to create awareness and appreciation of dance by offering quality experiences to communities and populations that may face barriers accessing the arts.

Under the Community pillar, Dance For All offers a variety of options through Community Experiences allowing our dancers and The Sarasota Ballet staff to interact with the community through small group events such as backstage tours, ballet talkbacks, lecture demonstrations, community performances in unconventional spaces, and family dance events. The Sarasota Ballet also offers low-cost or complimentary tickets to our professional performances for marginalized community groups.

With a variety of experiences, individuals or groups can tailor offerings to best suit their needs. With continually expanding community relationships, The Sarasota Ballet is energized to broaden Community Experiences building long-term and invested audiences.

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We invite you to join the heart of The Sarasota Ballet Community, the Friends of The Sarasota Ballet.

ADVANTAGES OF BEING A FRIEND • • • • • • • •

Contribute to the success of one of the most exciting ballet companies in America Share in The Sarasota Ballet’s growth and achievements 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 Discover the inner workings of the Company through volunteer work

Friends of The Sarasota Ballet Mission The Mission of the Friends of The Sarasota Ballet is to support the performances and programs of The Sarasota Ballet through advocacy, fundraising, and volunteering.

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Make Connections Through Volunteer Opportunities The Friends of The Sarasota Ballet have the opportunity to volunteer and get involved in 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 Luncheon Details

Showcase Luncheons and 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.

OCTOBER 30, 2023 | 11:30 “Behind the Scenes – The Development of the Season Wardrobe” Jerry Wolf, Head of Wardrobe DECEMBER 11, 2023 | 11:30 Friends of The Sarasota Ballet Holiday Luncheon FEBRUARY 5, 2024 | 11:30 “Prepare to Find Your Inner Dancer” Christopher Hird, Education Director MARCH 18, 2024 | 11:30 Guest Speaker – Iain Webb, Director of The Sarasota Ballet APRIL 15, 2024 | 11:30 “Inside The Sarasota Ballet” An Insight to the Operations & the Makings of the Season

EX OFFICIO Sandra DeFeo

The Sarasota Ballet Board Chair

Iain Webb

Director of The Sarasota Ballet

Joseph Volpe

Executive Director of The Sarasota Ballet

Amy Wensley

Friends of The Sarasota Ballet Liaison

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEES

Patricia Golemme

Laura Feder

Laurie Fitch

Peggy Sweeney

Bruce Ensinger

Elaine Foster & Phyllis Myers

Elaine Foster

Laurie Fitch

Richard March

Betty Ferguson

President

Vice President Secretary Treasurer

Past President

Advisory Council Liaison Communications

Showcase Luncheons Meet Me at the Barre Membership

Andi Lieberman & Carolou Marquet

Share the Passion

Outreach

Sara Rachon

We hope you will join our community of dance enthusiasts and become a Friend of The Sarasota Ballet. To learn more about the Friends of The Sarasota Ballet, events, or volunteer opportunities, please contact:

Relevé Liaison

Membership Chair Betty Ferguson at 917.885.4699 | bcamarest@yahoo.com

Will Call/Box Office

Volunteer Coordinator Rosalyn Ehrenpreis at 941.400.1584 | rosalyn.ehrenpreis@gmail.com

Rosalyn Ehrenpreis

Volunteer Coordinator

Carol Arscott

Donna Maytham

Office Member-At-Large

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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 Peggy and Ken Abt Priscilla Adams Stacy Alario-Chrisman Janette Albrecht Mary Lee Martens and Charleen Alper Caroline C. Amory and Marjorie A. Floyd Patricia Anderson Kathleen A. Fischer and Chuck Angulo Carol Arscott Shari and Steve Ashman Norma Barne Nicholas and Jocelyn Baskey Joan Bauerlein Lark Baxter Isabel Anchin Becker Patricia Belote Rhoda Beningson Kacy Carla Bennington Rochelle Bernard Barbara Blumfield Robert Boyd Janet and James Breidster Arline Breskin Kay Delaney and Murray Bring Susette T. Bryan Cynthia Edstrom Byce Diana Cable Kim Azar-Calka Peter and Judy Carlin Frank Cerullo Lynn C. Chancer Lisa Charles Barbara Chertok Victoria Chester Dennis Ciborowski and Meryl Gale Alan Cohen

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Saul and Naomi Cohen Jonathan Coleman Juanita Connell Nicole Converse Judith Conway Evelyn and Glenn Cooper Patricia Corson Katie Couchot Sandra Cowing Kristie Cox Jacqueline and Harold D’Alessio Lucille D’Armi Riggio Jeanie Davis James and Leila Day Sandra DeFeo Louis DeFrancesco and Anne Heim Katherine DeMoure-Aldrich JoAnne DeVries Syble DiGirolamo Lynda and Fred Doery Barbara Dubitsky Cori Susanna Dykman Rosalyn Ehrenpreis Bob Griffiths and David Eichlin Barbara Eisenberg Ellen and Harold Ellis Douglas Endicott Bruce Ensinger and Clark Denham Barbara E. Epperson Jan and Bill Farber Laura Feder Shirley Fein Patricia D. Fennessey Betty Ferguson Frances Fergusson Sandra Fink Cherie and Jeff Finn Linda A. Fiorelli Judy Fireman Beverly Fisher Laurie Fitch

Bert Fivelson Karol Foss Donald Fosselman Elaine Foster Kevin Fulcher and Kim Deme-Fulcher Tammy Fullum Kathryn Gibby Elizabeth and Thomas Glembocki Rita Glosser Linda Glover Nancy Gold Ellen Goldman Patricia A. Golemme Sue Marquis Gordon Dedrea A. Greer Robin and Roy Grossman Helen Habbert Mary Hale Renee Hamad Deborah Hamburg Robert Ladieu and David Hamilton Julie A. Harris Charlotte Hedge JoAnn Heffernan Heisen Marcia Hendler Anne and Carl Hirsch Ashley Hodson Dennis Holly Stephanie Horeis Barbara Horowitz Dale Horwitz Charles Huisking and Jeffrey Sebeika Barbara P. Hyde Barbara Jacoby Barbara Jarabek Tim and Mary Johnson Richard Johnson Susan K. Johnson Alison Jones Anne Jones Merrill Kaegi

Deborah Kalb Barry and Cynthia Karafin Valda Kaye Elaine Keating Ken Keating Carolyn Keidel Margaret Kelly Bruce and Barbara Keltz Pat and Ann Kenny Marlene Kitchell Robin Klein-Strauss Mary Klimasiewfski Susie Klingeman Robert Kloss Patricia Knasiak Philippe Koenig and Jan Wallace Carla Kortendick Judith and Ike Koziol Margret Krakowiak Randi and Donald Kreiss Peter E. Kretzmer and Melody Genson Lydia Landa Gail Landry Jim and Peggy Lang Joan Langbord and George Hollingworth Iris Leonard Harry Leopold and Audrey Robbins Judith Levine Margaret Levinson Carol Lewis Marlene and Hal Liberman Barbara Jacob and Karen Lichtig Andrea Lieberman Tina and Rick Lieberman John Lindsey James Long and Barbara Fischer Long George B. Ludlow Francine Luque Dorothy L. Lutter Meg Maguire Maria Mandler Richard March Carolou and Lou Marquet Anita Martin Jean Martin Frank and Katherine Martucci Jacqueline Massari Peter and Teresa Masterson Joan Mathews Carol Mathias Richard and Cornelia Matson Donna Maytham Helen McBean Melissa McCoy and Alan Creais Leanne McKaig

Lydia McKenzie Jennifer Meinert Peter B. Miller and Dr. Martha Harrison Sandra Miranda Jean Ann Mitchell Bill and Linda Mitchell Mary Mitchell Regina Monahan Carolyn Montgomery Raymond and Maralyn Morrissey Phyllis Myers Mafalda Neikrug Susan Newsome George G. Nimick Marilyn Nordby Rosemary Oberndorf Mercedita Oconnor Joanne Olian Catherine Olsen Conrad and Lenée Owens Jeannette Paladino Helena Panoyan Lorelei A. Paster Stu and Gini Peltz Colette Penn Sue Peterson Marilyn Petrillo Cathy Phillips Julie Planck and Charles Albers Barbara Posa DJ Arnold and Richard Prescott Rose Marie Proietti Barbara Quinn Jimmye Reeves Rebecca Reilly Pamela Reiter David Welle and Rosemary Reinhardt Natasha Reisner Cheryl Richards Sandra and Bill Ripberger Anne F. Roberts Sara Curtis Robinson Ellen Roderick Terry and Susan Romine Sally Ross Dr. Jack and Nancy Rozance Beverly Ryan Sharon and Paul Saatsoglou Sara Rachon Sharon Sakson Phyllis Schaen Barbara Schott Carole Schwartz Eda T. Scott Patricia Seftel Erwin and Carol Segal John and Carole Segal

Tracy Seider Micki Sellman Susan and Timothy Sheehan Jane Sheridan Linda R. Simons Alison Gardner and Jan Sirota Beverly and James Smith Maria Smith Zerbe Sodervick and Jane Reed Susan Spencer Dale Sprintz Irene J. Stankevics Gordon Stanley Hillary Steele Maureen and Tom Steiner Judilee Sterne Louise P. Stevens Noreene Storrie Susan Strahs Lois Stulberg Ann Sundeen Peggy Sweeney Melliss Kenworthy Swenson Edward Swindell Diran and Virginia Tashian Joan J. Tatum Marcia Jean Taub and Peter Swain John Teryek Jacqueline and John Thompson Carol Hefren Tillotson Janet R. Tolbert Marianne Trulson Judith Turrentine Sallie Carter Tyler Susan Valentine Karen Vereb Joseph and Jean Volpe Carol Von Allmen Jenny Aldrich Walker Emily Walsh Bernard and Lauren Walsh Sandra W. Warner Robert de Warren Thomas and Gwendolyn Watson Judith Waxberg Wendy and Chad Weiss Myrna and Jeremy Whatmough Kim Wheeler Laurie Wiesemann Florence Wildner Anthony Winer and Paul Settle Edie Winston Elizabeth Wolfe Earl Wright Vivian Zaffuto Dr. Elaine Zwelling

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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:

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES:

PHYSICAL THERAPY:

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

Partners Imaging Center of Sarasota

Rick Haupt Physical Therapy Inc.

CHIROPRACTIC:

VISION CARE:

PODIATRY:

Dr. Jared A. Winters

Dr. Susan M. Sloan

Dr. Robert F. Herbold

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

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

Dr. Eric Larson

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

500 S Orange Avenue Sarasota, FL 34236 941.365.4060

INTERNAL MEDICINE:

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

Dr. Bart Price

DENTAL:

ORTHOPAEDICS:

Dr. Peter Masterson

David A. Sugar, MD

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

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

Sugar Orthopaedics 1630 S Tuttle Ave Sarasota, FL 34239 941.556.6900

2620 S Tamiami Trail Sarasota, FL 34239 941.955.1239

4717 Swift Road Sarasota, FL 34231 941.929.1234

Dr. Paul Yungst

2000 Webber St, Suite 110 Sarasota, FL 34239 941.917.6232

Please join the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee as we kick off our 2023-2024 People of the Book Series by welcoming world-renowned author Mitch Albom to Sarasota!

Collectively, Albom’s books have sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, beginning with his breakthrough books Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. His new book, The Little Liar is a moving parable that explores honesty, survival, revenge, and devotion, set during the Holocaust. All ticket buyers will receive a signed copy of his book!

ALL EVENTS IN PERSON ALL EVENTS IN PERSON ALL EVENTS IN PERSON ALL EVENTS IN PERSON ALL EVENTS IN PERSON JANUARY 17, 2024 • 7:00PM

MARCH 19, 2024 • 7:00PM

BENYAMIN COHEN

NATASHA LANCE ROGOFF

FEBRUARY 29, 2024 • 2:00PM

APRIL 17, 2024 • 7:00PM

TOM DUGAN

ARTHUR SMITH

MARCH 8, 2024 • 2:00PM

FAYNE FREY

For more information, contact cdierksen@jfedsrq.org or 941.263.4974

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129

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Sustaining and expanding the reach of our company performances and education programs requires ongoing support from patrons like you. Your generous, tax-deductible contribution has a direct impact on our programs now and in the future, allowing us to achieve the following: World-Class Performances Your support helps bring world-class dancers, choreographers, and guest artists to The Sarasota Ballet, allowing us to produce breathtaking and critically acclaimed productions.

Accessible Education With your donation, we can continue providing the highest caliber of dance training that introduces the beauty of ballet to students of all ages and abilities.

Community Engagement Your contribution helps us engage with the community through interactive programs, masterclasses, and collaborative partnerships, fostering a sense of unity and appreciation f or the arts.

Scan here to make your gift today!

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