Ballet San Jose (BSJ) has announced its 2012 season which opens March 2 and runs through May 6, 2012. The three-program season will feature a large number of company premieres including Jerome Robbins's Interplay, Clark Tippet's Bruch Violin Concerto and Ben Stevenson's full-length story ballet, Cinderella. In additional news the company has previously announced a new partnership with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in New York and the forthcoming implementation of the ABT National Training Curriculum in the Ballet San Jose School.
Program One slated for March 2-4 opens with the iconic classical ballet Paquita (after Marius Petipa's 1881 revival of the work with music by Ludwig Minkus.) Also on the bill is the company premiere of Jerome Robbins's Interplay, set to selections from "American Concertette" by composer Morton Gould. Interplay preceded Robbins's ground-breaking choreography for West Side Story and is considered an American Masterpiece. It is the first Jerome Robbins piece ever to be performed by Ballet San Jose. David Lichine's 'high-life' one-act, comedy ballet Graduation Ball will conclude the program.
Program Two runs April 13-15 and will feature the company premiere of George Balanchine's Allegro Brillante set to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's unfinished Piano Concerto No. 3 in E flat, Opus 75...the last piece of music Tchaikovsky ever wrote. Jessica Lang's pas de deux, Splendid Isolation III, is also slated for the program along with Clark Tippet's Bruch Violin Concerto set to Max Bruch's Concerto No. 1 in G minor for Violin, Op.26. Rounding out the program is Stanton Welch's Clear, set to concertos from Johann Sebastian Bach.
Program Three (May 4-6) is the company premiere of Ben Stevenson's Cinderella set to music by Sergei Prokofiev. All the classic elements are here: the ugly stepsisters (danced by company men with cross-dressing humor) an elaborate masquerade ball, and Cinderella's arrival in horse-drawn chariot. Replete with romance, comedy and magic, Stevenson's Cinderella is the most produced version of this family-favorite fairytale ballet.
As previously announced, Ballet San Jose has formed a partnership with American Ballet Theatre that will serve as a catalyst for new and rapid growth for its professional company and the Ballet San Jose School. This unique partnership has already provided BSJ with access to ABT's vast creative resources and huge repertory of nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century ballets and commissioned works. An advisory staff will implement the ABT National Training Curriculum in the Ballet San Jose School after which the school will become the only certified institution on the west coast to provide the complete ABT Curriculum.
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