Suzanne Farrell Ballet & Theater Ballet Moscow Announce New Artistic Partnership

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, the Kennedy Center's own ballet company, will engage in an artistic partnership with Theatre Ballet Moscow in February 2015 to perform George Balanchine's Monumentum Pro Gesualdo. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet will also perform Balanchine's Movements for Piano and Orchestra. Theatre Ballet Moscow will complete the program with pieces by George Aleksidze and Paul Mejia. Through this artistic partnership, Theatre Ballet Moscow will have the opportunity to take classes and learn Balanchine's choreography from Ms. Farrell, one of Balanchine's foremost interpreters, and rehearse with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. Performances will take place February 26 and 27 at 7:00pm at the Cultural Centre ZIL in Moscow.

Monumentum Pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra were created independently, but have been companion pieces in performance since 1966. Both ballets are set to the works of Stravinsky. The partnership between George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky is said to be one of the most important music and dance collaborations of the twentieth century. Monumentum Pro Gesualdo was composed in honor of Don Carlo Gesualdo's 400th birthday and consists of Stravinsky's orchestrations of Gesualdo's madrigals. Ms. Farrell danced the leading role in the premiere of Balanchine's Movements for Piano and Orchestra in April 1963-her first major role in a Balanchine ballet. Igor Stravinsky's Movements for Piano and Orchestra consists of five short movements altogether lasting around eleven minutes. After Mr. Stravinsky saw the ballet for the first time, he said it "was like a tour of a building for which I had drawn the plans, but never explored the result."

The Suzanne Farrell Ballet has participated in numerous artistic partnerships in the company's 13 year history. In 2005, the company partnered with the National Ballet of Canada to perform Balanchine's Don Quixote. In 2011, the company traveled to Bulgaria for an artistic partnership with the National Ballet of Bulgaria. In addition to these international partnerships, The Suzanne Farrell Ballet has collaborated with regional ballet companies in the U.S. since 2007 including Cincinnati Ballet, Ballet Austin, and The Sarasota Ballet. These partnerships allow Ms. Farrell to share her coaching skills and profound understanding of Balanchine's choreography with other dancers, while providing others an opportunity to see The Suzanne Farrell Ballet dancers interpret these works.

"We are looking forward to bringing the genius of Balanchine to dancers and audiences in Moscow," said Suzanne Farrell, Artistic Director of The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. "I have memories of dancing and staging ballets in Russia, and this opportunity will allow our dancers to make memories of their own."

Ms. Farrell, one of Balanchine's most celebrated muses, danced with New York City Ballet from 1961-1969 and 1975-1989. Over the years, she originated 23 roles in Balanchine ballets and her repertory eventually reached some 110 ballets. She has received numerous awards, including the 1976 Dance Magazine award, a 1985 Emmy Award for her performance in Eight by Adler, the 1988 New York State Governor's Arts Award, the 2003 National Medal of the Arts, and the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors. The documentary, Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary, airing on PBS and in theaters across the United States. Since the fall of 2000, Ms. Farrell has been a tenured professor of dance at FSU in Tallahassee. She also stages Balanchine works throughout the world for the George Balanchine Trust.

Under the Artistic Direction of George Balanchine's most celebrated muse, The Suzanne Farrell Ballet continues to flourish as the Kennedy Center's own ballet company in Washington, D.C. With her deep, inimitable insight into the Balanchine canon, Ms. Farrell carries forth his enduring legacy, sharing his profound vision and influential works with world audiences.

More than 65 Balanchine works now stand in the company's repertoire, including the iconic ballets Agon, Apollo, Mozartiana, Episodes, Liebeslieder Walzer, Prodigal Son, Serenade, and Swan Lake. Several were originally created on Ms. Farrell, and she owns the exclusive restaging rights to three of them: Don Quixote, Meditation, and Tzigane. Others include Chaconne, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Movements for Piano and Orchestra, and Diamonds from Jewels, which the company performed in full for its 10th anniversary in 2011.

Additionally, Ms. Farrell's own program "The Balanchine Couple," which she scripted and performs or narrates, highlights landmark pas de deux from his body of work, while through her Balanchine Preservation Initiative, she has restaged more than a dozen rarely performed or "lost" ballets, including Ragtime, Divertimento Brillante, Variations for Orchestra, and Pithoprakta. The company's repertoire also includes works by two of her other mentors, Jerome Robbins and Maurice Béjart.

What began in 1993 as an invitation from the Kennedy Center-asking Ms. Farrell to lead a series of master classes for local ballet students-has grown to become one of the Center's crown jewels in its educational and performance offerings. The three-week summer intensive Exploring Ballet with Suzanne Farrell now attracts students from all around the world. A 2003 National Medal of Arts recipient and 2005 Kennedy Center Honoree, Ms. Farrell is also a tenured professor at Florida State University, where the company has enjoyed an annual residency since 2005.

The company has performed annually at the Kennedy Center since 2001, mounted numerous national tours, participated in the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival the first annual Gettysburg Arts Festival, Fall for Dance at New York City Center, and the Kennedy Center's own Ballet Across America. Internationally, the company has performed at the Edinburgh International Arts Festival, the National Theater for Opera and Ballet in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman. Artistic partnerships include collaborations with The National Ballet of Canada (Don Quixote), Cincinnati Ballet (Chaconne), Ballet Austin (Episodes), the Bulgarian National Ballet (Agon), and The Sarasota Ballet (Diamonds).

Theatre Ballet Moscow (TBM) was established by the Moscow City Government in 1989. Led by artistic director Elena Tupyseva, the company's mission is to develop a pioneering dance repertoire for Moscow audiences by commissioning and re-staging works of up-coming and established Russian and international choreographers. The company strives to serve as a prestigious incubator for new talents and choreographic invention, both in contemporary dance and ballet. Theatre Ballet Moscow has a lot of professional international connections. In the past three years, the company produced and presented works created by Paul Mejia (USA), Chris Haring (Austria), Ivan Perez, Annabelle Lopez, Juanjo Arques, Guy Weizman, Roni Haver (the Netherlands), Ann Van den Broek (Belgium), Nadja Sajdakova (Germany), Regis Obadia (France), Alexander Pepelyaev (Russia-Estonia).For more information, please visit http://baletmoskva.ru/en/.