Cape Town City Ballet & Philharmonic Orchestra Present SYMPHONY OF DANCE This Weekend

The Cape Town City Ballet and Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra will appear together on stage for the spectacular production, Symphony of Dance, showing at Artscape in Cape Town from tonight 7 to 11 October.

Conceptualized by Robin van Wyk, Artistic Director of Cape Town City Ballet, the programme features six breath-taking ballets danced to famous orchestral and instrumental masterpieces by Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Ponchielli, Barber and Pärt.

Says Van Wyk, 'Our ballet audiences are accustomed to seeing the dancers on stage and the orchestra in the pit. However, for Symphony of Dance, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Graham Scott, will share the onstage limelight with us in a wonderful celebration of classical and neo-classical dance.'

The highlight of the programme is bound to be the world premiere and first ever staging of Romance, a new ballet by Robin van Wyk, danced to a live performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's magnificent 2nd Piano Concerto. Audiences will be thrilled to know that the piano soloist for all performances will be the acclaimed South African pianist, Francois du Toit.

Two more ballets will also be premiered. Largo Variation, choreographed by Kirsten Isenberg, is set to the poignant minimalistic, Spiegel im Spiegel, by the Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt. In Adagio for Strings, another new work by Van Wyk, the dancers will move to the stirringly emotive composition by the same name, written by American composer Samuel Barber.

Audiences can additionally look forward to the beloved music of Johann Strauss in The Emperor Waltz, choreographed by Veronica Paeper, and The Blue Danube, choreographed by Van Wyk. In Van Wyk's ballet Ensemble for Six, The Dance of the Hours from Amilcare Ponchielli's opera, La Gioconda, will take centre stage.

Symphony of Dance is showing at Artscape in Cape Town from 7 - 11 October. For this limited season, tickets from R150 - R350 are available at Computicket of Artscape Dial-a-Seat on tel. 021 421 7695.

Performances:

Wed 7 Oct @ 19h30

Fri 9 Oct @ 19h30

Sat 10 Oct @ 14h00

Sat 10 Oct @19h30

Sun 11 Oct @ 15h00

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