Brooklyn Ballet Announces ROOTS & NEW GROUND 2 Spring Season

Brooklyn Ballet announces its spring season, Roots & New Ground 2, sequel to its outstanding 2015 Roots and New Ground season.

A multidisciplinary Dance Company rooted in ballet and dedicated to the vibrant diversity of both Brooklyn and the dance world, Brooklyn Ballet continues to present artists working in an array of movement forms. These artists dig deep-honoring traditions and exploring new connections and contexts.

This season features works in ballet, urban vernacular, early tap and rural percussive, authentic jazz and modern dance; collaborations with two visual artists, a composer, and featuring live music.

The concerts take place at the Actors Fund Arts Center. Three performances include receptions or post-show discussions. Tickets start at $10 and may be purchased online at ovationtix.com, by phone at 718-246-0146, and in person at Brooklyn Ballet, 160 Schermerhorn, Brooklyn, NY.

The Program:

Working within her aesthetic and ongoing interest in expanding the ballet vernacular through creative dialogue with seemingly disparate dance forms, Brooklyn Ballet's Artistic Director, Lynn Parkerson, presents two new pieces this season:

Found and Lost is a ballet for three women and three men to original music composed and performed by cellist Malcolm Parson, of Turtle Island Ensemble and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The piece is a stylistic exploration of ballet as influenced by authentic jazz, which was created by African American dancers, often as a commentary on the deep social problems in America at that time. The source material for Found and Lost is a vernacular jazz variation choreographed by Brenda Bufalino and Ann Kilkelly to music by Lester Young.

Pas de Duex, a collaboration between Parkerson and Visual Artist,Cornelia Thomsen, to music by Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau is a mixed-movement duet performed by a ballerina and a gliding hip-hop dancer. The piece explores intimate connections between the two bodies and the two dance vocabularies as well as virtuosity and bravura as implied in the dance's title.

Julia K. Gleich's piece, Martha, tests some of the basic tenants of ballet by deconstructing pivotal but cliche moments from historical dances and using a backdrop of an insouciant corps de ballet built upon the Western swagger. The choreography is developed from the role of Martha, in the iconic 1956 John Ford Western The Searchers. A tragic character not unlike Giselle, her world is constructed in a series of episodes that explore the tangents of ballet and Hollywood's Wild West. Visual Artist Elana Herzog, a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, collaborates.

Michael Fields, aka Big Mike, performs his hilarious and captivating solo,The Big GOAT, choreographed to Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Lonely Goatherd. The piece is the result of Mike's love for both popping and the film, Sound of Music. With this work, he challenges the traditional pairing of certain dance styles with particular genres of music.

Spectres, arranged by Claudia Jeschke with live music by pianist Julius Abrahams: Inspired by Nijinsky's famous performance of Le Spectre de la Rose to Carl Maria von Weber's Invitation to the Dance (original choreography by Michel Fokine in 1912), Spectres invites spontaneous dance dialogues between a seminal work of the classical male repertoire (performed by Miami City Ballet principal dancer Rainer Krenstetter) and a new, contemporary work inspired by the timeless phantasms/spectres of the valse (by former Limon Dance Company soloist, Belinda McGuire). The startling format of a spontaneous pas de deux promises strange loops of contact, resonating kaleidoscopic memories and surprising interactions. (Performed 6/16-18)

Previous Brooklyn Ballet guest artist Emily Oleson returns, performing in Matthew Olwell's Buck Dance? This work explores aspects of early tap and rural percussive dance styles, and is inspired by material of Matthew Gordon, The Fiddle Puppet Dancers, Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble, and Mark Schatz. In examining various dances that identify as "buck dance" as well as the work of Ruth Pershing with Piedmont Blues musician and dancer John Dee Holman in the film Talking Feet, there is room for intriguingly ambiguous ideas about dance traditions, race, and the complicated intersections of American music. (Performed 6/16-18)

Returning for the 2017 season, in This Dance Goes Like This, choreographer David Fernandez found inspiration in composer Malcolm Parson's music, to create a unique fusion of modern dance and ballet for four dancers. The rhythm and movement of Parson's Americana-inspired score compelled Fernandez to cultivate a sense of floating in this piece. Guitarist Gabe Schnider plays live. (Performed 6/8-11)

Founded in 2002 by Artistic Director Lynn Parkerson, Brooklyn Ballet is a multidisciplinary, multicultural Dance Company that is rooted in the ballet form, while collaborating across disciplines, mixing movement genres and decoding cultural stereotypes. The Company brings a contemporary vision to the treasured art form of ballet with repertory that revitalizes and reimagines the classical form, often juxtaposing or featuring an array of dance forms including ballet, urban vernacular, early tap and rural percussive, authentic jazz, African, Celtic, Middle-Eastern and modern dance. The first-of-its-kind in Brooklyn in more than 40 years, the organization is committed to artistic excellence, education and community engagement. Along with its professional company and multiple yearly performance seasons, Brooklyn Ballet has a professional Dance School located in Downtown Brooklyn. Its world-class faculty teaches high-quality technique classes to dance students of all ages, from Pre-ballet to Conservatory Ballet, as well as Adult Ballet, Jazz, and Modern dance. Brooklyn Ballet School accommodates students on recreational, advanced and professional tracks providing a positive experience for every student.

The school's Elevate and "Brooklyn Ballet in the Houses" programs offer talented children scholarships to the school and an opportunity to participate in the rigors of ballet training. Additional community service includes Take Ballet to the Streets-Brooklyn Ballet's free outdoor performance series-and its offering of low-cost space rentals and performance opportunities to New York City dance artists.

In 2011, Brooklyn Ballet opened the doors to its first permanent home at The Schermerhorn, a residential development in downtown Brooklyn built and managed by Common Ground and The Actors Fund.

The Actors Fund Arts Center is a state-of-the-art black box 99-seat performance venue and rehearsal space located at the lobby level of The Schermerhorn in downtown Brooklyn. The Actors Fund Arts Center serves as a resource for Brooklyn-based artists and arts groups to aid in the development and sharing of their work, as well as a venue for integrating the residents of The Schermerhorn with the surrounding community through the arts. The venue is operated by The Actors Fund in collaboration with Breaking Ground.

IF YOU GO:

Brooklyn Ballet

Roots & New Ground 2

June 8-11 & 16-18, 2017

Schedule of Events:
June 8 at 8pm Pre-performance reception 6:30pm
June 9 at 8pm Free Beer Friday!
June 10 at 8pm
June 11 at 4pm Post-show Children's Reception
June 16 at 8pm Free Beer Friday!
June 17 at 8pm Post-show discussion with the artists
June 18 at 4pm

At The Actors Fund Arts Center, 160 Schermerhorn, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Tickets start at $10 | web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/34418
T: 718-246-0146 | brooklynballet.org

Venue: The Actors Fund Arts Center, 160 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Tickets: General $25-50; Student/Senior $15; Child (under 12) $10; Opening Night & Pre-Performance Reception $75; Special Best Seats reserved seating: $100 Opening Night.

For tickets, visit web. ovationtix.com/trs/pr/972996 or call 718-246-0146.

Choreographers:

David Fernandez (6/8-11 program)

Mike "Big Mike" Fields

Julia K. Gleich

Claudia Jeschke (6/16-18 program)

Matthew Olwell (6/16-18 program)

Lynn Parkerson

Dancers:

Courtney Cochran

James "Floats" Fable

Michael "Big Mike" Fields

Paunika Jones

Miku Kawamura

Rainer Krenstetter (6/16-18)

Acee Francis Laird

Bobby "Anime" Major

BeLinda McGuire (performing 6/16-18)

Emily Oleson (performing 6/16-18)

Matthew Olwell (performing 6/16-18)

Christine Sawyer

Maxwell Simoes

Eliza Tollet

Composer

Malcolm Parson

Musicians

Julius Abrahams, piano

Amy Kang, cello (performing 6/16-18)

Malcolm Parson, cello (performing 6/8-11)

Gabe Schnider, guitar

Visual Artists

Elana Herzog

Cornelia Thomsen