Mariinsky Ballet Joins Royal Shakespeare Company et al. in 2011 Lincoln Center Festival

The Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet joins the previously-announced Royal Shakespeare Company and The Cleveland Orchestra, completing the trio of leading performing ensembles coming to  New York this summer as part of Lincoln Center Festival 2011. Nigel Redden, Festival Director, today announced the complete Festival schedule, which runs from July 5 through August 14.  In a co-presentation with the Metropolitan Opera, the renowned Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet returns to the Festival for eight performances at the Met Opera House, dancing three programs. Highlighting the company's appearance are the U.S. premieres of Anna Karenina and The Little Humpbacked Horse, evening-length ballets by critically-acclaimed choreographer Alexei Ratmansky set to music by leading Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin. A third program pairs Alberto Alonso's Carmen Suite, to Shchedrin's arrangement of Bizet's score, and George Balanchine's neo-classical masterwork Symphony in C, also with music by Bizet. Artistic Director of the Mariinsky, Valery Gergiev will conduct the Mariinsky Orchestra.

Said Mr. Redden, "We are privileged to have three of the world's foremost performing ensembles-the Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Shakespeare Company and The Cleveland Orchestra-highlighting dance, theater, and music presentations, respectively at Festival 2011. At the same time, we are thrilled to present the Festival debuts of Peter Brook, Tom Zé and the Danish Royal Opera, and to welcome back Garry Hynes, Amon Miyamoto, David Michalek, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This year's Festival is the longest running one in its fifteen-year history and once again offers New York a feast of innovative and compelling artists and performances from around the world."

Three leading stage directors will bring exciting new productions to Festival 2011. Legendary theater artist Peter Brook, whose last Lincoln Center production was La Tragédie de Carmen at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1983, brings his intimate A Magic Flute to the Festival for its U.S. Premiere with 16 performances at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater. The fully-staged adaptation of Mozart's opera, created for his Paris-based Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, is performed by an ensemble of two actors and alternating casts of seven singers, with pianist. Tony Award-winning director Garry Hynes, whose DruidSynge was a high point of the 2006 Festival, returns with the Druid Theatre Company's production of Seán O'Casey's The Silver Tassie, a searing drama set during and after World War I. This rarely-staged O'Casey play will have eight performances at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater.

Japanese director Amon Miyamoto, who made his Festival debut in 2002 with his acclaimed production of the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical Pacific Overtures, returns with the U.S. Premiere of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion which is the opening production of the Kanagawa Arts Theatre, where Miyamoto serves as Artistic Director. Based on the wrenching novel by Japan's acclaimed writer Yukio Mishima, the play features Go Morita in the main role of the young monk. A member of V6, a popular Japanese boy band and a rising star of stage and film, Morita makes his first American stage appearance with this engagement. Temple will have four performances at the Rose Theater.

As previously announced The Royal Shakespeare Company, in a co-presentation by Lincoln Center Festival and the Park Avenue Armory, in association with The Ohio State University, will have an
unprecedented six-week New York residency, offering 44 performances of five Shakespeare plays-As You Like It, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and The Winter's Tale-at the Park Avenue Armory in a specially-constructed replica of the new thrust stage Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratfordupon-Avon. The auditorium has been named the Scarlet & Gray Stage. Under Artistic Director Michael Boyd, this will be a rare opportunity for American audiences to see this extraordinary ensemble of actors, who will have worked together for three years, undertaking multiple roles. In conjunction with the main-stage repertoire, the Royal Shakespeare Company's residency alsoincludes a major education program at the Park Avenue Armory, presented in collaboration with Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, the New York City Department of Education and The Ohio State University to reach under-served young people in New York and share skills with teachers, with productions of The Comedy of Errors (in association with Told by an Idiot) and Hamlet.

Highlighting the music presentations at this year's Festival, The Cleveland Orchestra, led by its music director Franz Welser-Möst offers Bruckner: (R)evolution, an immersion in the symphonies of 19th-century giant Anton Bruckner. Symphonies Nos. 5, 7, 8 (the original 1887 version), and No. 9 will be juxtaposed with works by one of America's contemporary masters of minimalism, John Adams: Guide to Strange Places, Dr. Atomic Symphony and the Violin Concerto featuring Leila Josefowicz as guest soloist. A champion of Bruckner's music-a composer he feels has been unfairly neglected-Welser-Möst hopes to spark a re-awakening by showing these monumental works in a new light.

Music from opposite ends of the globe, and completely divergent traditions, is represented at Festival 2011 by The Royal Danish Opera and Tom Zé. The acclaimed Royal Danish Opera gives the U.S. Premiere of its production of Poul Ruders' riveting opera Selma Ježková, conducted by Michael Schønwandt, with a performance in the Rose Theater. The opera, with a libretto by Henrik Engelbrecht based on Lars von Trier's original screenplay for the film Dancer in the Dark, is directed by Kasper Holten, artistic director of the company. The Royal Danish Orchestra will also perform a concert program of works by Danish composer Carl Nielsen and Igor Stravinsky, also conducted by Schønwandt in Alice Tully Hall. And soloists of the Orchestra will be heard in an intimate chamber concert in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, in a program of works by Nielsen and Norwegian composer, Johan Svendsen.

A rare New York concert by Brazil's influential pop surrealist Tom Zé will take place at Alice Tully Hall. A leading force in the Tropicalia movement of the 1960s, the socially/politically-conscious musician has been enjoying a career renaissance since the mid-1990s when David Byrne discovered and introduced his earlier recordings to a new generation of listeners. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) has been presented at the Festival on four previous
occasions, including the Festival's inaugural season in 1996. Now Lincoln Center Festival and the
Cunningham Dance Foundation celebrate visionary choreographer Merce Cunningham and his legacy in a unique, full-day project, Merce Fair which will take place in three segments from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., in various venues at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Merce Fair, encompassing dance performances, concerts, rehearsals and workshops, video and film screenings, art installations, panel discussions and talks is one of the highlights in the final year of the "Legacy Tour," a world-wide retrospective of the Company's nearly 60 years of extraordinary work under the guidance of one of the most important artists of the 20th
century.

A great critical and audience success of Lincoln Center Festival 2007, David Michalek's Slow Dancing, was an outdoor video-art installation featuring super slow-motion portraits of dancers and choreographers. The New York-based visual artist/photographer's latest visual art project Portraits in Dramatic Time will have its world premiere at Festival 2011. The installation will feature large-scale, hyper-slow motion performance-portraits of an array of international theater artists. Each video will be shown on an 85 feet wide by 45 feet high screen, hung on the facade of the David H. Koch Theater facing Josie Robertson Plaza. The installation will run from dusk to 11:45 p.m. each evening from July 5-31. Lincoln Center Festival 2011 will have 116 performances by ensembles and artists from some 20 countries, and will include 6 World, North American, U.S., and New York premieres unfolding in seven venues on and off the Lincoln Center campus.

Tickets for performances by the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Cleveland Orchestra are on sale now. Tickets to other Lincoln Center Festival events go on sale to the general public on March 14. There will be a pre-sale period from March 8-13 for members of "The Friends of Lincoln Center." For membership information call: 212-875-5443 or email membership@LincolnCenter.org
For regular ticket purchases beginning March 14, call CenterCharge 212-721-6500, go to the Lincoln Center Festival website (www.LincolnCenterFestival.org) or visit the Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall Box Offices, 65th Street and Broadway. Tickets for the Mariinsky Ballet may also be purchased at the Metropolitan Opera Box Office, 64th Street and Broadway, on the Metropolitan Opera website (www.metoperafamily.org) or by calling 212-362-6000.