MUSIC FOR LOVERS at The Jacques d’Amboise Center for Learning & the Arts

The ChoreoJoey Project opens its 12th year with Music for Lovers, a jazz ballet choreographed and directed by Stephen Hill that explores the many ways love shapes how people relate to one another and the world around them. The work is built around a lyric from Nina Simone’s Music for Lovers:

“When the whole world discovers

That love's the only thing worthwhile

There'll be music for everyone

And the whole world will smile”

That idea—the discovery of love as a worthwhile presence—develops the world of the ballet. Rather than focusing only on romance, Music for Lovers examines familial, platonic, intimate, communal, environmental, and worldly love, allowing each form to influence the relationships and movement onstage.

The choreography blends jazz dance, social dance, and movement influenced by West African technique within a narrative structure shaped by American jazz music, particularly works associated with the 1960s and 1970s. Music from Dorothy Ashby, Herbie Hancock, Idris Muhammad, Cal Tjader, Nancy Wilson and more.