Frederick Ashton News

Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch announced plans today for the company's 2013-2014 season, including eight promotions and additions of several new dancers. Houston Ballet's roster now stands at 53 dancers.

Oregon Ballet Theatre (OBT) is pleased to announce its upcoming 2013-2014 performance season, which includes several noteworthy items.

Casting for American Ballet Theatre's 2013 Fall Season at the David H. Koch Theater was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.

New York City Center is celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Fall for Dance Festival with a very special season, beginning with two free evenings of dance at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, hosted by The Public Theater, on September 16 and 17 (rain date, September 18). The Festival will continue at City Center from September 25 - October 5 with performances by 20 acclaimed dance companies and artists from around the world, including three new works from today's most exciting young choreographers, commissioned by New York City Center in celebration of the tenth anniversary.

Company C Contemporary Ballet founder and Artistic Director Charles Anderson has announced details of the Company's 2014 season of two programs plus a benefit gala in San Francisco and Walnut Creek with performances January 30 through May 11, 2014, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and ODC Theater in San Francisco and the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. The 12th season will feature a wide range of the kinds of ballets that have set the barre high for this 14-member Bay Area Company, which will return to New York for its third season there at the Joyce Theater August 9 and 10. Theatricality, precision technique, bravura performance, wit and a flair for the off-beat and innovative will be embodied in world premieres by Anderson, Susan Jaffe, Maurice Causey and Charles Moulton, as well as in the return of repertory favorites by Anderson, Patrick Corbin, Alexandre Proia, Charles Moulton and Yuri Zhukov. The complete 2014 season schedule may be found below. For more details about Company C and the 2014 season, visitwww.companycballet.org.

Devon Carney, Associate Artistic Director of the Cincinnati Ballet, and Yves de Bouteiller, former principal dancer of the Milwaukee Ballet and Ballet du Nord, will be on the faculty for the Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet's Summer Intensive beginning today, July 22, and running through July 26 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

La Fille Mal Gardee is one of the oldest works of modern ballet, originally choreographed by Jean Dauberval in 1789 for the Grand Theatre de Bordeaux. Dauberval found inspiration for the piece in Pierre-Antoine Baudouin's painting of an older lady reprimanding a younger girl in a hay barn, while her lover runs off with haste. The resulting ballet was a comic delight.

In my next life, I'm returning as the world's foremost dance historian to write the ultimate chronicle of Tchailovsky's Sleeping Beauty from 1890 to 2013. It's going to be a huge tome, one that encompasses every move, scene shift and cast change that was ever seen. Actually, by the time I finish my epic work, it will be superseded by an even larger tome, but that's life. What led me to this decision was American Ballet Theater's production of Sleeping Beauty that I saw on the July 6, 2012, the closing night of the season. This sent me back to my books, DVDs, CDs, balletomane friends and YouTube to decide just what Sleeping Beauty is all about, or should be about.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if I liked Frederick Ashton's Sylvia at the Metropolitan Opera House on Wednesday evening, June 26, or not. It had lots of things in its favor, but where was the spark? What's special about this ballet, and how did it get from Paris 1876 to New York City 2013? Is there something that eludes me? I decided to do a little excavating on my own.

The World Premiere of The Tempest by Alexei Ratmansky will highlight American Ballet Theatre's inaugural Fall season at the David H. Koch Theater, October 30-November 10, 2013. The Fall 2013 season, announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie, will also feature revivals of Bach Partita by Twyla Tharp, Les Sylphides by Michel Fokine, Gong by Mark Morris and Clear by Stanton Welch.

Casting for the final two weeks of American Ballet Theatre's 2013 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House has been announced by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.

Casting for the final two weeks of American Ballet Theatre's 2013 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House has been announced by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.

The Bolshoi's production of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is, in the words of Rodgers and Hammerstein, 'A Puzzlement.' Big, sprawling, clashing swords, crying on the floor, it just fails to come to life.

I was looking forward to American Ballet Theater's triple bill on May 21 with anticipation, because I had seen one of the ballets, Frederick Ashton's A Month in the County, years ago, and always held it in warm esteem. I remembered how moved I was as the curtain fell on the dancer (was it Lynn Seymour?) portraying the heroine, Natalia Petrovna, alone on the stage with nothing but a loveless and frustrating future awaiting her.

Casting for the first two weeks of American Ballet Theatre's 2013 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House was recently announced by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie. The season will begin tonight, Monday, May 13 at 6:30 P.M. with the Company's Opening Night Gala, featuring a piece d'occasion choreographed by Marcelo Gomes, set to the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony and danced by Julie Kent and Roberto Bolle.

Casting for the first two weeks of American Ballet Theatre's 2013 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.

Geva Theatre Center's 40th Anniversary Season concludes with A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Mark Cuddy and Skip Greer. This most popular of Shakespeare's comedies and suitable for the entire family, begins performances on May 8 and runs in the Elaine P. Wilson Mainstage through June 2.

Devon Carney, Associate Artistic Director of the Cincinnati Ballet, and Yves de Bouteiller, former principal dancer of the Milwaukee Ballet and Ballet du Nord, will be on the faculty for the Shreveport Metropolitan Ballet's Summer Intensive from July 22-26, 2013 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

It wasn't until Frederick Ashton undertook a new creation of the ballet that it finally became an international hit. He referred to it as his 'poor man's Pastorale,' a lovely reference to Beethoven's symphony where things go from simplicity to thunderstorms and back to normalcy and contentment with the world. He commissioned The Royal Opera House conductor, John Lanchberry, to orchestrate a new score that, while recalling French culture and manners (it did begin as a French ballet after all), is firmly rooted in an English sensibility