HOUSTON BALLET'S FALL REPERTORY PROGRAM CLASSICALLY MODERN FEATURES WORLD PREMIERE AND TWO COMPANY PREMIERES 

HOUSTON BALLET’S FALL REPERTORY PROGRAM
CLASSICALLY MODERN
FEATURES WORLD PREMIERE AND TWO COMPANY PREMIERES

Stanton Welch Creates a New Ballet Inspired by the music of Mediæval Bæbes
Company Gives First Performances of Hans van Manen Solo
and Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun

Houston, TX - From September 18 – September 28, 2008, Houston Ballet presents Classically Modern, a fall repertory program featuring four different interpretations of classical ballet that show the range and evolution of dance styles, including works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Hans van Manen, and Stanton Welch.  Featured on the program are the Houston premieres of Solo by Holland’s best known dance maker Hans van Manen, American master Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun, and George Balanchine’s dazzling neoclassical ballet for a full company of dancers Symphony in C. Houston Ballet will give seven performances of Classically Modern in Brown Theater at Wortham Theater Center in downtown Houston. Tickets may be purchased by calling 713 227 2787 or by visiting www.houstonballet.org

Stanton Welch will create a new work for Houston Ballet inspired by the music of the popular English group Mediæval Bæbes.  The Mediæval Bæbes offer a sound that is unique by pulling lyrics from medieval texts and setting them to original scores using medieval and classical instruments. The music evokes an earlier time, but is accessible to a modern audience. The medieval themes of nature, the life cycle, love and longing are as relevant in 2008 as they were in 1408. In the last ten years, they have placed three studio albums on the top of the U.K. classical charts and performed before audiences in the U.K., United States, Canada, and Europe.

Mr. Welch, one of the most sought after choreographers of his generation, has created ballets for such prestigious international companies as San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The Australian Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet in the United Kingdom, and Royal Danish Ballet. His new work for Houston Ballet will be his thirteenth ballet for the company.

Houston Ballet is joining companies worldwide in celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of Jerome Robbins with the company premiere of Afternoon of a Faun. Other companies honoring the legend of Broadway and ballet include The Australian Ballet, New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and The Royal Ballet.

“I am especially excited about Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun, a dramatic contrast to the comical The Concert, seen here last season,” said Mr. Welch. “Robbins is a very important choreographer, creating many iconic evergreen works. Robbins’s 1953 take on the Claude Debussy music is unlike the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky version. It is a moody, beautiful duet set in a ballet studio.”  

Jerome Robbins found the inspiration for Afternoon of a Faun one day in the 1950s in a studio of the School of American Ballet in New York. A young boy stood against the ballet barre in a shaft of sunlight and began to stretch his body in a sensuous, animalistic manner. Mr. Robbins’ version of Vaslay Nijinsky’s ballet of 1912 depicts an encounter between two dance students rather than a faun pining after a nymph in Nijinsky’s version. The couple appears to be narcissistically absorbed in their own reflections rather than aware of each other.

Set to French composer Claude Debussy’s Prélude a l’après-midi d’un faune, composed between 1892 and 1894, the music was inspired by a poem of Stéphane Mallarmé’s. The poem describes the reveries of a faun and a real or imagined encounter with nymphs. The pas de deux by Jerome Robbins is a variation on these themes. Afternoon of a Faun was given its world premiere by New York City Ballet, City Center, New York on May 14, 1953.

New York-born choreographer Jerome Robbins, one of the first great American ballet masters, had a wide-ranging career in the fields of both theater and dance – as a performer and choreographer in ballet and musical theater, and as a director and choreographer in theater, movies, television and opera. In a career that spanned five decades, he won four Tony Awards, two Academy Awards, an Emmy, and countless other awards for his achievements. He joined Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre) in 1940 and choreographed his first work, Fancy Free, for that company in 1944. This was followed by Interplay (1945) and Facsimile (1946), after which he embarked on a prolific and enormously successful career as a choreographer and later as a director of Broadway musicals and plays. He was simultaneously creating ballets for New York City Ballet, which he joined in 1949 as associate director with George Balanchine. Among his outstanding works for that company were The Guests (1949), The Age of Anxiety (1951), The Cage (1951), The Pied Piper (1951), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), Dances at a Gathering (1969), The Goldberg Variations (1971) and Glass Pieces (1983).  Houston Ballet has two works by Jerome Robbins in its repertory:  The Concert, which entered the company’s repertory in 2007; and In the Night, which the company first performed in 1987.

Another premiere on the program is Hans van Manen’s Solo, first performed by Netherlands Dance Theater in The Hague on January 16, 1997. Believing that the complexity of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Suite makes it impossible for just one person to dance, van Manen divides this masterful solo among three men in a tour de force work that challenges the men’s daring agility and grace. This explosive display of virtuosity and wit launches the men into an exhilarating whirlwind of movement and musicality in a short, but powerful seven minute ballet. With a classical score and a contemporary dance style, the dancers connect briefly, and each dance sequential solos with virtuosity. “Solo epitomizes dance at its essence,” writes Allan Ulrich, dance critic for The San Francisco Chronicle.” (February 5, 1999). 

One of Europe’s greatest living choreographers, Hans van Manen began to work with the Netherlands Dance Theater in 1960, first as a dancer, next as a choreographer, then as the artistic director (from 1961 to 1971).  For the following two years he worked as a freelance choreographer, then joined the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam in 1973.  Outside of the Netherlands, he has staged his ballets for many international companies.  In September 1988, Mr. van Manen rejoined Netherlands Dance Theater as a resident choreographer.  In the course of his career, he has created more than 100 works, 58 of which have been for Netherlands Dance Theater. Mr. van Manen has also been awarded numerous prizes.  In 1991 he received the Sonia Gaskell Prize for his entire body of work.  In 1992—his 35th year as a choreographer— he was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands in the Order of Orange Nassau.

Houston Ballet has three works by van Manen in its repertory, Five Tangos (2008), Grosse Fuge (2006), and Adagio Hammerklavier (1978).

George Balanchine’s Symphony in C, set to George Bizet’s classic in four movements, makes for a grand finale, and a stunning showpiece for the full company. Houston Ballet first premiered Symphony in C in 1992, and has not been seen in Houston in 16 years.

Bizet composed his Symphony in C Major when he was a 17-year pupil of Charles Gounod at the Paris Conservatory. The manuscript was lost for decades, and was published only after it was discovered in the Conservatory’s library in 1933. He required only two weeks to choreograph and originally named it Le Palais de cristal in 1947 for the Paris Opera Ballet, where he was serving as a guest ballet master. When he revived the ballet for the first performance of New York City Ballet in 1948, Balanchine simplified the costumes and design and changed the name using just the name of the musical composition. Originally created to showcase the whole company with the opportunity for four ballerinas to dance lead roles, the ballet has four movements and a cast of 48 dancers. 

“The enduring appeal of George Balanchine’s exhilarating Symphony in C stems first of all from its dialogue between choreography and score. It combines the youthful vigour and the classical discipline of the seventeen-year-old Georges Bizet’s first symphony to produce an effect much like light shining and refracting through grand architecture, thus making the original title, Le Palais de crystal, singularly apt,” writes Marilyn Hunt in the International Dictionary of Ballet.

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Kimberly Bies

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