FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACTS:
PNB: Gary Tucker, 206.441.2426, gtucker@pnb.org
Works & Process: Duke Dang, 212.758.0024, ddang@worksandprocess.org
Works & Process at the Guggenheim presents
PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET — BALANCHINE’S PETIPA
Friday and Saturday, May 14 and 15, 2010
7:30 pm
Peter B. Lewis Theater
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street
New York City, NY
SEATTLE, WA — Pacific Northwest Ballet Education Programs Manager Doug Fullington will give a presentation of Balanchine’s Petipa as part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim. The presentation’s lecture-demonstration format will feature performances by PNB company members and discussion of dances by both Marius Petipa and George Balanchine. Balanchine’s Petipa will be presented at 7:30 pm on Friday, May 14 and Saturday, May 15 in the Peter B. Lewis Theater in the Guggenheim Museum. For tickets, call 212.423.3587, or visit www.worksandprocess.org
Balanchine’s Petipa explores the influence of the choreography of Marius Petipa (1818-1910) and his colleagues at the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg on the choreography of George Balanchine (1904-1983), with a particular focus on choreography for men. Excerpts from 19th-century ballets will include The Awakening of Flora, La Bayadère, The Nutcracker, Paquita, Raymonda, The Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake. Excerpts from Balanchine ballets will include Apollo, Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Fée”, Divertimento No. 15, Emeralds, Prodigal Son, Raymonda (1946), Raymonda Variations, and Theme and Variations. The program’s Balanchine excerpts have been staged by Peter Boal, Elyse Borne, Frederic Franklin, and Francia Russell. The 19th-century dances have been reconstructed by Mr. Fullington using notations made in St. Petersburg in the Stepanov notation method at the turn of the 20th century.
Doug Fullington has been Education Programs Manager at Pacific Northwest Ballet since 2005 and Assistant to Artistic Director Peter Boal since 2006. He has been with PNB since 1995 and is also on the consulting staff of Pacific Northwest Ballet School as dance historian. He is a fluent reader of Stepanov notation, a classical ballet notation system developed in Russia and used in the Imperial Theaters, St. Petersburg, between about 1894 and 1915. In 2000, he contributed reconstructed dances to the Bolshoi Ballet’s revival of Marius Petipa’s The Daughter of Pharaoh, and in 2004, he reconstructed Petipa’s Le jardin animé for PNB School. He most recently reconstructed 25 dances from Petipa’s 1899 production Le Corsaire for the Bavarian State Ballet. His writings on the Stepanov notations have been published in Ballet Alert!, Ballet Review, Dance View, and Dancing Times. In 2000, he was named a principal researcher for The George Balanchine Foundation’s “Popular Balanchine” project. Mr. Fullington is also a professional musician. In 1993, he founded the Tudor Choir, a professional vocal ensemble based in Seattle that he continues to direct.
Joining Mr. Fullington will be eight PNB company members: Principal dancers Carla Körbes, Kaori Nakamura, Lucien Postlewaite, and Mara Vinson; and soloists Benjamin Griffiths, James Moore, Seth Orza, and Lesley Rausch. PNB Acting Music Director and Conductor Allan Dameron will accompany.
Pacific Northwest Ballet, one of the largest and most highly regarded ballet companies in the United States, was founded in 1972. In July 2005, Peter Boal became Artistic Director, succeeding Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, Co-Artistic Directors since 1977. The Company of forty-eight dancers presents more than 100 performances each year of full-length and mixed repertory ballets at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall and on tour. The Company has toured to Europe, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada and throughout the United States, with celebrated appearances at Jacob’s Pillow and in New York City and Washington, DC. Under the direction of Mr. Boal, PNB has continued to expand and diversify its repertory to include works by Ulysses Dove, Susan Marshall, Benjamin Millepied, Mark Morris, Victor Quijada, Susan Stroman, Twyla Tharp, Christopher Wheeldon and others. Founded in 1974, Pacific Northwest Ballet School, under the direction of Francia Russell since 1977 and now under Mr. Boal’s direction, is nationally recognized as setting the standard for ballet training and offers a complete professional curriculum to over 950 students. PNB and PNBS also provide comprehensive dance education to the greater Seattle area and reach over 10,000 adults and children each year through DanceChance, Discover Dance and other outreach programs and activities.
Works & Process at the Guggenheim celebrates its 25th year with its spring 2010 season. In over 300 productions, New York audiences have been able to see, hear, and meet the most acclaimed artists in the world, in an intimate setting unlike any other. Works & Process, the performing-arts series at the Guggenheim, has championed new works, offered audiences unprecedented access to our generation’s leading creators and performers, and hosted post-show receptions for the audiences and artists to continue the discussion. Each 80-minute performance uniquely combines artistic creation and stimulating conversation and takes place in the Guggenheim’s intimate Frank Lloyd Wright–designed 285-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater. Described by The New York Times as “an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process,” Works & Process is produced by founder Mary Sharp Cronson and consulting producer Charles Fabius.
All performances occur at the Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street, New York.
Tickets are $30 ($25 for Guggenheim members, $10 for students 25 and under with valid ID) and may be purchased by calling 212.423.3587, M-F 1-5 pm, or online at www.worksandprocess.org.
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Lead funding provided by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation with additional support from The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston., The Christian Humann Foundation, Fundación/Colección Jumex, Leon Levy Foundation, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc.
This program is supported by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Programming subject to change. For further information, please visit: worksandprocess.org.
PUBLICITY CONTACTS:
Pacific Northwest Ballet
Gary Tucker, Media Relations Manager
Tel: 206.441.2426
E-mail: gtucker@pnb.org
301 Mercer Street
Seattle, WA 98109
www.pnb.org
Works & Process at the Guggenheim
Duke Dang, General Manager
Tel: 212.758.0024
E-mail: ddang@worksandprocess.org
845 Third Avenue, 16th Floor
New York, NY 10022
www.worksandprocess.org
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