2021-2022 Season Program Book by The Sarasota Ballet

2021 - 2022 SEASON 1

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Sir Peter Wright’s SUMMERTIDE Twyla Tharp’s NINE SINATRA SONGS

LOVE & BETRAYAL

Ricardo Graziano’s SONATINA (World Premiere)

PROGRAM 2 19 - 20 NOV 2021 OPERA HOUSE

GISELLE

Martha Graham’s APPALACHIAN SPRING

DAY & NIGHT

NEW WORLD

PROGRAM 1 22 - 24 OCT 2021 FSU CENTER

PROGRAM 4 28 - 31 JAN 2022 FSU CENTER

PROGRAM 3 17 - 18 DEC 2021 VAN WEZEL Sir Peter Wright’s GISELLE

Sir Frederick Ashton’s VALSES NOBLES ET SENTIMENTALES Dame Ninette de Valois’ THE RAKE’S PROGRESS Johan Kobborg’s NAPOLI ACT III

The Sarasota Ballet’s

2021 - 2022 SEASON Sir David Bintley’s A COMEDY OF ERRORS (World Premiere)

PROGRAM 7 29 - 30 APR 2022 OPERA HOUSE

SERENDIPITOUS MOVEMENT

THE SARASOTA BALLET PRESENTS THE MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP

PROGRAM 6 25 - 26 MAR 2022 VAN WEZEL

A COMEDY OF ERRORS

MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP

PROGRAM 5 4 - 7 MAR 2022 FSU CENTER

George Balanchine’s SERENADE Mark Morris’ THE LETTER V (Company Premiere) Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s ELITE SYNCOPATIONS

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CONTENTS Letters from Leadership & Company Overview Leadership Letters 15 Spectacular Seasons The Sarasota Ballet’s Repertoire Board of Trustees Advisory Council History of The Sarasota Ballet The Facts The Crystal Gala

7-15 16-19 20-21 22-23 24 25 26 28-29

Season Program Notes New World Day & Night Giselle Love & Betrayal The Mark Morris Dance Group A Comedy of Errors Serendipitous Movement “Torchbearer of the British Ballet Tradition” Voices of Her Project

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31-35 37-41 42-45 47-53 54-55 56-59 61-67 69-72 74-75

Biographies & Dancers Biography of Iain Webb Biography of Joseph Volpe Biography of Margaret Barbieri Artistic Staff Principals Soloists Coryphée Corps de Ballet Apprentices Studio Company

77 79 81 82-83 84-87 88-89 90-91 92-94 96 98

Patrons, Institutions, & Staff Patron Listings In Memoriam Foundations and Trusts Corporate Partners Media Sponsors Development Team 2020 Strategic Plan The Martucci Legacy Society Endowment Funds Patron Benefits Ways to Give Company Staff

100-124 125 126-128 129-131 132 133 134-135 136 137 138-139 141 142-143

Education, Community Engagement, & The Friends Education Staff The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory The Sarasota Ballet School Summer Intensive Adult Program Community Engagement Dance – The Next Generation The Friends of The Sarasota Ballet Doctors Circle Advertisers Index

144-145 146-147 148-149 150-151 152-153 154-155 156-157 158-161 162 164 5

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IAIN WEBB

DIRECTOR

t is my unique privilege, as Director of The Sarasota Ballet, to welcome you all to our 2021 – 2022 Season, marking my fifteenth as Director. We want to take this Season to not only celebrate everything we have accomplished together these past fifteen Seasons, but also to look to the future and the continued growth and success of The Sarasota Ballet. We have breathed new life into nearly-lost ballets, such as Sir Frederick Ashton’s Apparitions and Valses nobles et sentimentales, while fostering a culture of pure artistic expression and authenticity. Our dancers have the freedom to explore multiple creative avenues—Resident Choreographer and Principal Dancer Ricardo Graziano’s next World Premiere is set for our opening Program, New World; meanwhile, last year’s Voices of Her Terrace Program featured six works choreographed by women of The Sarasota Ballet as well as our Studio Company. I take great pride in our Company’s creative output during my tenure, and eagerly anticipate the ballets to come this Season and beyond. While the pandemic is certainly far from over, we have learned a great deal during the past year and have created a Season that will bring thrilling live performances back into the theater. As always, we are committed to the safety of our patrons, dancers, and staff, and will continue to ensure that our events and performances adhere to all health and safety guidelines. I personally want to thank all our devoted donors and audience members who showed robust support during our Digital Season last year and whose outpouring of generosity kept our Company stable and our employees secure. I also thank our dancers and staff who worked tirelessly through unprecedented challenges to assemble some truly amazing ballet programs and virtual events, and our Board of Trustees, who contributed their expertise to assist with guiding us through the crisis. I am deeply grateful to Joseph Volpe, who has stood by me as a stalwart source of strength as Executive Director for six Seasons now. Finally, I thank Margaret, who not only enters her tenth year as Assistant Director of the Company, but has given me unconditional support and inspiration. Thank you all for sharing the love of ballet with me these fifteen years, and for so many years to come.

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JOSEPH VOLPE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

s we prepare to share with you the marvelous ballets planned for our 2021 – 2022 Season, I want to take a moment and reflect on the myriad of challenges The Sarasota Ballet has overcome these past couple of Seasons. To refer to this last year and a half as unusual would be a monumental understatement; and yet, I believe we have come through it stronger than ever. We saw our programming adapt to a digital format last Season, to spread our artistry far and wide when it may very well have been needed most, as well as to facilitate employment for our dancers and staff. To that end, I am intensely proud of our focus on maintaining financial support for our people, especially with a significant number of our dancers stranded from their home countries. The Sarasota Ballet School shifted to virtual and hybrid options, so our students would not be left with a gap in their dance education. Our Community Engagement Programs also delivered virtual experiences to our local partners, keeping Sarasota ties to the performing arts thriving and vibrant. Now that we are returning to a more traditional performance format, we are more confident than ever in our adaptability and commitment to artistic integrity. With The Sarasota Ballet’s infrastructure secure, I want to congratulate Iain and Margaret on their stalwart leadership throughout the pandemic. Their careful yet ambitious response to the impact of COVID-19 not only bolstered our national and international reputation as a world-class artistic institution, but as a deeply compassionate and community-focused organization. I would also like to thank our Board of Trustees, who contributed their energy and expertise towards ensuring our resources were allocated especially effectively. Finally, it is crucial that I voice my appreciation for all of our donors and institutional partners—the financial support provided by so many of our loyal patrons, foundations, and local businesses has truly allowed us to attain an exemplary standard of quality, which we are eager to share with you this Season and beyond. It is a pleasure to welcome you back and I am thrilled to once again be able to say that I look forward to seeing you all in the theater.

“We can’t change the world, but we can change little pieces of it and hope for a ripple effect.” - Margie Barancik

MARGARET BARBIERI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

ow exciting it is to return once again to the studio for full Company rehearsals! Last Season, it was necessary for us to rehearse in small, isolated groups to maintain safety, with repetiteurs and coaches often calling in via Zoom to contribute their expertise. While we are still taking a series of safety precautions to protect our dancers’ well-being, we have at least reached a point where rehearsals can resume normal operation. I am so pleased to welcome back all our wonderful dancers and to meet the new Company members who joined us this August. I eagerly look forward to working with each of them and seeing the fruits of their labor take form onstage over the course of the Season. It is a pleasure to introduce Mandy-Jayne Richardson and Lindsay Fischer, who join Iain, Octavio, Pavel, and myself in teaching and coaching our dancers throughout the Season. Their wealth of expertise includes over two decades with the National Ballet of Canada, and they are a great addition to The Sarasota Ballet. This Season continues our Voices of Her project—a multi-year celebration of the enormous impact women have made on the world of ballet, particularly regarding company leadership and choreography. Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring leads our Season in our first Program, New World, followed by Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs in Program Two, Day & Night, and Dame Ninette de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress in Program Four, Love & Betrayal. These three dance icons also founded their own dance organizations—Graham and Tharp, primarily to perform their own creations, and de Valois, to establish an environment in which British ballet could evolve. De Valois, or “Madam” as those of us who were close with her affectionately called her, was especially influential in my own development as a dancer, and so much of her instruction carries through to my own approach to staging and coaching ballets today. Through Voices of Her, and indeed many of The Sarasota Ballet’s artistic endeavors, we strive to preserve Madam’s ballet legacy. As I celebrate my own anniversary, 10 Seasons as Assistant Director, I am thrilled and honored to share this special anniversary season with you all, as we celebrate Iain’s 15th Anniversary and his remarkable impact on The Sarasota Ballet. Here’s to a wonderful Season together, and it is my pleasure to welcome you all home to the theater.

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RICHARD JOHNSON BOARD CHAIR

s Chair of The Sarasota Ballet’s Board of Trustees, it is my distinct joy to congratulate the Company on a phenomenal 30th Anniversary Season in spite of unprecedented obstacles. The Sarasota Ballet emerges from the COVID-19 Pandemic with a level of financial stability rare in today’s performing arts world; so much of this is attributable to the astounding benevolence and support shown by you, the devoted patrons of the Company. I also want to applaud the incredible accomplishments managed by each element of The Sarasota Ballet—from the professional Company’s digital season, which filled thousands of homes around the world with the beauty of ballet; to The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory and The Sarasota Ballet School, which continued to thrive after adapting classes to virtual and hybrid models; to the Community Engagement Program, which maintained enriching connections with schools and organizations in the area. A significant portion of the strength and agility with which The Sarasota Ballet reacted to the pandemic—in fact, so much of the growth the Company has experienced over these past fifteen years—can be directly attributed to the tireless efforts of Director Iain Webb. I am continuously impressed by his determination to hone the Company’s artistic and technical prowess to the highest standard possible. In the pursuit of this endeavor, he has fueled the evolution of The Sarasota Ballet into the world-class ballet company it has become. The Board of Trustees and our Advisory Council serves to support the Company leadership’s mission, and to enact policies and initiatives that enhance the organization’s ability to achieve that mission. Iain’s directorship has brought The Sarasota Ballet unprecedented levels of critical acclaim and fiscal security, and I take great pride in chairing this Board to see his vision carried out. I know I speak for all Trustees and Council members when I state that we look forward to working alongside Iain to help The Sarasota Ballet grow ever stronger for years to come.

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JEAN WEIDNER FOUNDER & GOLDSTEIN CHAIR EMERITA

t is with immense pride and delight, as both the Founder of the Company and a longtime patron, to congratulate The Sarasota Ballet on its success navigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performing arts world. Throughout the previous Season, the Company’s series of specially crafted digital programs delivered much-needed joy and beauty into the homes of thousands of ballet fans around the globe. I feel compelled to call attention to the absolutely astounding level of leadership and compassion displayed by Iain, Joe, Margaret, and the rest of the Company. The measures taken towards maximizing the safety and well-being of Sarasota audiences, paired with the comprehensive support provided for dancers and staff, have served as a radiant beacon of hope as we gradually transition towards a return to normalcy. In addition to the professional Company’s accomplishments, the Trainees of The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory triumphed in their own right. Besides adhering to their exercises and instructions through such a difficult time and in a virtual environment, they shined in last spring’s Terrace Programs and in other outdoor performances around Sarasota. Several even scored top ranks in the Youth America Grand Prix competition, demonstrating their talents and artistry to the national ballet community, and earning scholarships for their future ballet studies. It is truly dazzling to see these young dancers take to ballet so skillfully and with such evident passion. To speak of passion for ballet, however, one cannot find a more spectacular example than Director Iain Webb, now entering his 15th Season leading the Company. His love of ballet is apparent in everything he sets out to achieve, and his meticulous care for the preservation of ballet history shines through the attention to detail shown in The Sarasota Ballet’s revivals and performances. His drive for artistic excellence and integrity is matched by that of his wife, Margaret Barbieri, in her 10th Season with the Company as Assistant Director; with her extraordinary life experiences over the course of her astounding ballet career, she passes on a wondrous authenticity through her coaching in the studios. With Joseph Volpe supporting their artistic vision through his unparalleled experience and ability, this Company, and indeed ballet itself, is in exceptionally adept hands.

IAIN WEBB

15 Sensational Seasons Webb joins as Director “It’s a sensational season. I don’t think any American company has ever done all these ballets before. It’s a rarity.” - Clive Barnes, 2007

2007

The Two Pigeons Opens Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons opens Iain’s first Season and marks the first Ashton ballet performed by The Sarasota Ballet.

A Bourne World First! Closing Iain’s first Season with Infernal Galop, The Sarasota Ballet becomes the first Ballet Company in the world to perform a work by Sir Matthew Bourne.

2008 International Acclaim The Dancing Times (UK) reviews the Company: “Speaking for myself, I would say that Iain Webb and Margaret Barbieri, and their dancers, did Sir Fred and Clive proud.” - David Vaughan, 2008

The New York Times Reviews “The Sarasota Ballet has suddenly become America’s foremost exponent of Ashton ballets.” - Alastair Macaulay, December 2008

2009

The Sarasota Ballet turns 20 The 2010 - 2011 Season marks the 20th Anniversary of The Sarasota Ballet. Iain fills the Season with remarkable ballets from choreographers ranging from Ashton, Bournonville, and Balanchine to Tuckett, Walsh, and Wheeldon. Iain dedicates the Season and Annual Gala to founder Jean Weidner Goldstein.

International Stars Perform Joining The Sarasota Ballet for 2009’s performances of Sir Peter Wright’s Giselle, renowned stars and longtime friends of Iain, Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg, dazzle audiences.

2010 In The Upper Room Twyla Tharp’s In The Upper Room enters the Company’s rep, marking a changing point in the level of repertoire that The Sarasota Ballet performs. It is a huge achievement and success.

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

Diamonds in Washington The Sarasota Ballet joins forces with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet to perform George Balanchine’s Diamonds at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

2011

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Graziano Choreographs After being asked by Iain to choreograph, Ricardo Graziano workshops a few ideas during the summer break before presenting them to Iain. His first idea becomes a part of the upcoming Season’s opening program. Over the following Seasons, Iain continues to support and mentor Ricardo as he develops his choreography.

2012 Barbieri Joins

Nutcracker World Premiere Combining Sarasota’s circus history with the traditional Nutcracker tale, Matthew Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker receives its world premiere on December 14, 2012.

Joining the Company full-time, Margaret Barbieri takes on the role of Assistant Director for the start of the 2012 - 2013 Season.

Changing Light Premieres Commissioned by Iain, Will Tuckett’s Changing Light fills the stage with vibrant choreography and a commissioned score by Jeremy Holland-Smith.

2013 Ballet Across America III Performing Ashton’s Les Patineurs at the Kennedy Center for 2013’s Ballet Across America III, The Sarasota Ballet receives rave reviews.

Triumphant Ashton Festival After years of planning, the 2014 Ashton Festival—commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Ashton’s passing—attracts audiences, critics, historians, and ballet aficionados from across the world. The Festival lasts four days and sees glowing praise from around the ballet world.

2014

“...bighearted performance by The Sarasota Ballet, ensured its place as the jewel of this year’s Ballet Across America sampler of regional companies.” - Sarah Kaufman | The Washington Post, June 2013

Fall for Dance The Sarasota Ballet brings Ashton’s Les Patineurs to New York audiences for New York City Center’s 2014 Fall for Dance Festival.

“…a triumph of courage, enterprise, enthusiasm, artistic importance, stylish dancing, but, above all, choreographic felicity. Visiting Ashton dancers from the 1950s to the ’70s spoke with awe of how well this young Gulf Coast company reminded them of what they had loved years ago and had thought lost.” - Alastair Macaulay | The New York Times, May 2014

IAIN WEBB

15 Sensational Seasons Jacob’s Pillow

2015

Expanding the Company’s national touring, The Sarasota Ballet embarks on its first week-long residency at the world-famous Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The 2015 performances would see significant acclaim from critics and featured Wheeldon’s The American, Ashton’s Monotones I & II, and the world premiere of Graziano’s In a State of Weightlessness.

Joseph Volpe Transitioning from Board Member, the worldfamous Joseph Volpe joins The Sarasota Ballet as Executive Director. Volpe’s wealth of knowledge and unparalleled experience, gained from his tenure as General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, helps Iain usher in a new era for The Sarasota Ballet.

25 Years of Ballet Celebrating 25 years of The Sarasota Ballet in style, Iain creates a Season unlike any before, with 7 Company Premieres including Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Concerto and George Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes.

2 American Firsts Included in the 25th Anniversary are Company Premieres of Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand and Enigma Variations. Both performances mark the first time either ballet has been performed by an American Company.

2016 Balanchine’s Jewels For the December 2016 program, The Sarasota Ballet receives the rare and distinguished honor of being given permission to perform George Balanchine’s full-length masterpiece Jewels. This is a feat few ballet companies achieve.

The Joyce Theater, NYC Performing for a week-long residency in New York’s Joyce Theater, The Sarasota Ballet garners critical praise for their all-Ashton program. “The flame of dance inspiration passes from place to place. Today I’m tempted to ask if the torch is passing to Florida. What these Sarasotans are doing for Ashton is comparable to what Miami City Ballet is doing for Balanchine.” - Alastair Macaulay | The New York Times, 2016

2017

Choreographic Festival The Sarasota Ballet performs as a part of Ballet West’s 2017 inaugural National Choreographic Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah. “The Sarasota Ballet has a huge reputation in the dance world and I’m just so proud and admiring of the work Iain and Maggie have done. They have built it into this remarkable organization and it is our honor to have them join us.” - Adam Sklute, Artistic Director of Ballet West

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

Sir Anthony Dowell World-renowned dancer and director Sir Anthony Dowell works with The Sarasota Ballet for their 2018 Company Premiere of Ashton’s The Dream.

A Long-Awaited Return

2018

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Return to the Joyce The Company returns to the Joyce with a split program, featuring works by Sir Frederick Ashton, Ricardo Graziano, and Christopher Wheeldon.

2019 Varii Capricci

Having spent 2 years working with historians, repetiteurs, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Iain and The Sarasota Ballet successfully revive Sir Frederick Ashton’s Apparitions to soldout performances and international acclaim.

2020

One of Ashton’s final works, created on the famed partnership of Dowell and Sibley, The Sarasota Ballet’s 2019 revival of Varii Capricci sees the ballet’s first performances since 1983. For The Sarasota Ballet’s performances, the principal roles would be performed by Marcelo Gomes and Victoria Hulland. This Season would also mark the first season that International Guest Artist Gomes would join the Company as a Season-long Guest Artist.

A Taylor First Performed as part of the Company’s fourth program of the 2019 - 2020 Season, The Sarasota Ballet becomes the first Company outside of Paul Taylor’s own to perform his work Brandenburgs.

30th Anniversary Working side by side, Iain, Joe, and Margaret put together a comprehensive Season of performances, education programs, and community engagements to celebrate The Sarasota Ballet’s 30th Anniversary. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, the Company manages to not only protect its dancers and staff, but also bring world-class digital performances to thousands of audience members around the world.

2021

Iain’s 15th Season Amidst the ongoing pandemic, Iain creates the 2021 - 2022 Season, marking a return to live, in-theater performances and his 15th Season as Director.

The Sarasota Ballet’s

Repertoire

Sir Frederick Ashton

Apparitions, Birthday Offering, La Chatte métamorphosée en femme, The Dream, Enigma Variations, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Illuminations, Jazz Calendar, Marguerite and Armand, Meditation from Thaïs, Monotones I, Monotones II, Les Patineurs, Les Rendezvous, Rhapsody, Romeo & Juliet Balcony Pas de Deux, Scènes de ballet, Sinfonietta, The Sleeping Beauty Awakening Pas de Deux and Vision Solo, Symphonic Variations, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Two Pigeons, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci, Voices of Spring Pas de Deux, The Walk to the Paradise Garden, A Wedding Bouquet

George Balanchine

Allegro Brillante, Apollo, Bugaku, Divertimento No. 15, Donizetti Variations, The Four Temperaments, Jewels (Emeralds, Rubies, & Diamonds), Prodigal Son, Serenade, Stars and Stripes, Tarantella, Theme and Variations, ValseFantaisie, Western Symphony, Who Cares?

Sir David Bintley

A Comedy of Errors, Four Scottish Dances, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café

Sir Matthew Bourne Boutique, The Infernal Galop

August Bournonville

Flower Festival in Genzano Pas de Deux, The Jockey Dance, The Kermesse in Bruges Act I Pas de Deux, William Tell Pas de Deux

Christopher Bruce

Othello

Agnes de Mille Rodeo

Dame Ninette de Valois Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress

Robert de Warren The Nutcracker [production]

Flemming Flindt The Lesson

Michel Fokine Les Sylphides, Petrushka

Marcelo Gomes Dear Life...

Martha Graham Appalachian Spring

Ricardo Graziano (Resident Choreographer) Amorosa, Before Night Falls, En Las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness, The Jolly Overture, Pomp and Circumstance, Shostakovich Suite, Somewhere Pas de Deux, Sonata in Four Movements, Sonatina, Symphony of Sorrows, Valsinhas

Matthew Hart

Sergeant Early’s Dream

Cry Baby Kreisler, John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s Ballet Fantasy

James Buckley

Johan Kobborg

John Cranko

Joe Layton

Anne Frank

Pineapple Poll

Peter Darrell

Napoli Act III [production], Salute The Grand Tour

Sir Kenneth MacMillan Concerto, Elite Syncopations, Las Hermanas, Summer Pas de Deux

Mark Morris The Letter V

Vaslav Nijinsky

L’Après-midi d’un Faune (The Afternoon of a Faun)

Robert North

Paul Taylor

Airs, Brandenburgs, Company B

Twyla Tharp

In The Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs

Will Tuckett

Changing Light, Lux Aeterna, The Secret Garden, Spielende Kinder

Antony Tudor

Troy Game

Continuo, Gala Performance, The Leaves are Fading, Lilac Garden

Rudolf Nureyev

Vasily Vainonen

Renato Paroni

Hans van Manen

Anna Pavlova

Dominic Walsh

Raymonda Act III

Rococo Variations

The Dragonfly Solo

Marius Petipa

La Bayadère Bronze Idol, Pas de Trois, and Pas de Deux, The Black Swan Pas de Deux, Le Corsaire Pas de Trois, Diana and Actaeon Pas de Deux, Don Quixote Pas de Deux, Harlequinade Solo

Yuri Possokhov Firebird

André Prokovsky Anna Karenina, Vespri

Jerome Robbins The Concert, Fancy Free

Galina Samsova Paquita [production]

Peter Schaufuss

La Sylphide pas de deux [production]

Flames of Paris Pas de Deux Grosse Fuge

COMPANY CHOREOGRAPHERS

Ricki Bertoni

Hip 2 Be Square, Ragtop

George Birkadze Farandole

Asia Bui

Song on the Beach

Jamie Carter

À Deux Mains, Addio ad un Sogno, Concordium, Five Duets (Between Longing and Yearning), Holiday Overture, The Tarot

Meg Egington Cézanne’s Doubt

Pavel Fomin

Hommage à Chopin, Paquita [production]

Bello, Camille Claudel La Valse Pas de Deux, Clair de Lune, Dying Swan, I Napoletani, Time Out of Line, The Trilogy: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Wolfgang for Webb

Alex Harrison

Christopher Wheeldon

Baroque and Blues, Gitana Galop, Headlines, Percolator

The American, Prokofiev Pas de Deux, There Where She Loved

Sir Peter Wright

Giselle [production], The Mirror Walkers, Summertide

The Blue Hour

Kate Honea

Logan Learned Nebulous, Scene de Ballet

Octavio Martin

On The Outside, Orpheus and Eurydice

Emelia Perkins Washington Square

David Tlaiye Xibalba

Macyn Vogt Exurgency

Kelly Yankle Ne Me Quitte Pas

Board of Trustees

RICHARD S. JOHNSON

PATRICIA GOLEMME

Board Chair

Board Vice Chair

FRANK MARTUCCI

JONATHAN STRICKLAND COLEMAN

President

Secretary

PAT KENNY

MAUREEN STEINER

Treasurer

Governance

JEAN WEIDNER GOLDSTEIN

SYDNEY GOLDSTEIN

Founder & Chair Emerita

Chair Emerita

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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Peggy Abt

Ginger Cannon Bailey

Isabel Anchin Becker

Paul Cantor

Sandra DeFeo

Lynda Doery

Julie A. Harris

Bill Farber

Phil Lombardo

Peter B. Miller

Rosemary Oberndorf

Mercedita OConnor

Audrey Robbins

Jan Sirota

Hillary Steele

Jean Weiller

Mark Famiglio

Honorary Trustee

Chair Emerita

Dr. Bart Price

Honorary Trustee

Advisory Council

Ginger Cannon Bailey

Maryann Armour

William Chapman

Jan Farber

Frances D. Fergusson

Marnie Grossman

JoAnn Heffernan Heisen

Charles Huisking

Robin KleinStrauss

Peter E. Kretzmer

Karen Lichtig

Christine Lieberman

Richard March

Joan Mathews

Donna Maytham

Linda Mitchell

Dr. Joel Morganroth

Virginia Peltz

Kimberley A. Pelyk

Marilynn Petrillo

Rose Marie Proietti

Richard Segall

Marilyn Sellman

Lois Stulberg

Marcia Jean Taub

Clara Reynardus de Villanueva

David Welle

Lisa Wicks

Advisory Committee Chair

History of The Sarasota Ballet 1987

The Sarasota Ballet was founded in 1987 by Jean Weidner Goldstein as a presenting organization with the goal of becoming a full resident ballet company, which was achieved in 1990 with the appointment of the Company’s first Director, Montreal-based choreographer Eddy Toussaint. Toussaint launched The Sarasota Ballet with much of his own choreographic work. Following a Season under the leadership of Jean Weidner Goldstein as Interim Director, Robert de Warren, former Director of Ballet at Teatro alla Scala Milan and Northern Ballet, took the mantle of Artistic Director. During his thirteen years with the Company, de Warren likewise focused on bringing his own choreographic creations to stage.

2007

In January 2007, The Sarasota Ballet announced de Warren’s retirement and the appointment of Iain Webb, who would take the helm as Director. That first Season would revolutionize The Sarasota Ballet and set the Company on a path to both national and international recognition. Heavily inspired by his career with The Royal Ballet and combined with his close personal relationships with some of the biggest names in the dance world, Webb brought extraordinary ballets to the Sarasota stage by some of the great choreographers of the 20th century.

2016

In 2016, the renowned Joseph Volpe, former General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, took on the role of Executive Director of The Sarasota Ballet. His mission has been to bring the organization’s administrative staff and financial foundation to a level that matches the Company’s artistic excellence. Over the past five years, Volpe has expanded the organizational structure of The Sarasota Ballet and strengthened the Company’s future.

Present Alongside his wife Margaret Barbieri, Assistant Director and former principal of The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Webb has introduced 163 ballets and divertissements through the 2021 2022 Season. This new repertoire has included works by some of the greatest choreographers in the dance world, such as Sir Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Paul Taylor, Sir David Bintley, Sir Matthew Bourne, and Christopher Wheeldon, to name only a few. Several of these ballets have received their American premieres with The Sarasota Ballet, and the Company has been integral in bringing rarely seen ballets to today’s audiences. The Sarasota Ballet’s expansive repertoire, coupled with the athleticism and artistry of the Company’s dancers, has brought the Company national and international acclaim. In addition, The Sarasota Ballet has continued to push the art form forward through commissioning new works, from both budding choreographers within the Company and established choreographers around the globe.

Together, Iain Webb, Joseph Volpe, and Margaret Barbieri continue to grow The Sarasota Ballet both in its achievement and reputation. 25

The Facts The Sarasota Ballet

ARTISTRY & AUDIENCE 163

Ballets and Divertissements

Choreographers

World Premieres

American Company & American Premieres

National Tours

National & International Reviews

Dancers

30,000

Audience Members A Year

EDUCATION 11

Studio Company Members

Margaret Barbieri Conservatory Students

120

Summer Intensive Students

200

Sarasota Ballet School Students COMMUNITY 125

Dance – The Next Generation Students

Joyful Movement Through Parkinson’s Members

Silver Swans® Members

2500

Community Performance Audience Members

Community Partners 26

Dancers of The Sarasota Ballet | Photography Frank Atura

#1 CAR MATS AND MASKS

SUPPORTING THE SARASOTA BALLET And Celebrating Director Iain Webb’s 15th Season 27

The Cr y s t a l Gala C E L E B RAT I N G I A I N W E B B ’ S 15 T H S E AS O N AS D I R E C TO R

The C r y s t a l G a l a Celebrating Iain Webb’s 15th Season as Director Honorary Chairs: Bud and Betty Shapiro The Crystal Gala Committee: Ricki Bertoni, Danielle Brown, Victoria Hulland, and Ricardo Rhodes Performance by The Sarasota Ballet Dinner by Michael’s on East Desserts and Dancing in Five Points Park Sunday, May 1, 2022 5:00 PM Sarasota Opera House Join us for an extraordinary evening to Celebrate Iain Webb’s 15th Season as Director of The Sarasota Ballet. The Crystal Gala will begin with an exciting performance by The Sarasota Ballet at the Sarasota Opera House. Following the performance, guests will be escorted to a spectacular tent on Pineapple Avenue to enjoy dining curated by Michael’s on East. The evening will conclude with desserts and dancing under the stars in Five Points Park. Sponsorship Tickets are available beginning at $1,000.00. Become a Sponsor of The Sarasota Ballet’s Crystal Gala by Friday, December 17 to receive recognition on The Crystal Gala’s Invitation, in performance programs, and in a special ad in the Observer and Scene Magazine. For more information on becoming a Sponsor please call Rachael Fisk at 941.225.6519.

New World

Program 1 | 22 - 24 October 2021 Graham’s Appalachian Spring Graziano’s Sonatina

Appalachian Spring

Choreography by Martha Graham Music by Aaron Copland

rom the Depression years through World War II and beyond, US art explored its own culture, history and narratives, rejecting many former European influences. Martha Graham, at the zenith of her powers, had initiated her version of this phenomenon with her landmark solo Frontier (1935), honoring her own pioneer ancestry in a first collaboration with the designer Isamu Noguchi. Aaron Copland had enjoyed major hits with his ballet scores for Billy The Kid (1938) and Rodeo (1942). Oklahoma! (1943) was transforming commercial Broadway. Financed by the Coolidge Foundation, Graham commissioned a new score from Copland for a ballet with “an American theme.” They collaborated by letter between Mexico and California on Ballet for Martha, the eventual title striking Martha shortly before the premiere, from a Hart Crane poem. Copland’s inspiration came from a book Songs, Dances and Rituals of the American Shakers, which included the beautiful 1848 Shaker hymn Simple Gifts featured in the ballet. Against Noguchi’s skeleton set of a framework farmhouse and fence, Graham presents a spring celebration of 19th century American Puritan pioneers. It’s hard to improve on the Los Angeles Times summary of the ballet: “A young farm couple ruminate on their lives before getting married and setting up house in the wilderness. An itinerant preacher delivers a sermon. An older pioneer woman oversees the events with sympathy and wisdom. The newlyweds muse on their future as night falls. In the course of the dance, Graham reveals the inner lives of the four principal characters - Wife, Husbandman, Pioneer Woman and Preacher. She shows that the couple will face a future that will not be all sweetness and light, but she also draws out the private and shared emotional resources they will be able to bring to the challenges. Such is the power of Graham’s images, however, that this very particular story broadens out to become a parable about Americans conquering a new land.” Graham was 50 when she first played the bride to the farmerhusband of Erick Hawkins (the love of her life) while Merce Cunningham danced the preacher and May O’Donnell the pioneer woman. Agnes de Mille described the ballet, imbued with Graham’s love for Hawkins, as “a love letter, a dance of hope, budding, fresh and beautiful.” Both Graham’s ballet and Copland’s score (which won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Music) are American classics of enduring impact and popularity.

Design by Isamu Noguchi Staged by Peggy Lyman Hayes Peter Sparling Lighting Design by Beverly Emmons

Martha Graham CHOREOGRAPHER

Martha Graham (1894-1991) is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th Century. She was named “Dancer of the Century” by Time and has been compared with other creative giants such as Picasso, Einstein, Stravinsky and Freud. She created 181 ballets and a technique that revolutionized dance throughout the greater part of the past century. Using the founding principles of contraction and release, she built a vocabulary of movement to “increase the emotional activity of the dancer’s body,” exploring the depth and diversity of human emotion. Her ballets were inspired by a wide range of sources from the American frontier to Greek Mythology. She created and portrayed prominent women, including Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Medea, Phaedra, Joan of Arc and Emily Dickenson. During her 70 years of creating dance, she collaborated with other great artists – Noguchi, Copland, Barber, and Schuman, and her mentor Louis Horst among others, and is recognized for her groundbreaking work in all aspects of the theater—use of time, space, lighting, costumes, sets and music. Her company was a training ground for many generations of choreographers including Cunningham, Taylor and Tharp. At the Neighborhood Playhouse, she is said to have changed the course of American acting through students such as Bette Davis, Gregory Peck, and Tony Randall. Her creative genius earned numerous honors and awards, including the Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of the Arts. Martha Graham’s extraordinary legacy lives on in the work of the Martha Graham Dance Company, Ensemble and School, and in the students worldwide studying her technique and performing her masterworks.

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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NEW WORLD | 22 - 24 October 2021 | FSU Center for the Performing Arts

Aaron Copland COMPOSER

Often hailed as “the Dean of American music,” Aaron Copland was born 14 November 1900 in Brooklyn into a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family (originally named Kaplan). He studied piano and composition with Leopold Wolfssohn and then with Nadia Boulanger in Paris where he participated fully in the heady 1920s of the American expatriate “Lost Generation,” traveling widely in Europe before returning to New York in 1925. His 1920s work displayed a strong Jazz and Modernist influence. In the 1930s, Copland continued to travel, compose, teach, and write, but aimed to compose more accessible work, and drew close to the political left, associating with Lee Strasberg’s Group Theater. Copland’s wider range included Hollywood film scores Of Mice and Men and Our Town, radio broadcasts, and incidental music for plays and ballets. In 1936 came his first major signature work, El Salon Mexico, and in the 1940s major acclaim and financial security with the hugely popular scores including Rodeo, Appalachian Spring for Martha Graham, Lincoln Portrait, Fanfare for the Common Man, and his Third Symphony. In the 1950s, Copland became interested in experimental music, notably Schonberg, Webern, Berg, Takemitsu, and Cage. A calm, affable and famously generous man, Copland guarded his privacy and died 2 December 1990, leaving a large fortune to the Aaron Copland Foundation for Composers.

Isamu Noguchi DESIGNER

Born 1904 in Los Angeles, Noguchi grew up in Japan before attending school in Indiana and studying medicine at Columbia University. Dropping out of University, he went on to study sculpture in 1924, and afterwards began a brief apprenticeship with Gutzon Borgium. With a Guggenheim Scholarship, Noguchi studied with Brancusi in Paris and traveled widely, absorbing ideas and influences in London, Japan, China, and India. Back in 1930s New York, Noguchi had two solo exhibitions, applied for public commissions, and undertook portrait sculptures, including Martha Graham, whose landmark solo Frontier he designed. Based in Greenwich Village in the 1940s, Noguchi created sets for Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, and worked for the Herman Miller company on an influential 1947 collection of modernist furniture. From the 1950s onwards, Noguchi traveled and developed an illustrious career in stage design, public gardens and monuments, sculpture, and interior design items. At his death in1988, aged 84, laden with honors and awards, Noguchi was hailed by The New York Times as “a versatile and prolific sculptor whose earthy stones and meditative gardens bridging East and West have become landmarks of 20th-century art.”

Beverly Emmons

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Beverly Emmons’ career as a lighting designer has seen her talents demonstrated on Broadway, as well as through dance and opera. A Sarah Lawrence College graduate, Emmons’ first Broadway work was 1975’s A Letter for Queen Victoria by writer/director Robert Wilson; Emmons and Wilson would continue to collaborate on works such as the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach, scored by Philip Glass, and the vast five-act opera the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down. More recently, she designed lighting for the 1999 revival of Annie Get Your Gun, and the 2011 play, Stick Fly. Emmons’s dance lighting portfolio includes work for ballet companies including the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as well as choreographers such as Martha Graham, Trisha Brown, and Bill T. Jones. She served as artistic director of the Lincoln Center Institute from 1997 to 2002, and was also on the graduate theater faculty of Columbia University. Since 2011, she has returned to Sarah Lawrence College, where she teaches lighting design and stagecraft.

First Performed by Martha Graham Dance Company 30 October 1944 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 26 October 2018

Sonatina W

Choreography by Ricardo Graziano

hen Ricardo Graziano was commissioned by Director Iain Webb with choreographing a ballet to open the 2021 2022 Season—Webb’s 15th Anniversary Season—Graziano had intended for his ninth complete work to expand upon a project he had partially created during pandemic lockdown the previous Season. Webb, however, felt that the Company needed to have something classical and entirely new for this first program of the Season. This way, the work could include a larger cast so that the Company could return in full force to the stage and welcome Sarasota audiences home to the theater once again. “After so many years creating ballets for the Company, most of them contemporary works,” explained Graziano, “it felt suitable to create something distinctly Ashtonian in tone and style. The more of Sir Frederick Ashton’s repertoire I danced, the more frequently I would incorporate some of his signature elements into my own contemporary ballets, like his emphasis on the use of the upper body. With Sonatina, though, this influence is more noticeable – I wanted to create a plotless ballet that both demonstrates the heart of The Sarasota Ballet and would just be fun for our Company to dance, and our audiences to watch.”

Music by Antonín Dvořák Costume Design by Jerry Wolf Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

Ricardo Graziano CHOREOGRAPHER

Ricardo Graziano started dancing when he was 8 years old in his hometown of Mogi das Cruzes, Brazil. At the age of 16 he won a scholarship to study at the Academie des Tanzes in Mannheim, Germany, and in 2005 joined Tulsa Ballet. In 2010 Graziano joined The Sarasota Ballet as a Soloist, and in 2011 was promoted to Principal. Also in 2011 Graziano was given the opportunity by Iain Webb to choreograph his first ballet, Shostakovich Suite, which premiered in October 2011. Following this ballet, Graziano choreographed four new ballets before being appointed Resident Choreographer by Iain Webb in 2014 after a performance of Symphony of Sorrows. Since then, he has choreographed four more works for the Company, including In a State of Weightlessness, which premiered 12 August 2015, as a part of The Sarasota Ballet’s first week-long residency at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. His other works for The Sarasota Ballet include: Pomp and Circumstance for The Sarasota Ballet’s March 2013 Gala; Valsinhas in May 2013; Before Night Falls in February 2014; En las Calles de Murcia in March 2015; Sonata in Four Movements in August 2016 at the 1932 Criterion Theatre in Bar Harbor, Maine; The Jolly Overture and Somewhere for The Sarasota Ballet’s April 2018 Gala; and Amorosa in January 2019. In total, Graziano has choreographed nine one-act ballets and three divertissements.

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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NEW WORLD | 22 - 24 October 2021 | FSU Center for the Performing Arts

Antonín Dvořák COMPOSER

Antonín Dvořák was born 8 September 1841 and raised in a small village outside Prague, Czech capital of Bohemia, then a province of the Hapsburg Empire. A devout Roman Catholic, Dvořák drew key inspiration from Czech folk music, studied organ, viola, and violin and spent his early years as a professional musician and piano teacher in Prague, where in 1871 he wrote his first string quartet and in 1873 married Anna Cermakova. Of their nine children, three died in infancy. With a wife and growing family to support, Dvořák secured the post of organist at St. Adalbert’s Church, Prague. He continued to compose and found a publisher through Brahms, who became a friend and major influence. Throughout the 1870’s, Dvořák’s reputation in Prague grew with his works for strings, piano, and especially his Symphony No. 5. The international success of his Stabat Mater led to nine triumphant visits to England, including the premieres of his Symphony No. 7 in London (1885) and Requiem in Birmingham (1891), and an honorary degree from Cambridge University. In 1890-1891 Dvořák conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Prague, before spending three fruitful years in America (1892-1895) where he directed the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Dvořák’s desire to discover an “American music” with strong Native American and African-American roots, introduced him to American spirituals, which influenced his Ninth Symphony, From the New World (New York 1893). Homesick, Dvořák returned in his later years to Prague, directing the Conservatory until his death on 1 May 1904. Apart from his nine symphonies, choral works, and four concertos, he composed symphonic poems, chamber music, and ten operas, of which one, Rusalka (1900), is frequently performed.

Jerry Wolf

COSTUME DESIGNER

Native to Portland, Oregon, Jerry Wolf earned his B.A. in Theater Arts at Redlands, California, and his MFA at University of Texas in Houston. Fresh out of college, he launched a career in Broadway Touring as Wardrobe Supervisor for 25 years. Thirteen tours included Evita, Cats, Les Misérables, and Phantom of the Opera. Wolf returned to Texas in 2003 and began a seven-season run with Houston Ballet as the First Assistant to the Wardrobe Head. He then moved in 2011 to Tulsa Ballet for five seasons as Director of Wardrobe and, while visiting in Sarasota, was eventually asked to become Head of Wardrobe for The Sarasota Ballet, where he is now in his sixth season.

Aaron Muhl

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Aaron Muhl is in his 13th season as Lighting Designer and Supervisor for The Sarasota Ballet. He also works as a freelance designer and consultant with theater and dance companies around the country. Aaron was previously the production manager for the Historic Asolo Theater and the Ringling International Arts Festival at the Ringling Museum of Art. Some of his notable Sarasota Ballet lighting designs include: Summertide, In A State of Weightlessness, The Secret Garden, and Lux Aeterna. Aaron earned his B.F.A. in theatrical design from the University of Central Florida and his M.F.A. in lighting design from the University of Memphis.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 22 October 2021

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Day & Night

Program 2 | 19 - 20 November 2021 Wright’s Summertide Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs

Day & Night Cover Summertide

Summertide

Choreography by Sir Peter Wright Music by Felix Mendelssohn

Design by Dick Bird

ir Peter Wright’s Summertide is an abstract expression of Mendelssohn’s glorious music from the awakening of a new day, through the languid beauty of an afternoon in the sun, to the exhilaration of a summer’s night. “Prior to the ballet’s November 2015 American Company Premiere, we had been talking to Sir Peter for quite some time about reviving his ballet Summertide, which he had choreographed in the late seventies for The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. We all had thought that there was neither notation nor film of the ballet and, therefore, it would be very difficult to revive. However, Doug Nicholson from the Birmingham Royal Ballet, knowing of our desire to recreate Summertide, researched the archives and, to our delight, he found a film and a partial notation of the ballet. So it was with great joy and honor that Sir Peter allowed Iain and me to bring this wonderful ballet to Sarasota. “I remember the middle movement being a very beautiful adagio which he created on David Ashmole, me, Nicholas Millington, and Derek Purnell. Working with Sir Peter was always an inspiring experience and I have very fond memories of working with him on his Giselle, both when he staged it for us in The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet and also when he staged his production for Frankfurt Ballet. Similarly, I remember it was a very special time working with Sir Peter on Summertide, which was set to Mendelssohn’s mesmerizing Piano Concerto No 2. I was very excited to work with him on the ballet’s revival, and today so excited for our dancers to have the distinction to work with such a brilliant man.” “How thrilling it will be to see this lost ballet come back to life once more this Season.” - Margaret Barbieri, Assistant Director of The Sarasota Ballet

Staged by Margaret Barbieri Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

Sir Peter Wright CHOREOGRAPHER

Sir Peter Wright made his debut as a professional dancer with the Ballets Jooss during World War II, and in the 1950s worked with several dance companies, including the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, for which he created his first ballet, A Blue Rose, in 1957. In 1959 he was appointed Ballet Master to the Sadler’s Wells Opera and teacher at The Royal Ballet School. In 1961 he went to Stuttgart as teacher and Ballet Master to the company being formed by John Cranko. There he choreographed several ballets, including The Mirror Walkers, Namouna, Designs for Dancers, and Quintet, and mounted his first production of Giselle, which he subsequently produced for The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, and many other international companies. His interpretations of the classics include The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker, all now featured regularly in opera houses throughout the world. During the 1960s he also established himself as a successful director of television ballets and choreographed various West End musicals and revues. In 1969 he returned to The Royal Ballet as Associate to the Directors, and then became Associate Director. In 1977 he was appointed Director of Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, taking the Company to Birmingham in 1990, when it became Birmingham Royal Ballet. On his retirement in July 1995 he was made Director Laureate of Birmingham Royal Ballet. He received the Evening Standard Award for Ballet in 1981, and in 1985 was made a CBE. In 1990 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from London University, the University of Birmingham conferred on him the title of Special Professor of Performance Studies, and he was presented with the Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance. In 1991 he was made a Fellow of the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music. He also won the 1991 Digital Premier Award, which he used to commission a new ballet for the Company. He was awarded a Knighthood in the 1993 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, in 1994 an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Birmingham and the Critics’ Circle Award 1995 for Distinguished Services to the Arts. He is president of the Benesh Institute (Dance Notation) and the Friends of Sadler’s Wells Theatre, and a vice president of The Royal Academy of Dance and the Myasthenia Gravis Association. He is a governor of The Royal Ballet School.

First Performed by The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet 12 October 1976 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 20 November 2015 38

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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DAY & NIGHT | 19 - 20 November 2021 | Sarasota Opera House

Felix Mendelssohn COMPOSER

German Romantic composer, pianist and conductor, Felix Mendelssohn wrote Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music. Born on 3 February 1809 in Hamburg, Germany, he made his public debut in Berlin. The young Mendelssohn began taking piano lessons with Ludwig Berger. He also studied composition under composer K.F. Zelter. Mendelssohn was quick to establish himself as a musical prodigy. During his childhood, he composed 5 operas and 11 symphonies. In 1819, he joined the Singakademie music academy and began composing non-stop. In 1820 alone, he wrote a violin sonata, two piano sonatas, multiple songs, a cantata, a brief opera and a male quartet. In 1826, Mendelssohn produced one of his best known works, Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At Singakademie, he also became a conductor, but continued to compose prolifically. In 1829, he conducted a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. The performance’s success led to other great opportunities, including a chance to conduct the London Philharmonic Society that same year. In 1835, Mendelssohn was granted an illustrious role, conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. In 1837, Mendelssohn composed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in D Minor. From 1838 to 1844, he toiled away on his Violin Concerto in E Minor. Prior to the piece’s completion, Mendelssohn founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music and became its director. In so doing, he put Leipzig on the map as the musical center of Germany. After finishing Violin Concerto in E Minor, Mendelssohn conducted a string of concerts for the Philharmonic. In 1846 he presented his newly written Elijah at the Birmingham Festival. He died on 4 November 1847, in Leipzig.

Dick Bird DESIGNER

Dick Bird’s designs for ballet include: Summertide for The Sarasota Ballet; Aladdin for Birmingham Royal Ballet; The Firebird for the National Ballet of Japan; Dragon Quest, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake for Star Dancers, Tokyo; La Bayadère for K-Ballet, Tokyo; and The Canterville Ghost for English National Ballet. Designs for opera include: Otello for Vienna Staatsoper; Don Giovanni for Greek National Opera; Nixon In China for Scottish Opera and Royal Danish Opera; Street Scene for Teatro Real, Madrid; Les pêcheurs de perles for Metropolitan Opera New York, English National Opera, and Los Angeles Opera; La donna del lago for Royal Opera House, London; Béatrice et Bénédict for L’Opéra Comique, Paris; The Mikado for Scottish Opera; Nabucco for Opera National de Lorraine; Così fan tutte for Garsington Opera; House of the Dead for Opera North; Snegurochka for Wexford Festival Opera; The Gambler for Opera Zuid; and Das Portrait for Bregenz Festival. For theatre he has designed: Hamlet and La Grande Magie for Comédie Francaise; Twelfth Night for Teater Polski; Light for Complicite; Lear for Crucible Theatre; The Night Season for The National Theatre, London; Harvest for the Royal Court Theatre; The Enchanted Pig for the Young Vic Theatre; and Othello and As You Like It for The Globe Theatre. For Kate Bush, he designed the Before the Dawn concerts at London’s Hammersmith Apollo.

Nine Sinatra Songs

Choreography by Twyla Tharp Songs Sung by Frank Sinatra

Costume Design by Oscar de la Renta

wyla Tharp describes Nine Sinatra Songs as “a long string of gorgeous, romantic duets.” Clement Crisp hailed it as “a portrait in which seven couples incarnate the most correct as well as the most extreme aspects of ballroom behaviour.” For Arlene Croce it was “full of flair and sophistication…a composite of the Great American Prom, and, by extension, a picture of different relationships.” To any audience who has ever seen it, Nine Sinatra Songs is sheer delight, from start to finish, full of surprises and satisfactions. Beneath the mirror-ball, seven couples, each differently characterized and gorgeously costumed in different colours, interpret a classic Sinatra recording. Created at a time when Disco had separated the traditionally-embraced ballroom couple, Ms. Tharp intentionally chose Sinatra’s mature recordings from the time “when my parents were still together, when all parents were together, the last time we assumed as a culture that of course men and women lived together and loved for a lifetime.” So the nostalgic romanticism of the swooning love songs is matched by a cynical awareness that love is not forever, that the moment must be seized, that the crooner’s cliches cannot be trusted. Each of the couples dances a variation on this theme, offering us: infatuation, what Ms. Tharp terms “a bastardized tango,” a late-night smooch, effortlessly smooth harmony, a hectic Latin pastiche, the will-they-won’t-they? of That’s Life, and so on, culminating in a reprise of My Way. Ms. Tharp came straight to Nine Sinatra Songs from intensive research into turn-of-the-century ballroom exhibition dancing for the movie Ragtime, and while acknowledging a long-seated desire to evoke the (later) romantic glamour of Astaire and Rogers, she also determined to adjust the traditional partnering by empowering her female dancers into a more proactive or equal role than orthodox ballroom allows. It would be tedious to list the endless revivals since its triumphant 1982 premiere by companies all over the world. Suffice it to say that Nine Sinatra Songs must rank among the most popular and universally welcomed of Ms. Tharp’s many successful dances.

Set Design by Santo Loquasto Staged by Shelley Washington Lighting Design by Jennifer Tipton

Twyla Tharp

CHOREOGRAPHER

Twyla Tharp has choreographed over 135 dances for her own company and for Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance, Martha Graham Dance Company, Miami City Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet. She has choreographed five Hollywood films: Milos Forman’s Hair (1978), Ragtime (1980), and Amadeus (1984); Taylor Hackford’s White Nights (1985); and James Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything (1994). She has directed and choreographed four Broadway shows: When We Were Very Young (1980), The Catherine Wheel with David Byrne (1981), Singin’ In the Rain (1985), and Movin’ Out (2002). Among Ms. Tharp’s numerous awards, she has received a Tony, two Emmys, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born 1 July 1941 in Portland, Indiana, Twyla Tharp was educated and began dance training in California before moving to New York, where she graduated from Barnard College (1963) with an Art History degree and studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, before joining the Paul Taylor Dance Company and forming her own company Twyla Tharp Dance in 1965, which toured internationally from 1971 to 1988, when she merged it with American Ballet Theatre to re-form a new company in 1991 for a major international tour of Cutting Up with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Twyla Tharp Dance toured internationally from 1999 to 2003. From Twyla Tharp’s distinguished choreographic oeuvre, one might single out landmark works: Deuce Coupe (Joffrey Ballet, 1973) to Beach Boys music, often credited as the first “crossover” ballet, Sue’s Leg (1975), Push Comes To Shove (American Ballet Theatre, 1976) for Baryshnikov, Nine Sinatra Songs (1982), The Golden Section (1983), or In The Upper Room (1986). Ms. Tharp has written her autobiography Push Comes To Shove (1992), The Creative Habit, and The Collaborative Habit. She has a son and a grandson. She continues to create, write, and lecture.

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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DAY & NIGHT | 19 - 20 November 2021 | Sarasota Opera House

Frank Sinatra The father of modern pop singing, Francis Albert Sinatra—popularly nicknamed “Ol’ Blue Eyes”—was born 12 December 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey, the only child of doting Italian immigrant parents. A troubled and delinquent youth, he developed his singing gifts by ear; Sinatra never learned to read music. His first break came at age twenty when he joined a local singing trio—through his mother’s persuasion—forming the “Hoboken Four,” quickly becoming their lead singer and finding national success. In 1939 he joined the Harry James band, and later the Tommy Dorsey band, as featured vocalist; he found a role model of sorts in Dorsey, who inspired him to record over forty songs in 1940 and launch a series of hits. When Sinatra decided to go solo in 1942, it was to Dorsey’s chagrin, however, due to contract arrangements in Dorsey’s favor; after a fierce legal battle, Sinatra went his own way, never truly resolving the personal dispute by Dorsey’s passing in 1956. As a best-selling recording artist during World War II (in which, to his subsequent embarrassment, he did not serve), Sinatra became the heartthrob of the “bobby soxers,” as teenage fans were called at the time. While his recording career flourished in the immediate postwar era, including stardom in Hollywood musicals, often with Gene Kelly (Anchors Aweigh, Take Me Out To The Ballgame, and On The Town), his career would begin to slump by 1950 after the death of his publicist George Evans and public reaction to his personal affairs. His career bounced back with a vengeance in 1953, with the movie From Here to Eternity and a series of triumphantly successful albums (Songs for Young Lovers, In The Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, and Come Fly With Me) for Capitol Records. This success continued into the 1960s, with Sinatra a leading member of the notorious Rat Pack, further movie successes (Ocean’s 11, The Manchurian Candidate), plus a hectic concert and recording schedule. At the age of 55, Sinatra announced his retirement, but consistently returned to the stage and recording studio until 1995. He died in Los Angeles at the age of 82 on 14 May 1998, described by American music critic Robert Christgau to have been “the greatest singer of the 20th century,” and an iconic figure in music to this day.

Jennifer Tipton

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Jennifer Tipton is an internationally renowned American lighting designer known for her impactful career as the principal lighting designer of Paul Taylor Dance Company. A Cornell graduate, she has also designed lighting for the American Ballet Theatre, as well as served as a Professor-Adjunct of Design at the Yale School of Drama since 1981. Tipton has also won multiple Tony Awards and Drama Desk Awards for her lighting designs on and off Broadway, for works including 1977’s The Cherry Orchard and 1989’s Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. Her prolific and significant creations via the medium of light have earned her worldwide acclaim and numerous awards, notably the prestigious MacArthur Grant in 2008. She continues to collaborate with many of the greatest choreographers of the modern era.

Oscar de la Renta

COSTUME DESIGNER

An internationally renowned couturier, Óscar Arístides Renta Fiallo, known professionally as Oscar de la Renta, was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on 22 July 1932. Raised Catholic in a protective family, he left at eighteen to study painting at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, where he would draw clothes for newspapers and fashion houses for extra income. He would eventually secure an apprenticeship with Cristóbal Balenciaga, Spain’s most famous couturier and de la Renta’s eventual mentor. De la Renta left Spain in 1961 to join fashion house Lanvin in Paris as a couture assistant. In 1963 de la Renta left for New York to work for cosmetics mogul Elizabeth Arden. Two years later, he took a position with American fashion house Jane Derby; upon Derby’s death in August 1965, de la Renta took over and would launch his own label. Meeting immediate success, in 1967 and 1968 de la Renta won the Coty Award, called “fashion’s Oscars,” and in 1973 was inducted into the Coty Hall of Fame. His wildly successful career would span five decades. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and would eventually die of complications from cancer on 20 October 2014, continuing to innovate in the fashion industry until his death through his label that continues today, preserving his legacy.

First Performed by Twyla Tharp Dance 14 October 1982 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 13 April 2012 41

Giselle

Program 3 | 17 - 18 December 2021

GISELLE | 17 -18 December 2021 | Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall

Giselle S

ir Peter Wright’s production of Giselle premiered in Stuttgart in 1965 and had its London premiere at Covent Garden in 1968, by the Royal Ballet Touring Company. The crowning achievement of the Romantic ballet and an enduringly central part of the repertoire, Giselle perfectly exemplifies how ballet is a living tradition—taught, preserved, adapted and handed down from generation to generation. Sir Peter Wright’s internationally-acclaimed staging is perhaps the definitive and most authentic production available. Giselle, originally staged with great success at the Paris Opera in 1841 as a vehicle for the star Carlotta Grisi, was choreographed by Jules Perrot and Jean Coralli and went on to triumph in London, St. Petersburg and Vienna (1842), Berlin and Milan (1843), and Boston (1846), but passed out of the Paris Opera repertoire in 1868. In 1884 Marius Petipa, who essentially took the French repertoire to Russia with him, restaged Giselle at the Imperial Maryinsky Theatre, making his own changes, additions and omissions, as he did again in 1899 and finally in 1903 for Anna Pavlova. Petipa’s version was notated and forms the basis for subsequent revivals, although most Western productions are based on Diaghilev’s 1910 staging for their second Paris season.

Production by Sir Peter Wright Original Choreography by Jean Coralli Jules Perrot Music by Adolphe Adam Staged by Margaret Barbieri Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

despairing, overwrought girl sees his sword on the ground and in her madness, she stabs herself and dies. Act Two takes place near Giselle’s forest grave, haunted by the Wilis and their Queen, Myrtha, the ghosts of jilted brides who revenge themselves by dancing to death any man they meet. Both her suitors visit Giselle’s grave and Hilarion falls victim to the Wilis. But when Albrecht is about to suffer the same fate, the spirit of Giselle intervenes and saves him from Myrtha’s merciless revenge, and the ballet ends with Giselle’s spirit finding peace by rejecting the Wilis and forgiving Albrecht.

Count Albrecht of Silesia, in disguise as the peasant Loys, romances a young and sensitive village girl, Giselle, who falls completely in love with him and rejects her jealous admirer Hilarion, a village hunter, despite his suspicions about her new beau and her mother Berthe’s concern that the girl is over-exerting her delicatelybalanced emotions. Their alarm is justified with the arrival of an aristocratic hunting party including Bathilde, the Count’s beautiful and gracious fiancée, whose kindness to Giselle is brutally followed by Hilarion’s revelation of Loys as the Count. The

Giselle Sir Peter Wright

Adolphe Adam

The French composer and music critic Adolphe Adam was born in Paris in 1803.The son of a composer and music professor at the Paris Conservatoire, he studied organ, although his father discouraged his musical career. In his twenties, Adam wrote songs and played in vaudeville theatre orchestras, composed prolifically for various Paris theatres, and travelled as far as Russia. He supplemented this by playing the organ and arranging for piano the operas of other composers, such as his former teacher Boieldieu.

CHOREOGRAPHER

In 1961 he went to Stuttgart as teacher and Ballet Master to the company being formed by John Cranko. There he choreographed several ballets, including The Mirror Walkers, Namouna, Designs for Dancers, and Quintet, and mounted his first production of Giselle, which he subsequently produced for The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, and many other international companies. His interpretations of the classics include The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker, all now featured regularly in opera houses throughout the world. During the 1960s he also established himself as a successful director of television ballets and choreographed various West End musicals and revues. In 1969 he returned to The Royal Ballet as Associate to the Directors, and then became Associate Director. In 1977 he was appointed Director of Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, taking the Company to Birmingham in 1990, when it became Birmingham Royal Ballet. On his retirement in July 1995 he was made Director Laureate of Birmingham Royal Ballet. He received the Evening Standard Award for Ballet in 1981, and in 1985 was made a CBE. In 1990 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from London University, the University of Birmingham conferred on him the title of Special Professor of Performance Studies, and he was presented with the Elizabeth II Coronation Award from the Royal Academy of Dance. In 1991 he was made a Fellow of the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music. He also won the 1991 Digital Premier Award, which he used to commission a new ballet for the Company. He was awarded a Knighthood in the 1993 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, in 1994 an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Birmingham and the Critics’ Circle Award 1995 for Distinguished Services to the Arts. He is president of the Benesh Institute (Dance Notation) and the Friends of Sadler’s Wells Theatre, and a vice president of The Royal Academy of Dance and the Myasthenia Gravis Association. He is a governor of The Royal Ballet School.

COMPOSER

Of his more than eighty works for the theatre, including fourteen ballets, Adam is best remembered for his ballet Giselle (1841), the opera Le Postillon de Lonjumeau (1836), and the beloved Christmas carol O Holy Night, which is said to have been the first music ever broadcast on the radio. At the height of his career, Adam fell out with the Director of the Opéra-Comique and opened the Opéra-National (Paris’ fourth opera house) in 1847, appealing to a wide popular audience. After investing all his own money and borrowing heavily to launch the venture, he was ruined when his new theatre had to close during the violent 1848 Revolution. While continuing to compose, to pay off his debts Adam was also obliged to take up music journalism and teach at his alma mater, the Paris Conservatoire, a workload that contributed to his premature death in Paris in 1856 at 52 years old.

First Performed by The Paris Opera Ballet 28 June 1841 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 27 November 2009

GISELLE | 17 -18 December 2021 | Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall

THE HISTORY OF SIR PETER WRIGHT’S PRODUCTION OF GISELLE Sir Peter Wright’s production of Giselle premiered in the summer of 1965 at the Stuttgart Ballet. The performances caused a sensation and its success brought his production into the repertoires of many of the great ballet companies throughout the world, forever linking Wright with one of the most beloved romantic full-length classics. However, it almost never came to pass. Having just created a new production of Swan Lake for Stuttgart Ballet, Director John Cranko felt that the next full length ballet for the company should be Giselle, especially because their previous production had been rather a disaster. Cranko approached Wright, then ballet master, to mount the ballet. While honored to have been trusted with this project, Wright initially protested as he’d never performed the ballet, let alone enjoyed watching it! Eventually he agreed to Cranko’s request, and given carte blanche, Wright left for London for 6 weeks of research. Working with the esteemed ballet historian Ivor Guest, as well as Cyril Beaumont’s book The Ballet Called Giselle Wright’s passion for the romantic classic grew the closer he got to the original choreography and story behind the ballet. His breakthrough came with the revelation of Giselle’s original death. In the productions that Wright had seen around the world, Giselle had died of a broken heart at the end of Act I. This never sat well with Wright; he thought it overly dramatic. It also made her burial in the woods even more senseless. This though, was not the original story! In an account of the first performance of Giselle at the Paris Opera Ballet, she had gone mad, taken Albrecht’s sword and plunged it into her heart. Here now was not only a death that made sense, but one that would prevent her burial in hallowed grounds in a Church cemetery, forcing her mother to bury Giselle in the woods and exposing her spirit to the malevolent Wilis. With this revelation, Wright found his connection and inspiration, leading him to bring further characterizations with the other principal characters throughout the ballet. Albrecht transformed from a ‘sloppy’ Prince, to a young viral man looking to experience life before being forced to marry the spoiled Countess Bathilde, but who nevertheless genuinely falls in love with Giselle. Hilarion became a tragic hero, in love with a woman whose heart belongs

to another, his grief and love leading him to Giselle’s grave and his untimely death. Soon after Wright’s success at Stuttgart Ballet, his production of Giselle moved to The Royal Ballet, where at a 1968 matinee performance, a young corps de ballet dancer by the name of Margaret Barbieri performed her first Principal Role on the Covent Garden stage as Giselle. This performance would begin a long relationship between Sir Peter Wright and Barbieri, and as his production of Giselle toured around the world, so too would Barbieri. The combination of Wright’s choreography and Barbieri’s artistry would bring critical acclaim to them both and to this production of Giselle. Margaret Barbieri and Egon Madsen

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The Sarasota Ballet’s Marijana Dominis | Photography Matthew Holler

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Love & Betrayal

Program 4 | 28 - 31 January 2022 Ashton’s Valses nobles et sentimentales de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress Kobborg’s Napoli Act III

Valses nobles et sentimentales

Choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton Music by Maurice Ravel Design by Sophie Fedorovitch Staged by Margaret Barbieri

aurice Ravel admitted his own fascination with the waltz, a folk dance formerly banned by the Pope (its dancers grasped each other around the waist!) and firmly identified with the early 19th century Romantic movement. “The title sufficiently indicates my intention to compose a succession of waltzes, after Schubert’s example” wrote Ravel, referring to Schubert’s earlier use of the same title. The composer intended his homage to Schubert to be at the same time nostalgically retrospective and entirely contemporary: Ravel always liked to startle and surprise, and he was interested in modernism and jazz, as we can hear in his later piano concerti. The music writer Roger Nichols summed up Valses nobles et sentimentales perfectly, as offering “nostalgia without incoherence, sentiment without sentimentality.” In 1906 Ravel started work on his waltz project, culminating in his 1919 La Valse. Before then, he had presented his Valses nobles et sentimentales in an anonymous 1911 Paris competition, dedicated to the pianist Louis Aubert, where the audience attributed it to Zoltan Kodaly or Erik Satie while greeting it with booing and catcalls. Ravel orchestrated his waltzes in 1912 as Adélaïde, ou le langage des fleurs. Ashton had used Valses nobles et sentimentales for his 1935 Valentine’s Eve for Ballet Rambert, and he revisited Ravel’s ravishing, swooning score for his new 1947 piece for Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, which encapsulated the postwar yearning for glamour, style and elegance in a Britain bankrupted by World War II and still dominated by austerity and rationing. Sophie Fedorovitch designed Ashton’s ballet against an abstract décor of screens and silhouetted palms, suggesting a ballroom, with luscious velvet and tulle costumes in maroon and pink, redolent of both the original 1830s Romantic ballet and the exhilarating Parisian catwalk designs of Christian Dior’s 1947 New Look, with its elegantly exaggerated feminine tailoring and extravagant yards of swirling skirts. Nothing could have captured so completely the glamorous, escapist dreams of a glumly rationed postwar Britain.

Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

Sir Frederick Ashton CHOREOGRAPHER

Sir Frederick Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904 and determined to become a dancer after seeing Anna Pavlova dance in 1917 in Lima, Peru. Arriving in London, he studied with Léonide Massine and later with Dame Marie Rambert (who encouraged his first ventures in choreography) as well as dancing briefly in Ida Rubinstein’s company (1928-1929). A Tragedy of Fashion (in which he danced alongside Marie Rambert) was followed by further choreographies (Capriol Suite, Façade) until in 1935, when he accepted Dame Ninette de Valois’ invitation to join her Vic-Wells Ballet as Dancer and Choreographer, his principal loyalty remaining with what would become the Sadler’s Wells and ultimately The Royal Ballet. Besides his pre-war ballets at Sadler’s Wells (which demonstrated an increasing authority, with larger resources), Ashton choreographed for revues and musicals. His career would also embrace opera, film, and international commissions, creating ballets in New York, Monte Carlo, Paris, Copenhagen, and Milan. During the War, he served in the RAF (1941-1945) before creating Symphonic Variations for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s 1946 season in its new home at Covent Garden, affirming a new spirit of classicism and modernity in English postwar ballet. During the next two decades, Ashton’s ballets, often created around the talents of particular dancers, included: Scènes de ballet, Cinderella (1948), in which Ashton and Robert Helpmann famously played the Ugly Sisters, Daphnis and Chloe (1951), Romeo and Juliet (1955), and Ondine (1958). He created La Fille mal gardée (1960) for Nadia Nerina and David Blair, The Two Pigeons (1961) for Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable, Marguerite and Armand (1963) for Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev and The Dream (1964) for Dame Antoinette Sibley and Sir Anthony Dowell. Appointed Associate Director of The Royal Ballet in 1952, Ashton succeeded Dame Ninette de Valois as Director from 1963 to 1970. Under his direction the company rose to new heights, while his choreographic career continued with Monotones II (1965), Jazz Calendar, Enigma Variations (1968), A Month in the Country (1976) and the popular film success The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) in which he performed the role of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. He was knighted in 1962. Named Founder Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, Sir Frederick Ashton died in 1988. His ballets, which remain in the international repertoire undiminished, show a remarkable versatility, a lyrical and highly sensitive musicality. He had an equal facility for recreating historical ballets and creating new works. If any single artist can be said to have formulated a native English classical ballet style and developed it over a lifetime, it is Sir Frederick Ashton.

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LOVE & BETRAYAL | 28 - 31 January 2022 | FSU Center for the Performing Arts

Maurice Ravel COMPOSER

France’s most acclaimed 20th century composer was born in Ciboure (in the French Basque province adjoining Spain) on 7 March 1875 to a Swiss father and Basque mother, but grew up in Paris, where he studied music at the Conservatoire under Fauré and was influenced by Debussy’s Impressionism. His diverse interests extended to American Jazz, African, and traditional folk music—and especially Spain, for which country’s music he developed a particular affection and affinity. Ravel enjoyed an equal talent for piano and orchestral composition. The first decade of the 20th Century saw his String Quartet (1903), Introduction and Allegro for Piano, Harp and Flute (1905), Rhapsodie Espagnole (1907), the opera L’Heure Espagnole (1907) and the admired piano works Jeux d’Eau (1901), Miroirs and Sonatine (1905). The following decade saw his career blossom, with a major Diaghilev/Fokine ballet Daphnis et Chloé (1912), Mother Goose (1912) and important piano works Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911) and Le tombeau de Couperin (1917), which predated Stravinsky’s neoclassical innovations. Ravel continued to work successfully throughout the 1920s, developing his interest in the waltz form, neoclassicism, Spanish and jazz music, with works including La Valse (1920), Bolero (1928), the opera L’enfant et les sortilèges (1925), and his milestone Piano Concerti for Left Hand (1930) and Piano Concerto in G (1931). He also made a superb orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1922). In 1928 Ravel made a wildly successful American tour of 25 cities, famously refusing Gershwin’s request to study under him: “Why be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?”

Sophie Fedorovitch DESIGNER

Anglo-Russian designer Sophie Fedorovitch (1883-1953) was a key figure in British ballet. She is best remembered for her collaborations with Sir Frederick Ashton, including his first ballet A Tragedy of Fashion in 1926, and subsequently Les Masques, Mephisto Valse, Le Baiser de la fée, Nocturne, Symphonic Variations, and Orpheus and Eurydice, among others. In addition, she created designs for La Traviata and Madama Butterfly for the Covent Garden Opera Company (later The Royal Opera). Born in Minsk to Polish parents, she studied art in Kraków and on graduation returned to Russia before emigrating to the West in 1920. She became a British citizen in 1940. Her collaborations with Ashton played a crucial part in the development of British ballet. Ashton dedicated A Month in the Country to her memory, and wrote, “Her method of designing seemed to be a process of elimination, clearing the stage of all unnecessary and irrelevant details.”

First Performed by Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet 1 October 1947 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 24 February 2012 49

The Rake’s Progress

Choreography by Dame Ninette de Valois Music by Gavin Gordon

he Rake’s Progress, the great painting series by the arch-satirist William Hogarth (1697-1764), provided inspiration for this early English ballet masterwork, on which Dame Ninette de Valois collaborated closely with Gavin Gordon and Rex Whistler to find a coherent and stylistically effective dramatization of Hogarth’s bitter tale of the fall of a wealthy merchant’s spendthrift heir, Tom Rakewell. The ballet reduces Hogarth’s original eight paintings into six scenes. The Reception introduces the nouveau riche heir Rakewell, as he distributes largesse to hangers-on, takes lessons from an egregious Dancing Master, and spurns a girl he has betrayed. Scenes two to four show Rakewell’s decline and fall, through The Orgy (wine, women and song), The Virtuous Interlude (in which he is arrested for debt while The Betrayed Girl gives her savings to relieve his difficulties) and A Gaming House, where he inevitably fails to retrieve his fortunes, before (scenes five and six) sinking to The Debtor’s Prison and dying, diseased and ruined, in The Madhouse. Hogarth’s narrative, with its tragically worthless hero, poignantly honest heroine and bleakly comic cast of characters, also inspired Stravinsky’s 1951 opera (with distinguished libretto by Chester Kallman with W.H. Auden). De Valois’ ballet honors Hogarth’s vigorous and dramatically unflinching satire of 18th Century English society, while finding choreographic means to develop character and tell the story. One obvious example of this approach is The Betrayed Girl (originally danced by Markova), the only character of integrity in the ballet and therefore, intentionally, the only dancer en pointe. Another instance lies in the skillfully economic expression of The Rake’s deterioration, from his classical poise (elegant turn-out, high elbows and exaggerated port de bras) as a wealthy gentleman at the outset, descending by degrees to the animalistic wildness of his final appearance in The Madhouse. The ballet has been an English repertoire standard since its successful 1935 premiere, and was warmly received in America in 1949, where, despite its accessible dramatic energy, it is less frequently seen.

Design by Rex Whistler after William Hogarth Staged by Margaret Barbieri

Dame Ninette de Valois CHOREOGRAPHER

Despite her insistence that “it takes more than one to make a ballet company,” the indomitable and visionary Dame Ninette de Valois must take the principal credit for creating, in The Royal Ballet, a truly native British ballet tradition, in parallel with the equally legendary Dame Marie Rambert. Born Edris Stannus in 1898 in County Wicklow, Ireland, she began dancing at the age of 10, studied with Cecchetti and danced in pantomime, revue, and opera before joining the MassineLopokhova company (1922) and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (19231925), having changed her name legally to Ninette de Valois (1921) when ballet dancers required French or Russian stage names. In 1926 de Valois opened her London Academy of Choreographic Art and was invited in 1928 by the equally formidable Lilian Baylis to provide dancers and coach actors in drama and opera productions at her Old Vic Theatre. De Valois persuaded Baylis to present ballet evenings, with such success that she closed her private academy in 1931 and became resident at Baylis’ newly reopened Sadler’s Wells Theatre, where she founded the school and company that became the Vic-Wells, then Sadler’s Wells and finally (1956) The Royal Ballet after taking up residence in 1946 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. She continued to dance (especially character roles) until 1937, ran the company and school, and nurtured the talents of exceptional dancers and choreographers (Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Frederick Ashton, Beryl Grey, Moira Shearer and Michael Somes). Throughout the 1930’s, before her growing administrative duties took priority over her choreographic output, de Valois created a series of masterworks including Job (1931), The Rake’s Progress (1935), and Checkmate (1937). In her ballets she strove to produce a distinctively English style of choreography, drawing on English themes or sources, often preferring British composers (Bliss, Vaughan Williams, Gordon) and always working to realize her vision of an internationally excellent native ballet with homegrown stars, which bore spectacular fruit with her company’s sensationally triumphant 1949 American debut tour headed by Fonteyn, Shearer, and Helpmann. Her total dedication and often formidable presence continued to influence and guide The Royal Ballet long after her 1963 retirement as its Director, earning her the affectionately respectful nickname “Madam,” nine honorary doctorates, countless awards and prizes, the Order of Merit, Companion of Honour, and a Damehood (DBE). Widowed in 1986 from Arthur Connell, the Irish surgeon she married in 1935, de Valois had no children and continued to guide the fortunes of The Royal Ballet, making public appearances until her death at the age of 102 in 2001.

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LOVE & BETRAYAL | 28 - 31 January 2022 | FSU Center for the Performing Arts

Gavin Gordon COMPOSER

Gavin Muspratt Gordon was born in Ayr (Scotland) on 24 November 1901 and died in London on 18 November 1970. An early talent for music took him to London, where he enrolled at the Royal College of Music, studying with the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose influence continued in Gordon’s compositions. Gordon is best remembered as a composer of ballets in the early 1930’s, including the obscure Toothsome Morsel (1930), Regatta (1931), The Scorpions of Ysit (1932) and, his best-known and most successful achievement, Dame Ninette de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress (1935), for which he also wrote the libretto in close collaboration with the choreographer and her designer Rex Whistler, to create a theatrically effective expression of Hogarth’s paintings, which the writer Cyril Beaumont called “not so much a ballet as a mime play with dances.” While his music is little known today, Gordon enjoyed a varied and successful career in the 1930’s and 1940’s, not only as a composer, but also as a singer and actor.

Rex Whistler

COSTUME DESIGNER

Reginald “Rex” Whistler was born in Kent in 1905. Sent to boarding school in 1919, he showed a precocious talent for art. Following studies at the Royal Academy, and later the Slade School of Art, Whistler burst into a dazzling career encompassing all areas of art and design—from the West End theatre to book illustration (including Gulliver’s Travels) to mural painting. He painted many of London society, including Cecil Beaton and other members of Whistler’s set that became known as the “Bright Young Things.” His activities extended to ballet design, notably scenery and costumes for The Rake’s Progress in 1935. When war broke out, although he was 35, Whistler was eager to enlist, joining the Welsh Guards. He still found time to continue his art, including a notable self-portrait in uniform now in the National Army Museum. In 1944 he was sent to France following the D-Day landings and was soon killed in battle.

William Hogarth PAINTER

William Hogarth (1697-1764) was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called “modern moral subjects,” of which he sold engravings on subscription. His series of paintings satirizing contemporary customs, but based on earlier Italian prints, included his most famous, The Rake’s Progress, which was produced on canvas in 1732-1733, and then engraved and published in print form in 1735. Hogarth’s engravings were so plagiarized that he lobbied for the Copyright Act of 1735 as protection for writers and artists.

First Performed by Vic-Wells Ballet 20 May 1935 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 30 January 2009 51

Napoli Act III

Production by Johan Kobborg Choreography after August Bournonville

apoli is in every sense a joyous ballet. The definitive expression of Bournonville’s style, and the Royal Danish Ballet’s “calling card,” it triumphantly sealed the choreographer’s return to Copenhagen from an inspiring visit to Naples, following his 1841 disgrace, after a public quarrel with the Danish King at the Royal Theatre. A contemporary described its 1842 premiere: “unstoppable clapping and cheers…gaiety throughout the whole theatre, which could awaken the dead.” In its original three acts, Napoli told a familiar tale of thwarted lovers, a match-making mother, unwelcome suitors, supposed loss (in this case by drowning at sea), an exotic transformation scene (the Act II Blue Grotto), and a jubilant reunion in its celebratory Act III. So, it represented a deliberate departure from the mainstream European Romantic ballet tradition of doom-laden tragedy and moonlit fantasy (archetypally Giselle), in favor of common-sense faith in a perfectible human world of order and harmony. Bournonville explained in his memoirs how his ballet, drafted in a stagecoach travelling from Paris to Dunkirk, had drawn inspiration from his Neapolitan experiences. “From my window, I observed in an hour, more tableaux than I could use in ten ballets.” He had been underwhelmed by Giselle in Paris, and while offering a fashionably audience-pleasing, Romantic, ethereal fantasy for his Act II Grotto scene, he intentionally proposed a contrasting Neapolitan fishing community exuberance, with folk dances like the tarantella, for an Act III that passed in 1842 for earthy realism. (In twentieth century terms, it is as if the choreographer had found Cole Porter too theatrically effete, and opted for the hoe-down, democratic energy of Oklahoma!) Johan Kobborg’s staging bears the legitimate imprimatur of an international star, steeped in the Bournonville style, from his early training and years as a principal with the Royal Danish Ballet. What the modern audience gets, in the sunny ebullience of Napoli Act III, is an unbroken Danish tradition from 1842, exuberantly Italian in flavor, with Bournonville’s own, and many subsequent, alterations so that a living tradition constantly reinterprets a great heritage masterwork.

Music by Edvard Helsted & Holger Simon Paulli Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

Johan Kobborg

CHOREOGRAPHER

Renowned today for both his distinguished career as a dancer and for his artistic accomplishments as a choreographer, Johan Kobborg was born 5 June 1972 into an artistic family and, in fact, trained as a tenor in his youth before discovering his passion for ballet. Kobborg commenced his professional ballet training at sixteen with the Royal Danish Ballet School, joining the corps de ballet of the Royal Danish Ballet a year later. He received a promotion to Principal in 1994 after a performance of the role of James in Bournonville’s La Sylphide, and would go on to dance major roles in the works of Bournonville, Ashton, Balanchine, and more, as well as create roles including the titular lead in Peter Schaufuss’ Hamlet and Flemming Flindt’s Legs on Fire. The next phase of Kobborg’s career would commence in 1999, when he accepted a contract as Principal Dancer with The Royal Ballet that would span his next fourteen years. In addition to performing a vast repertoire including a significant portion of the oeuvre of Ashton and MacMillan, among many others, Kobborg would also make guest appearances with American Ballet Theatre, The Mariinsky Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Bayerische Staatsballett, Tokyo Ballet, La Scala Ballet, and dozens of other major dance companies around the world. Another career – and personal – highlight has been Kobborg’s partnership with Alina Cojocaru; first dancing together in a 2001 performance of Romeo and Juliet in which Cojocaru filled in to cover an injury, the two would go on to receive enormous international acclaim in their subsequent partnerships onstage. After several years dancing together, they also confirmed a romantic relationship, leading to an engagement in 2011, and two children since. During his tenure with The Royal Ballet, Kobborg began his choreographic journey, utilizing his intimate familiarity with Bournonville’s style to create a production of La Sylphide for The Royal Ballet in 2005. His adaptation received glowing praise and multiple awards, and has since been staged for the Bolshoi Ballet, Zurich Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, Atlanta Ballet, and others. He also found massive success with 2009’s Les Lutins, also for The Royal Ballet and staged for several major companies since. After his departure from The Royal Ballet at the end of the 2012 – 2013 Season, he assumed the role of Artistic Director of the Romanian National Ballet in Bucharest for several years. In recent years, Kobborg served as lead choreographer for the 2018 Nureyev-focused film The White Crow, directed by Ralph Fiennes; he also premiered his production of Romeo & Juliet at the Arena di Verona, Italy, on 26 August 2019 to an audience of over ten thousand. Today, Kobborg continues to choreograph and stage works for ballet companies all around the world.

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LOVE & BETRAYAL | 28 - 31 January 2022 | FSU Center for the Performing Arts

August Bournonville CHOREOGRAPHER

August Bournonville was born in Copenhagen 21 August 1805 into a ballet family. His dancer/choreographer father Antoine had trained under the great French ballet master Noverre, and his aunt Julie danced in the Royal Swedish Ballet. Alone among his five siblings, August trained for the stage, which he graced from the early age of eight, first at the Royal Danish Ballet, then briefly on scholarship in Paris, coming under the influence of the great Auguste Vestris. The gifted youngster had studied French, singing, and violin at home, as well as ballet. After his ballet scholarship in Paris, his return to dancing in the atrophied Royal Danish Ballet of the period was a severe disappointment, and he soon returned to the Paris Opera Ballet, where he danced from 1820 to 1828. Returning to Copenhagen in 1830, Bournonville applied his Paris experience, hard work, and driving talent to regenerate the Royal Danish Ballet. He created over fifty ballets (many of them since lost), establishing a unique Danish style characterized by exuberance, lightness, energy, their varied international settings, and a freedom from the prevailing Romantic Ballet style of moonlit, ethereal tragedy, glorifying the ballerina and largely sidelining the male dancer. In a famous 1841 incident, Bournonville fell from favor after confronting King Christian IX in the royal theater box over ballet politics, and found it prudent to travel abroad, for research and inspiration, before a triumphant 1842 return to Denmark. His dancing career flourished for many years, and he continued creating ballets and teaching until nearly the end of his life, which came after a sudden illness on 30 November 1879. Among his best-known ballets are La Sylphide (1836), Napoli (1842), Le Conservatoire (1849), The Kermesse in Bruges (1851), and A Folk Tale (1854). Bournonville’s work was not widely known outside Denmark until the 1950s, when the Royal Danish Ballet introduced his ballets and style with triumphant success internationally. It is now appreciated as a crucial part of the ballet heritage.

Holger Simon Paulli COMPOSER

Born 22 February 1810 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Holger Simon Paulli studied under composer and violinist Claus Schall as well as classical composer Frederik Thorkildsen Wexschall. After an apprenticeship with the Royal Danish Orchestra, he became the company’s ballet repetiteur in 1842; later, he would take the position of concertmaster in 1849, and from 1863 to 1883, he took on the role of opera conductor. He also conducted the orchestra of the Cecilia Association – popularizing much of the work of Richard Wagner in Denmark – and was chairman of the Chamber Music Association from 1868 until 1891, the year of his death. As a composer, Paulli contributed to several of August Bournonville’s works including: Napoli (1842), with Niels W. Gade and Edvard Helsted; Le Conservatoire (1849); The Kermesse in Bruges (1951); and Wedding Movements in Hardanger (1853).

Edvard Helsted COMPOSER

A Danish composer and concertmaster, Edvard Helsted was born 8 December 1816 in Copenhagen, Denmark into an artistically inclined family; his brother, Carl, would also become a composer. Helsted trained as a violinist and found employment with the Royal Danish Orchestra from 1838 to 1869, initially as an orchestra member and from 1863 as a concertmaster and rehearsal conductor. As a teacher, he instructed piano at the Royal Danish Academy of Music from 1869 to 1890. He was knighted into the Order of the Dannebrog in 1866, and appointed professor in 1890. As a composer, Helsted created the music for many of August Bournonville’s ballets: Imagination Island (1838), with others: Toreador (1840); Napoli (1842), with Niels W. Gade and Holger Simon Paulli; Kirsten Piil (1845); Old Memories (1848); Psyche (1850); and The Flower Festival in Genzano (1858), with Paulli. He also contributed music to various plays – for example, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Bird in the Pear Tree (1842) – and wrote a number of youth songs. Helsted died 1 March 1900 in Fredensborg, Denmark; he is buried at Asminderød Cemetery.

First Performed by The Royal Danish Ballet 29 March 1842 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 4 March 2011

Program 5 | 4 - 7 March 2022

Mark Morris’ Words | Photography Quinn Wharton 54

4 - 7 March 2022 | FSU Center for the Performing Arts

Mark Morris Dance Group F

ormed in 1980, Mark Morris’ internationally-renowned Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) has received “highest praise for their technical aplomb, their musicality, and their sheer human authenticity” (Bloomberg News). Live music and community engagement are vital components of the Dance Group. It has toured with its own musicians, the MMDG Music Ensemble, since 1996, and regularly collaborates with orchestras and opera companies around the world. MMDG’s film and television projects include Dido and Aeneas, The Hard Nut, Falling Down Stairs, the UK’s South Bank Show, and Live from Lincoln Center. In 2015, Morris’ signature work L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato premiered on PBS’ Great Performances. The Mark Morris Dance Center was opened in 2001 to provide a home for the Dance Group, subsidized rental space for local artists, programs for local children and seniors, and dance classes for students of all ages and abilities.

Words Choreography by Mark Morris Music by Felix Mendelssohn Jenn and Spencer Choreography by Mark Morris Music by Henry Cowell Gloria Choreography by Mark Morris Music by Antonio Vivaldi

Mark Morris

CHOREOGRAPHER

Mark Morris has been praised as “the most successful and influential choreographer alive, and indisputably the most musical” (The New York Times). In addition to creating over 150 works for the Mark Morris Dance Group, he conducts orchestras, directs opera, and choreographs for ballet companies worldwide. Morris’ work is acclaimed for its ingenuity, musicality, wit, and humanity. Named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 1991, he has received eleven honorary doctorates to date, and a multitude of awards, including the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society, the Benjamin Franklin Laureate Prize for Creativity, the Cal Performances Award of Distinction in the Performing Arts, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Gift of Music Award, and the 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award. In 2015, Morris was inducted into the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York. Morris’ memoir, Out Loud, co-written with Wesley Stace, was published by Penguin Press in hardcover in 2019 and paperback in 2021.

“Mark Morris is a genius. His best dances... tug at us powerfully. He can align steps and music in a way that transports.“ – HuffPost Mark Morris’ Jenn and Spencer | Photography Christopher Duggan

A Comedy of Errors

Program 6 | 25 - 26 March 2022

A COMEDY OF ERRORS | 25 - 26 March 2022 | Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall

A Comedy of Errors

Choreography by Sir David Bintley Music by Matthew Hindson

ony and Del of Ibiza and Anthony and Derek of Ramsbottom, two sets of twins born of Spanish holiday romances and separated at birth, find themselves, to the confusion and chaos of all, on the same party island one summer. Identity crises and marital discord ultimately turn to joy and happiness, however, as the twins are reunited with their estranged parents Fernando, Dawn, and Kimberley. Of his collaboration with composer Matthew Hindson, choreographer Sir David Bintley says: “Just as George Gershwin didn’t write jazz, but composed orchestral music during the Jazz Age, so Matthew’s music, whilst displaying all the best qualities of contemporary orchestral composition often reflects the influence of current popular music like disco, metal, techno, and rave. “In searching for a subject which would showcase Matthew’s music to its best advantage, I lighted on Shakespeare’s play The Comedy of Errors, with the idea of updating the story to a presentday Ibiza rather than Shakespeare’s classical Syracuse.” In the 1970’s, sun-starved Brits flock to Spain’s Costa del Sol as cheap flights open up a new world of Mediterranean travel and the

Design by Dick Bird Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

guarantee of good weather. Disco is king, Abba rules the sound waves, and as with many young women Dawn and Kimberley fall under the spell of the exotic, young locals, the result being a trip to the maternity ward, nine months later, where the girls are each delivered of twin baby boys. Thirty-some years later, the Spanish island of Ibiza is the central destination for Europe’s party-seeking youth, with its all-night raves and boisterous dance scene. It is here that Dawn and Kimberley, still young at heart, vacation with their sons Anthony and Derek. Little do they know that their other sons, Tony and Del, twin brothers of Anthony and Derek, and given up for adoption at birth, are also on the island. What could possibly go wrong?

A Comedy of Errors Sir David Bintley CHOREOGRAPHER

It was at the age of four that Sir David Bintley was bitten by the performing-arts bug at a Sundayschool concert in his native Yorkshire village of Honley. He has gone on to be one of the major players in British ballet: first as a marvelously musical and entertaining character dancer with what was then the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet; next, for 24 years as artistic director of the company it became, Birmingham Royal Ballet; and now, choreographing diversely themed ballets for companies all around the globe. Throughout this time, Bintley has become one of the most distinguished neoclassical choreographers of the modern age. Born in 1957, he trained throughout his teens and at 16 won a place at The Royal Ballet Upper School. A contract at SWRB followed in 1976, and before long he was delivering gold-standard interpretations of such characters as Ashton’s Ugly Sister in Cinderella, Alain and Widow Simone in La Fille mal gardée, Bottom in The Dream, and the lead in Petrushka. It was in 1978, thanks to SWRB’s sharp-eyed director, Sir Peter Wright, that Bintley received his first commission with the company and created The Outsider, a work very much in the dramatic tradition of Ashton, de Valois, and MacMillan. In 1983, he became SWRB’s resident choreographer and from 1986 to 1993 held the same post with The Royal Ballet in Covent Garden. In 1995 he took over from Wright at the Birmingham Royal Ballet, while from 2010

to 2014 he was also artistic director of the National Ballet of Japan. Bintley’s works are as plentiful as they are varied, including Allegri diversi (1987), ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café (1988), Hobson’s Choice (1989), Tombeaux (1993), Edward II (1995), Carmina Burana (1995), Far from the Madding Crowd (1996), The Seasons (2001), Beauty and the Beast (2003), Cyrano (2007), Sylvia (2009), and Cinderella (2010). Bintley’s 24 years with the Birmingham Royal Ballet were not only a matter of creating new works and commissioning new scores – he also brought to the repertoire many of the great classics that embody The Royal Ballet. In March 2018 he announced his plan to retire from BRB by the end of July 2019, whereupon he was succeeded by acclaimed dancer Carlos Acosta. In the 2020 New Year Honours appointments, he was awarded a Knighthood for his services to dance. Now focused on purely creative pursuits, Bintley continues to sculpt the ballet landscape with his unique vision, serving as a true successor to the distinguished lineage of British classical ballet.

Commissioned by The Sarasota Ballet First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 25 March 2022

A COMEDY OF ERRORS | 25 - 26 March 2022 | Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall

Matthew Hindson COMPOSER

Matthew Hindson is one of the most-performed and mostcommissioned composers in the world, and a leading Australian composer of his generation. As well as being performed by every Australian orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic among many others, Matthew’s music has been set by dance companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Japan, and the Sydney Dance Company. Matthew is the Deputy Dean and Associate Dean (Education) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. From 2004-2010 he was the artistic director of the Aurora Festival which is dedicated to the work of living composers. In 2006 Matthew was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music education and composition. From 2009-2013 Matthew was the Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, and from 2013-2015, a board member of the same organization.

Costume Designs for Holiday Makers

Dick Bird DESIGNER

Costume Design for Fernand

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Serendipitous Movement Program 7 | 29 - 30 April 2022 Balanchine’s Serenade Morris’ The Letter V MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations

Serenade

Choreography by George Balanchine Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Costume Design by Karinska

erenade, now one of the world’s most beloved ballets, was the first work George Balanchine choreographed after arriving in the United States in 1934. Using the first three movements of Tchaikovsky’s gracious Serenade for Strings, it was made on a group of young professional and advanced student dancers. After several out-of-town tryout performances, on 1 March 1935, it opened the first program of The American Ballet, the forerunner of the New York City Ballet. Over the years Balanchine continued to make changes in it, most notably in 1941 adding Tchaikovsky’s Danse Russe, the work’s original conclusion, as the third of the ballet’s four movements, the form in which it has since been danced around the world. Serenade is not a completely “abstract” ballet, for there are suggestions of love returned and love lost, but the emphasis remains on the movement itself rather than any narrative. That movement is often surprisingly simple, as Balanchine first worked out much of it on students at the newly-founded School of American Ballet. When seventeen women turned up for one class, an awkward number for a choreographer, he arranged the unusual spacing that opens the ballet, still a breathtaking moment. When only six turned up, or someone was late or fell, he wove these into the ballet. The later movements developed in similar fashion, building to the surprising finale. As the great modern dancer Martha Graham noted, “It is simplicity itself – but the simplicity of a great artist.” After opening the first performances of The American Ballet, in 1948 Serenade also began the New York City Ballet’s inaugural program and is considered the company’s signature ballet. The score itself has remained one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular, but it has its own surprises. The solemn opening, for example, is derived from a Russian folksong that in its original form provides the main theme for the joyous Danse Russe. And while Tchaikovsky was writing the Serenade in the summer of 1881, he was also writing a work that is its polar opposite, the 1812 Overture.

Staged by Sandra Jennings Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

George Balanchine CHOREOGRAPHER

Probably the most important and influential ballet figure in America, he was born Georgi Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg in 1904. More than three decades after his death in New York in 1983 we can appreciate more fully the huge impact of a choreographer whose creative life spanned 60 years, carrying the grand Russian classical style triumphantly into the modernist era, establishing one of the world’s leading companies—New York City Ballet—and giving America its own classical ballet tradition. Graduating from the Petrograd Imperial School of Ballet in 1921 at age 17, Balanchine also studied piano and composition, and joined what is now the Mariinsky Ballet, where his first choreographies shocked the company’s traditionally-minded establishment. In 1924 he toured Germany with his own group of Soviet State Dancers until an audition for Diaghilev led to the Ballets Russes acquiring the talents of Balanchine, Tamara Geva (the first of his four ballerina wives), and Alexandra Danilova. Within a year, he was appointed Chief Choreographer, creating 10 ballets for the company, notably Apollo (1928), which Balanchine later described as the great turning point in his life, and Prodigal Son (1929)—both constantly revived to this day. After Diaghilev’s death in 1929 and the fragmentation of the Ballets Russes, Balanchine worked in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rene Blum’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. It was in London during his directorship of Les Ballets 1933 that Lincoln Kirstein persuaded him to come to America, where they founded the American School of Ballet in New York (1934), out of which emerged The American Ballet (1935), Ballet Society (1946), and eventually the New York City Ballet (1948). Initially based at City Center, it moved in 1964 to its present home at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, built to Balanchine’s specifications. During the 1930s and 1940s Balanchine also choreographed extensively for Broadway and the movies, including Rodgers and Hart’s On Your Toes and The Boys from Syracuse. He later married Maria Tallchief (1946-1952) and Tanaquil LeClercq (1952-1969), for whom he also created leading roles. Balanchine’s ballets are notable in that his musical training enabled him to work closely with the music of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Webern—some of the greatest names of 20th century music—as well as reinterpret the music of the past: Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. One of the world’s greatest choreographers, he created a neoclassical aesthetic that connected the vigor of American modernism with the Russian ballet tradition. Balanchine now stands as a ballet colossus between America and Europe, his rich repertoire of ballet constantly performed and appreciated around the world.

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SERENDIPITOUS MOVEMENT | 29 - 30 April 2022 | Sarasota Opera House

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky COMPOSER

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Russia in 1840. He began taking piano lessons at age five and, although he displayed an early passion for music, his parents hoped that he would grow up to work in civil service. Tchaikovsky honored his parents’ wishes in 1859 by taking a bureau clerk post for four years with the Ministry of Justice, but became increasingly fascinated with music. When he was 21, he began music lessons at the Russian Musical Society and enrolled at the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory, becoming one of the school’s first composition students. In 1863 he moved to Moscow, where he became a professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky’s work was first performed in 1865, with Johann Strauss the Younger conducting Characteristic Dance in Pavlovsk. In 1868 Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony was well received in Moscow; the following year, his first opera, The Voyevoda, saw little fanfare. He repurposed some of its material to compose his next opera, Oprichnik, which achieved some acclaim in 1874, also earning praise for his Second Symphony and Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor, the latter two establishing him as a talented instrumental composer. Accolades came readily for Tchaikovsky in 1875 with Symphony No. 3 in D major. He embarked on a tour of Europe and in 1876 completed the ballet Swan Lake. He resigned from the Moscow Conservatory in 1878 to focus his efforts on composing. His collective body of work constitutes 169 pieces; among his most famed late works are the ballets The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and The Nutcracker (1892). Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg in 1893.

Karinska

COSTUME DESIGNER

Originally named Varvara Jmoudsky, Karinska was born 1886 in Kharkov, Ukraine. Karinska remained in Russia after the Revolution, remarrying and managing a fashion house and embroidery school, but when these were nationalized, she moved to Brussels and then Paris. She began making costumes for cinema and ballet, notably the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Les Ballets 1933, and this started her long collaboration with Balanchine. Her career continued to flourish in London, where she moved in 1936, before settling in New York in 1939. Karinska was a top costume-maker and designer, winning an Oscar for Joan of Arc (1948), a nomination for Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and the first Capezio Dance Award for Costume. In 1964 she accepted a permanent appointment making costumes for Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, from which she retired in 1977. Karinska died in 1993 at the age of 97.

First Performed by American Ballet (now New York City Ballet) 1 March 1935 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 13 April 2012 63

The Letter V

Choreography by Mark Morris Music by Joseph Haydn

ommissioned in 2015 by Stanton Welch for Houston Ballet, The Letter V marked the first time that legendary American modern dance choreographer Mark Morris had choreographed on the Company. However this was far from the first time that Morris had choreographed on a ballet company, having previously choreographed works over the past several decades for several other ballet companies including American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, and the Paris Opera Ballet. Choreographed to Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 in G Major with lighting designs by Nicole Pearce and costume designs by Maile Okamura, The Letter V is an extraordinary example of Morris’ dynamic approach to dance and distinctive musicality. Interestingly the ballet name originates from the fact that some of Haydn’s symphonies were once known by letters of the alphabet, with V being assigned to this piece, hence the ballet’s title. Reviewing the ballet’s New York premiere in 2019, The New York Times critic Gia Kourlas wrote that she “realized that the only thing I want to watch after a ballet by Mr. Morris was another ballet by Mr. Morris.” Talking before The Letter V’s world premiere in 2015, Morris talked about the artistic process behind the ballet. “I plan almost nothing in advance except I study the music, because I don’t know what I’m going to see. So when I come into the room, although I’ve seen these dancers and worked a little bit with them before, to actually start working from zero to make up a dance in a short period of time is a lot of very interesting and intuitive work. So I recognize them right away and I make up a dance on those exact people, and that’s what you’ll see when you see my dance The Letter V.”

Costume Design by Maile Okamura Lighting Design by Nicole Pearce

Mark Morris

CHOREOGRAPHER

Mark Morris, praised as “the most successful and influential choreographer alive, and indisputably the most musical” (The New York Times), was born on August 29, 1956, in Seattle, Washington. In addition to creating over 150 works for the Mark Morris Dance Group, he conducts orchestras, directs opera, and choreographs for ballet companies worldwide. Morris’ work is acclaimed for its ingenuity, musicality, wit, and humanity. Named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 1991, he has received eleven honorary doctorates to date, and a multitude of awards, including the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award for the Elevation of Music in Society, the Benjamin Franklin Laureate Prize for Creativity, the Cal Performances Award of Distinction in the Performing Arts, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Gift of Music Award, and the 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award. In 2015, Morris was inducted into the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York. Morris opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, New York, in 2001 to provide a home for his company, subsidized rental space for local artists, community education programs for children and seniors, and a school offering dance classes to students of all ages and levels of experience with and without disabilities. Morris’ memoir, Out Loud, co-written with Wesley Stace, was published by Penguin Press in hardcover in 2019 and paperback in 2021.

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SERENDIPITOUS MOVEMENT | 29 - 30 April 2022 | Sarasota Opera House

Joseph Haydn COMPOSER

An instrumental figure in the development of chamber music and widely regarded as the “Father of the Symphony,” Franz Joseph Haydn was born 31 March 1732 in Rohrau, Austria. Haydn was discovered to be musically gifted by his parents, who sent him at age six to live with a schoolmaster relative in Hainburg to begin training as a musician; not long after, he would move to Vienna to serve as a chorister at St. Stephen’s Cathedral. By 1749, Haydn had matured out of the vocal range of his youth, leaving the choir and exploring the career possibilities of freelance musicianship. After some time of honing his skills through various jobs, Haydn would finally see full-time employment in 1757 as Kapellmeister (music director) under Count Morzin. Prince Paul Anton, head of the enormously wealthy Esterházy family, hired Haydn in 1761 for similar work. The next few decades would prove massively fruitful for Haydn, remaining in the Esterházy family’s comfortable employ under the patronage of Anton and, after 1762, Prince Nikolaus I. A contract renegotiation in 1779 resulted in Haydn receiving permission to write for patrons other than the Esterházy family, and Haydn’s subsequent surge in international popularity as his compositions were enthusiastically received. In 1790, Prince Nikolaus was succeeded by his son Anton, who dissolved the court orchestra and drastically reduced Haydn’s salary due to a decrease in the need of his services, though allowing him to travel. Haydn journeyed twice to England, where he composed some of his most famous work, such as the Surprise, Military, Drumroll, and London symphonies. He returned to Vienna in 1795, where he would create works for public performance. By 1803 Haydn’s health began to decline; musical ideas would still come to him, but he could no longer focus effectively enough to manifest them into fully structured compositions. He died peacefully on 31 May 1809, having left behind a vast and diverse body of composition, along with an enormous impact on the world of classical music.

Maile Okamura

COSTUME DESIGNER

Maile Okamura has designed and constructed dance and opera costumes for the Mark Morris Dance Group, Dance Heginbotham, Atlanta Ballet, Tanglewood Music Festival, American Classical Orchestra, Bard College, and Middlebury College. She danced with the Mark Morris Dance Group from 1998 to 2015.

Nicole Pearce

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Nicole Pearce has created thirteen works with Mark Morris, including All Fours, Cargo, and Candleflowerdance, as well as Carnaval for the Voloshky Ukranian Dance Ensemble and Up and Down for Boston Ballet. Pearce has designed for the choreographers Robert Battle, Jessica Lang, Aszure Barton, John Heginbotham, Andrea Miller, Alexander Ekman, and Brian Brooks, and for companies such as Alvin Ailey, Joffrey Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Ballet Memphis, and The Joyce Theater. Other selected New York credits include The American Dream and The Sandbox directed by Edward Albee; Beebo Brinker Chronicles directed by Leigh Silverman; Edgewise directed by Trip Cullman; Trouble in Mind directed by Jade King Carroll; and Savage in Love directed by Pam MacKinnon.

First Performed by Houston Ballet 28 May 2015 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 29 April 2022

Elite Syncopations

Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan Music by various artists including Scott Joplin

n 1974, starting his fifth year as director of The Royal Ballet, Sir Kenneth MacMillan surely needed a change of pace. He had just overseen a new production of The Sleeping Beauty and choreographed both Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins and the erotic yet sympathetic three-act Manon, followed by an exhausting American tour and foot surgery. Why not something light and fun, danced to the irresistible rhythms of ragtime? The answer became Elite Syncopations, a lighthearted revue with the dancers in absurd costumes dancing to rags by Scott Joplin and others. So it was on 7 October 1974, with thirteen of the company’s leading dancers evoking the joys and absurdities of an earlier era, yet with a surprisingly contemporary flavor, that audiences had a chance to discover a very different side of MacMillan. With the twelve-piece orchestra onstage in what may or may not be a dance hall, the dancers, dressed in Ian Spurling’s painted tights and funny hats, take their turns in dances drawn from the ragtime era—roughly 1895-1918—that mixed European and African-American styles, the Cakewalk, Black Bottom, and the later Charleston. Adding to the fun, there are also suggestions of MacMillan’s own ballets tucked away in the details, while the dancers are given chances to show off their technical skills in unexpected ways. Although MacMillan initially intended “something short and light and funny which I can toss off and walk away from,” Elite Syncopations immediately became, and has remained, a favorite with audiences, with more substance than initially meets the eye.

Design by Ian Spurling Staged by Patricia Tierney Lighting Design by Aaron Muhl

Sir Kenneth MacMillan CHOREOGRAPHER

Sir Kenneth MacMillan was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1929. He won a scholarship to the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School and in 1946 became a founding member of Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet, a new company formed by Dame Ninette de Valois. He gained his first dance experience at the Wells and then moved to Covent Garden. In 1952 he returned to the Wells and there found his true vocation as a choreographer. Gifted young dancers formed a Choreographic Group to present new works, and the hit of their first performance in 1953 was MacMillan’s first ballet, Somnambulism, to music by Stan Kenton. In 1954 he staged a story ballet, Laiderette, and de Valois commissioned Danses Concertantes, which immediately established MacMillan as a choreographer of note. In the 1960s MacMillan would continue to prove his mastery through choreographing works such as the controversial The Invitation (1960), as well as a series of full-length ballets such as Romeo and Juliet (1965), The Sleeping Beauty (1967), and Swan Lake (1969). He became Director of Ballet at Deutsche Oper Berlin (1966-1969), and then Director of The Royal Ballet (1970-1977) and Resident Choreographer (1977-1982). In 1974 he created Manon and Elite Syncopations, and for the Stuttgart Ballet he created Requiem (1976) and My Brother, My Sisters (1978). Mayerling was first produced at Covent Garden in 1978 and had a triumphal American premiere in Los Angeles that same year. Other later works were La Fin du Jour, which draws inspiration from the fashionable way of life shattered by World War II, and Gloria, a lament and thanksgiving for the generation that perished in World War I. MacMillan created his fifth full-length ballet, Isadora, which received its world premiere at Covent Garden in 1981. He received his Knighthood in 1983 and was Artistic Associate of American Ballet Theatre from 1984-1989. MacMillan died in London in October 1992 at the age of 62. At the time of his death he was choreographing a revival of the musical Carousel.

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SERENDIPITOUS MOVEMENT | 29 - 30 April 2022 | Sarasota Opera House

Scott Joplin COMPOSER

Details are scanty about much of the life of Scott Joplin (c1868-1917), the Black composer hailed as The King of Ragtime. Born in Texas, after some music lessons he moved around the Midwest with various groups and interludes of study. Already composing, in 1899 he published The Maple Leaf Rag, soon to become world-famous, followed by other beloved rags like Elite Syncopations and The Entertainer, publishing some fifty in all. But ambitious to be recognized for more than rags, even before moving to New York in 1907 he wrote a ballet and the first of his two operas, only one of which, Treemonisha, survives, but not given a full performance until 1972. The energy of ragtime develops through the constant collision of an internally syncopated melodic line against a rhythmically straightforward bass. Most of its early practitioners were African-American except Joseph Lamb (1877-1960), who early sought out Joplin for advice and is considered the most important of the original rag composers along with Joplin and James Scott (1868-1938), followed by Paul Pratt (1890-1948) and Robert Hampton (1890-1945). The composer and actor Max Morath (b.1926) helped start the ragtime revival in 1960 with his television series The Ragtime Era and his own playing, while Donald Ashwander (1929-1994) remains best known for his music for New York’s Paper Bag Players.

Ian Spurling DESIGNER

Born in South Australia and educated in Adelaide and then at the Slade School of Art, where he studied stage design, Ian Spurling (19371996) worked in both ballet and opera. His designs included Peter Darrell’s The Seven Deadly Sins for Western Theatre Ballet (and later Scottish Opera) and Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, La Fin du Jour, and new set and costumes for Danses Concertantes. He also designed productions for Sir David Bintley and the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, Bavarian National Ballet and Houston Ballet. In addition he was known for his costumes for Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the rock band Queen.

First Performed by The Royal Ballet 7 October 1974 First Performed by The Sarasota Ballet 21 March 2008 67

Choreographers, Foundations, and Trusts The Frederick Ashton Foundation exists to enrich the legacy of Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988) and his ballets. The Ashton ballets performed this season as some of over one hundred ballets created by Sir Frederick Ashton TM. The Frederick Ashton Foundation, a registered charity working independently of, but in close association with, The Royal ballet, exists to enrich the legacy of Frederick Ashton TM and his Ballets. For further information, please go to www.frederickashton.org.uk. The performances of Serenade, Balanchine® Ballets, are presented by arrangement with The George Balanchine Trust and have been produced in accordance with the Balanchine Style® and Balanchine Technique® service standard established and provided by the Trust. Dame Ninette de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress is perfromed by kind permission of The Royal Ballet School. Appalachian Spring is presented by arrangement with Martha Graham Resources, a division of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations is performed by kind permission of Deborah, Lady MacMillan. Mark Morris’ The Letter V © Discalced, Inc. Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs TM, Choreography © Twyla Tharp. Special thanks to Sir David Bintley, Johan Kobborg, and Sir Peter Wright.

Sir David Bintley

Torchbearer of The British Ballet Tradition By Neil Norman There is no telling when—or where—inspiration will strike. For David Bintley, who had been thinking about the subject of a new ballet to conjugate with the music of composer Matthew Hindson, the moment arrived in the most mundane of places. “Seven or eight years ago I was ready to do a big piece,” Bintley says. “It was just a question of finding the right subject for Matt’s music. It suddenly came to me one rainy day in a car park in Shrewsbury.” He got out of the car, went to the nearest bookstore, and bought a copy of the play that had popped into his head: The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. The combination of Hindson’s own mischievous take on classical scores, the turbo-charged farce of Shakespeare’s wackiest comedy, and Bintley’s own choreographic artistry became the ingredients for a heady cocktail that honors the legacy of British ballet while taking it several steps further.

do was light upon the right idea. As Bintley remarked at the time: “It’s crucial to match the right subject to the composer.” “The salient thing about Errors,” he says, “is that it was tailor made for Matthew. It is fast and furious and full of character. Matthew brought the heart of it to me as well as the sadness underneath.”

It had taken time for him to arrive at The Comedy of Errors. As far back as 2016 when the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death was exercising writers, artists, and performers of every discipline, Bintley was considering another Bard-based ballet. He was planning a work to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. He was already hard at work on his ballet version of The Tempest and “Shakespeare was in the air. But there are fewer subjects from his plays that can be done in ballet than one might suppose.”

Shakespeare’s second comedy has often been accused by commentators of lacking depth. A fleet-footed farce with a preposterous plot, it tells the story of two sets of identical twins who have become separated and attempt to reunite, thereby causing infinite confusion among the citizens of Syracuse where the play is set. Renamed to ‘A Comedy of Errors’ and updated to the present day, the story is set on the party island of Ibiza – the perfect crucible for the myriad confusions and hectic to-ings and fro-ings that keep the comedy bubbling. Having decided on the subject and composer, Bintley’s next task was to find a suitable home for it.

Having enjoyed a fruitful relationship with composer Matthew Hindson on two shorter works, E=MC² and Faster, Bintley was keen to involve the composer in a full-length ballet. Hindson’s initial reluctance to commit himself to a full three-act ballet was eventually overcome by Bintley’s own considerable enthusiasm and powers of persuasion. All he had to

In 2019, while working with his old friend and fellow Yorkshireman Iain Webb, Director of The Sarasota Ballet, on his own version of the 1912 ballet/pantomime The Spider’s Feast, Bintley realized that the youthful, versatile company was the right place for Errors. Apart from their common history—they both attended The Royal Ballet School in the mid-1970s— Webb’s 15-year tenure at The Sarasota Ballet has ensured 69

that the Company is unusually well-versed in the British tradition and, according to the Financial Times’ ballet critic Gerald Dowler, boasts the most extensive active Ashton repertoire in the world. “They actually do that stuff really well,” says Bintley. “When I did ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café there, I saw that they were very adept at switching styles.” In addition, Bintley’s idea to set it in modern day Ibiza liberated Hindson’s compositional skills. “The whole thing is built around Matthew’s musical gifts,” says Bintley, whose own musical understanding is far more acute than many choreographers due to his background. The child of piano teachers and jazz musicians, he played the double bass and was a chorister and is one the few choreographers (along with George Balanchine) who can follow a score.

“There is a very lovely salsa that delivers a bit more depth. There is also an eight-minute rave in a club. Pointe shoes are out.” Out they may be, but Bintley’s choreographic philosophy remains firmly moored in the British tradition. Following his training at The Royal Ballet School, he was offered a contract to dance with The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet (now the Birmingham Royal Ballet) in 1976 and quickly came to the attention of company founder (and creator of the British ballet style) Dame Ninette de Valois, known to all as ‘Madam.’ He choreographed his first work for them two years later, The Outsider. The provincial and international touring arm of The Royal Ballet, SWRB gave young Bintley a taste of adventure as well as an opportunity to stretch his choreographic muscles. Here it was that he also came to appreciate the great English works of classical ballet, some of which are rarely performed but which he attempted to revive. Among these were Ninette de Valois’ Job: A Masque for Dancing (historically significant as the first ballet to be produced by an entirely British creative team), Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress, and Ashton’s Les Rendezvous. Under de Valois, Bintley absorbed the British tradition of classical ballet that was to prove the blueprint for his own dance making. As the former Artistic Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Bintley—or rather, Sir David Julian Bintley CBE—has left a glittering legacy ranging from Dame Gillian Lynne’s reconstruction of Robert Helpmann’s Miracle in the Gorbals (he later tried to revive Helpmann’s 20-minute Hamlet only to find that it had been ‘lost’ irretrievably), vivid abstract works of his own like ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café, and a raft of story ballets including Beauty and the Beast, Cyrano, Hobson’s Choice, The Tempest, and the incendiary Edward II. The range is enormous, yet each one is linked by the identifiable mark of British ballet in line, gesture, mime, and musical expressiveness to which Bintley was first

exposed at the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet under the laser gaze of ‘Madam’ and, later, Sir Frederick Ashton, known as ‘Fred.’ It has also seen Bintley produce his greatest ballets, many of which are based on works of English literature and history entirely in keeping with the company’s legacy as well as his own. But he has also ventured into more exotic territory with The Prince of the Pagodas, Aladdin (inspired by his four-year tenure as Artistic Director of the New National Theatre, Tokyo ballet company), and Carmina Burana, his first work for BRB. Although the English ‘Ashtonian’ style is specific— precision in the upper body, small beaten steps, filigree detail in characterization—it is by no means limiting. Bintley not only embraced Fred’s rigorousness of approach but also took on board the velocity, daring, and musicality of Balanchine who, like Madam, was at the time a living connection with the Ballets Russes. Above all, Bintley turned to literature and theatre for his source material, as Madam and Fred had done before him, whether it be Lewis Carroll or William Shakespeare. In the British tradition, narrative dance and theatre are inextricably bound together. “De Valois worked in Ireland with Yeats so it has a literary tradition as well,” says Bintley. “Madam’s aspiration always had some strong literary and pictorial influence. Ashton was more interested in the steps than in the story. John Cranko and Sir Kenneth MacMillan took storytelling in ballet to the next level.” Indeed, both Cranko (who was born in South Africa but whose work is well within the British tradition) and MacMillan developed and evolved British ballet,

shading it with humor, horror, and psychological depth. Bintley shares some of Cranko’s jaunty mischief as well as MacMillan’s penetration of character and fearless sensuality. De Valois, Ashton, Cranko, MacMillan and Sir Peter Wright, from whom he inherited the mantle of Artistic Director of BRB, are all part of the lineage to which Bintley belongs. But he also absorbs elements of George Balanchine in his ability to create narratives within abstract works through sheer gestural and choreographic invention. The shadows of Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe hover over some of his works, contributing to the mysterious qualities and darker aspects. Poe himself had been influenced by the Prussian fantasy writer ETA Hoffmann who wrote the story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King on which Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker ballet is based. What goes around comes around. Shakespeare and his contemporaries have proved endlessly inspiring to dancemakers: Romeo & Juliet (Cranko, MacMillan, Rudolf Nureyev, Antony Tudor), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Ashton, Cranko), The Tempest (Crystal Pite, Bintley), Marlowe’s Edward II (Bintley), and, most recently, Christopher Wheeldon’s The Winter’s Tale. Bintley took this one stage further by making thoroughly English ballets from thoroughly English novels Hobson’s Choice (Harold Brighouse) and Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy). “The British tradition can be progressed through these new ballets although the instinct is now to go for fulllength and not the short works,” Bintley tells me. “But the history of British ballet is very much tied up with the oneact repertoire. Growing up with the work of people like Ashton, John Cranko, and Kenneth MacMillan, I thought doing everything was what a choreographer did. But even in my most plotless works I’ve tried to capture a spirit, something that moves people. And every great abstract 71

work, like Balanchine’s Serenade or Agon, tells a story. Those pieces are not just bright and shiny. The whole of life is storytelling. Every hour of every day is an unfolding story, for everyone.” A Comedy of Errors also gives Bintley the opportunity to bring humor into ballet. Funny ballets are few and far between, and the really successful ones are as rare as hen’s teeth. One thinks of Ashton’s La fille mal gardée or Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker, Cranko’s Pineapple Poll and MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations. Although comedy has a great continuing legacy in theatre from Aristophanes onwards, it rarely makes an appearance on the ballet stage. “Farce and comedy come from character,” says Bintley. “Ashton and Cranko understood that. The Comedy of Errors is super concentrated farce. It has been a mainstay of literary theatre in the past. Think of Feydeau and Molière. But it can still be challenging.” Never one to shy away from a challenge, David Bintley continues to test his own Yorkshire mettle, venturing into new areas and ideas with a rock-solid choreographic tradition beneath him. As the leading torchbearer of British ballet, he knows the rules like his own skin and can stretch it like elastic. It is in his genetic make-up. “I think you’d probably be pretty right in saying it’s in my DNA,” he affirms. “I wouldn’t know how to do it any differently. You get narrower in your scope as you get older. The stretching that I like to do is not in the [choreographic] language but in the subject.” And that ‘stretching’ process continues.

One of the reasons that Bintley decided to pass on the leadership of the Birmingham Royal Ballet—Carlos Acosta took over from him in July 2019—is because he found he was spending more time in meetings and in performing administrative tasks than he was actually making ballets. The dance world has changed—especially for the major companies—and the burden of responsibility has increased correspondingly. “One of the things that happened over the past three or four years,” he told me following his departure from BRB, “was that I could see a future with me not being able to make anything. When I decided to go, I had a creative release. For the past two years I’ve had almost too many ideas. And I love working on scenarios. I just want to make dance.” Much like the great narrative ballets he has created, David Bintley’s story is… ...to be continued.

Voices of Her The concept behind our Voices of Her project was to establish a multi-year venture celebrating the influence of women on the evolution of ballet throughout history, as a result of their choreographic output and leadership. We wanted to establish a space in which we can acknowledge just how crucial women have been—and, of course, continue to be—in shaping the narrative of British and American ballet over the past century. This Season, that entails sharing three monumental works as part of our Season: Dame Ninette de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress, Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring, and Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs. Each ballet carries a distinct weight and energy – The Rake’s Progress as a narrative-driven, dramatically intense progenitor to much of twentieth-century British ballet; Appalachian Spring as a deeply expressive tale of hope against adversity with an emphasis on modern-styled physicality; and Nine Sinatra Songs as an electrifying fusion of the timeless concepts of love and heartbreak with contemporary aesthetics and hybrid dance styles. Through the inclusion of these remarkable works in our Season, we strive to honor the contributions these three iconic women have made towards the world of dance. Another major component of Voices of Her is the fostering of the choreographic stars of today – and tomorrow. Last Season, six women of The Sarasota Ballet professional company and Studio Company brought their choreographic talents to stage, for the first time in several cases, and explored the possibilities of expanding their careers towards these creative pursuits. Planned for our 2022 - 2023 Season, we will see celebrated choreographer Jessica Lang come to Sarasota and share her dance vision with us – we are tremendously excited to work with Lang, and will have more to discuss as the occasion draws nearer. Through Voices of Her, The Sarasota Ballet takes enormous pride in elevating women’s voices in ballet, and we hope you will join us in supporting their futures.

1. Dame Ninette de Valois 2. Margot Fonteyn 3. Alexandra Danilova

4. Maria Tallchief 5. Alicia Markova 6. Anna Pavlova

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Below are the ballets that have been performed by The Sarasota Ballet within the Voices of Her project: › Asia Bui’s Song on the Beach › Dame Ninette de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress › Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring › Emelia Perkins’ Washington Square › Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs › Macyn Vogt’s Exurgency 75

Thanks, Iain Webb, for

Spectacular Years.

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IAIN WEBB DIREC TOR Born in Yorkshire, England, Iain Webb started ballet at 14 before moving to London at 16, where he trained for two years with The Rambert School of Ballet and a year at The Royal Ballet School. He further spent a year as an apprentice with The Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet where he was offered a full-time position. His principal repertoire included Ashton’s The Dream (Oberon), The Two Pigeons (Young Man), La Fille mal gardée (Colas and Alain); Bintley’s The Snow Queen (Kay); Fokine’s Les Sylphides (Poet), Petrushka (Petrushka); Balanchine’s Prodigal Son (The Son); Cranko’s Card Game, Lady and the Fool, Taming of The Shrew; Nureyev’s Raymonda; Massine’s La Boutique Fantasque; van Manen’s Five Tangos; and Wright’s productions of Coppélia (Franz), The Sleeping Beauty (Blue Bird), Swan Lake (Prince and Benno). In 1989 Webb transferred to The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, to perform character roles that included Ashton’s The Dream (Bottom), Cinderella (The Small Sister, Dancing Master, and Napoleon), Tales of Beatrix Potter (Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Pigling Bland); Baryshnikov’s production of Don Quixote (Sancho Panza); and MacMillan’s Different Drummer (The Doctor) and Manon (The Client). During this time he was a board member of Sir Matthew Bourne’s “Adventures in Motion Pictures.” In 1996 Webb retired from The Royal Ballet, but was invited back as a guest artist to give three farewell performances at Covent Garden as The Small Sister in Ashton’s Cinderella. After retiring as a dancer, he was invited by Sir Matthew Bourne to be Rehearsal Director for The West End, L.A. and Broadway seasons of Swan Lake and continued to work with Bourne on his production of Cinderella. In 1999 Webb was asked by Tetsuya Kumakawa to join his newly formed K-Ballet Company in Japan as Ballet Master and two years later was appointed Assistant Director. During this time, he worked with Kumakawa on building the company into one of Japan’s leading ballet companies—and the only company to tour extensively throughout Japan as well as New York and Shanghai. Webb also worked with many international stars including Adam Cooper, with whom he co-directed The Adam Cooper Company and organized its tour to The Kennedy Center. Likewise, he coproduced with Johan Kobborg the London performances of Out of Denmark and staged Roland Petit’s Carmen Pas de Deux for Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca for American Ballet Theatre’s 65th Anniversary Gala. Throughout Webb’s career he has produced and directed many international performances, presenting dancers from The Royal Danish Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, and Stuttgart Ballet, to name a few. He has been a guest teacher for White Oak Dance Project, Birmingham Royal Ballet, and Rambert Dance Company, as well as teaching master classes and workshops for all the major ballet schools in England. In 2013 he became an Ashton Associate for the Sir Frederick Ashton Foundation. In July 2007 Webb took over the directorship of The Sarasota Ballet. Under his leadership the Company has performed 163 ballets and divertissements by the end of the 2021 2022 Season, including 44 world premieres and 13 American Company and American premieres. These include ballets by

Ashton, Balanchine, Bourne, Cranko, de Valois, MacMillan, Tharp, Tuckett, Tudor, van Manen, and Wheeldon. In 2011 The Sarasota Ballet performed George Balanchine’s Diamonds at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet. In 2013 The Company was invited back, this time to perform Sir Frederick Ashton’s Les Patineurs for Ballet Across America III. In 2014, Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri organized The Sir Frederick Ashton Festival, commemorating the 25th anniversary of Ashton’s passing. The Festival garnered national and international acclaim for its dedication in preserving and presenting the choreographic legacy of Sir Frederick Ashton. As a result, the Company was invited to perform at the 2014 Fall for Dance Festival at the New York City Center, marking The Sarasota Ballet’s first appearance in New York City. In August 2015 The Sarasota Ballet performed to critical acclaim at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts. The 2016 - 2017 Season marked Webb’s 10th Season as Director of The Sarasota Ballet and began with a weeklong residency at New York’s Joyce Theater, followed by two performances at the 1932 Criterion Theatre in Bar Harbor, Maine. In recognition of his outstanding achievements in building the artistic reputation and stability of The Sarasota Ballet, the Board of Directors engaged Iain Webb for an additional ten years as Director. In August of 2018, The Sarasota Ballet returned to the Joyce Theater for the Company’s second week-long residency.

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JOSEPH VOLPE EXECUTIVE DIREC TOR Joseph Volpe, retired General Manager of The Metropolitan Opera and theater and management consultant, was appointed Executive Director of The Sarasota Ballet in February 2016. Volpe first joined the Board of The Sarasota Ballet in 2014 after a long history in the world of the performing arts. He spent 42 years working at The Metropolitan Opera, rising from apprentice carpenter to General Manager from 1990 to 2006. In that role Volpe expanded the length of The Met repertory season as well as the number of new productions. There were four world premieres, 22 Met premieres, four commissions and expanded international touring activities. His term was characterized by sound fiscal management, fresh customer service initiatives, and no contract disputes for over three decades of his leadership in contract negotiations. He conceived and developed “Met Titles,” an innovative titling system providing multilingual translations of the operas on the backs of each seat, visible only to the individual audience member who wished to utilize them, and initiated the development of Tessitura, a management software program for targeted marketing and fundraising appeals, which is now licensed to more than 400 companies worldwide. In 1998, Volpe instituted an education outreach project for young children in cooperation with the City of New York Department of Education emphasizing direct experience with music and opera for students. He also established a partnership with the University of Connecticut that provides students from music and drama departments with behind-the-scenes access to the creative and technical processes that bring the opera to life on The Met stage. Volpe retired from The Met in July of 2006, leaving the company with a strong administration, an endowment fund that had increased from $100 million to $345 million and exceptional artistic plans for the future. Since that time, Volpe consulted for two years with Giuliani Partners. Currently, he consults with Theatre Projects Consultants providing comprehensive advice from project conception and design to daily operations and fiscal management. Volpe helps major arts organizations and universities as they plan a move into new facilities or address the reorganization and renovation of existing ones. He serves as a Senior Consultant for Hudson Scenic Studios advising on all aspects of management, labor negotiation, and strategic planning. He also heads The Volpe Group, Ltd, his own theater and management consulting firm.

Volpe taught a course entitled “Managing in the Performing Arts” for five years at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Georgetown, SUNY Purchase, Harvard and Oxford University. He has received honorary degrees from numerous universities, including Georgetown University, Fordham University and Hamilton College. Volpe is the author of The Toughest Show on Earth, My Rise and Reign at The Metropolitan Opera, published by Random House in 2006.

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MARGARET BARBIERI A S S I S TA N T D I R E C T O R Born in South Africa of Italian parents, Margaret Barbieri moved to England to study at The Royal Ballet School. In 1965 she joined The Royal Ballet Touring Company (now Birmingham Royal Ballet), and became a Principal Dancer in 1970. During a highly successful 25-year dancing career, she danced most of the leading roles in the classical repertoire (including The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Coppélia, Romeo and Juliet, La Fille mal gardée, Taming of the Shrew, The Two Pigeons, and The Dream). However it was her major impact in the title role of Giselle at the age of 21 that first established her special reputation as a Romantic Ballerina. In 1973 she was invited to dance Giselle at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and received high praise from the press and audience alike, a triumph which she repeated in 1974 when she returned to her native South Africa to dance the role in Durban. She replaced an indisposed Natalia Makarova at short notice in the same role for Norwegian National Ballet and made many guest appearances with companies internationally in Giselle, Swan Lake, Coppélia, and Cinderella. In addition to guesting, Barbieri also performed worldwide with The Royal Ballet. Barbieri worked closely with most of the great masters of the 20th Century, including Sir Frederick Ashton, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Dame Ninette de Valois, John Cranko, Antony Tudor, Rudolf Nureyev, and Hans van Manen. Roles were created on her by Ashton, Sir Peter Wright, Tudor, David Bintley, Michael Corder, Ronald Hynd, and Joe Layton. Many of her best-known roles were televised, including Swanhilda (Coppélia), Black Queen (Checkmate), The Mother (Bintley’s Metamorphosis), Young Girl (Le Spectre de la Rose), and van Manen’s Grosse Fuge. With David Ashmole, she was featured in BBC TV’s Ballet Masterclass series, given by Dame Alicia Markova, who later coached her in Fokine’s The Dying Swan and Pavlova’s The Dragonfly. Barbieri retired from The Royal Ballet in 1990 to become Director of the new Classical Graduate Programme at London Studio Centre and Artistic Director of the annual touring company, Images of Dance. During her tenure, she was instrumental in devising the Classical Ballet Course for the BA Honours degree. Here she gave Christopher Wheeldon his first professional commission and Sir Matthew Bourne his first classical ballet commission. She also found time to teach at Birmingham Royal Ballet Company and the English National and Royal Ballet Schools, serving on The Royal Ballet’s Board of Governors from 1994-2000 and participating as an External Assessor for the Arts Council of England from 1995-2001. Her staging credits include Swan Lake Act II, Le Jardin Animé from Le Corsaire, and Kingdom of the Shades from La Bayadère for Images of Dance; Nureyev’s production of Raymonda Act III for K-Ballet in Japan; Ashton’s Façade for Scottish Ballet, K-Ballet, and Oregon Ballet Theatre; and The Two Pigeons for K-Ballet and State Ballet Theatre of Georgia. During the last 10 years at The Sarasota Ballet she has staged Wright’s production of Giselle, Mirror Walkers, and Summertide; Ashton’s The Two Pigeons, Façade, Birthday Offering, Les Patineurs, Les Rendezvous, La Fille

mal gardée, Valses nobles et sentimentales, and Jazz Calendar; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress and Checkmate; Cranko’s Pineapple Poll; Wheeldon’s There Where She Loved and The American; Darrell’s Othello; Bourne’s Boutique; Bintley’s Four Scottish Dances; Layton’s The Grand Tour; Fokine’s Les Sylphides and Petrushka; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; and Samsova’s production of Paquita. Barbieri has been invited to judge at numerous ballet competitions across the globe, including Brazil, Japan, South Africa, the United States, and Europe. In April 2010, she was awarded Distinction by the University of the Arts, London, for her Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning. In 2013 she was invited to speak at the Ashton Symposium in London and became an Ashton Associate for the Sir Frederick Ashton Foundation. Having previously staged several ballets for The Sarasota Ballet, Barbieri was appointed Assistant Director in August 2012.

ARTISTIC STAFF Mandy-Jayne Richardson BALLET MISTRESS

Mandy-Jayne Richardson has established an international reputation as a truly accomplished Stager, Repetiteur, and Ballet Mistress. Her staging credits include works by Sir Peter Wright, Christopher Wheeldon, George Balanchine, and Alexei Ratmansky for companies such as American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, and the Royal Swedish Ballet. As a Ballet Mistress, Richardson worked as Senior Ballet Mistress with The National Ballet of Canada for over twenty years coaching and nurturing the numerous dancers that have worked under her careful eye. Prior to her career offstage, Richardson danced with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, and New York City Ballet, giving her a unique and valuable perspective and expertise on the technique and stylistic details that define the repertoires of those three iconic ballet institutions.

Ricardo Graziano

RESIDENT CHOREOGRAPHER

In 2011, Ricardo Graziano was given the opportunity by Iain Webb to choreograph his first ballet, Shostakovich Suite, which premiered in October 2011. Following this ballet, Graziano choreographed four new ballets before being appointed Resident Choreographer by Iain Webb on stage in 2014 after a performance of Symphony of Sorrows. Since then he has choreographed four more complete works for the Company, including In a State of Weightlessness, which premiered 12 August 2015, as a part of The Sarasota Ballet’s first week-long residency at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. His other works for The Sarasota Ballet include Pomp and Circumstance, Valsinhas, Before Night Falls, En Las Calles de Murcia, Sonata in Four Movements, The Jolly Overture, Somewhere, and Amorosa. In total, Graziano has choreographed nine, one-act ballets and three divertissements. Graziano is also a Principal Dancer with The Sarasota Ballet.

Pavel Fomin

BALLET MASTER

Pavel Fomin was born in Ukraine and received his ballet training at the Odessa Ballet School and the Kirov Ballet. From 1964 to 1990 he was a Principal Dancer with the State Academic Opera and Ballet House in Odessa City and danced most of the Russian classical repertoire, including Basilio in Don Quixote, Albrecht in Giselle, and Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty. While still performing, Fomin rose quickly to the position of Principal Ballet Master and Artistic Director at the Odessa State Academy of Opera and Ballet. Since joining The Sarasota Ballet in 1991 as Ballet Master, Fomin has staged many ballets and pas de deux for the Company.

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Octavio Martin

ASSISTANT BALLET MASTER

A native of Havana, Cuba, Martin received his training at the Cuban National Ballet School, joining the National Ballet of Cuba in 1994, and in 2001 was promoted to Primer Bailarin. In 2004 Martin was awarded the Alejo Carpentier medal, one of the highest honors an artist can receive in Cuba. For two years he was a Principal Guest Artist with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet of Canada and in 2006 he joined The Sarasota Ballet, rising to Principal Dancer in 2008, where he danced leading roles in ballets by Ashton, Balanchine, de Valois, and Wheeldon. As Assistant Ballet Master with the Company, Martin works closely with Director Iain Webb and Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri in working and rehearsing with the Company, and in addition teaches at The Sarasota Ballet School and The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory.

Lindsay Fischer

PRINCIPAL COMPANY TEACHER

Lindsay Fischer brings a wealth of experience to The Sarasota Ballet through his twenty-four years of service with The National Ballet of Canada, including six as Principal Ballet Master. Over and above his work in Canada, Fischer worked with companies like San Francisco Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, and Bavarian National Ballet as a Stager and Guest Teacher. During his onstage career, Fischer danced with both New York City Ballet and Dutch National Ballet as a Principal Dancer, and his international guesting credits include performances with Merrill Ashley, Margaret Barbieri, Cynthia Gregory, and Evelyn Hart. He has also staged works for and been a guest ballet master with companies around the world.

Danielle BROWN

Ricardo Victoria GRAZIANO HULLAND

Ricardo RHODES

Luke SCHAUFUSS

Ricki BERTONI

PRINCIPALS

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2007 Promoted to Soloist in 2009 and Principal in 2010

Danielle Brown

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, Enigma Variations, La Fille mal gardée, Jazz Calendar, Marguerite and Armand, Méditation from Thaïs, Scènes de ballet, Symphonic Variations, Valses nobles et sentimentales, Varii Capricci, The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Balanchine’s Apollo, Diamonds, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Prodigal Son, Serenade, Stars and Stripes, Western Symphony; Bourne’s Boutique; Darrell’s Othello; de Valois’ Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress; Fokine’s Les Sylphides; Graziano’s Amorosa, In a State of Weightlessness; Layton’s The Grand Tour; MacMillan’s Concerto, Las Hermanas; Nijinsky’s L’après-midi d’un Faune; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Possokhov’s Firebird; Robbins’ Fancy Free; Taylor’s Brandenburgs; Tharp’s In the Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Tuckett’s Lux Aeterna; Tudor’s Lilac Garden; Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide.

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2010 Promoted to Principal in 2011

Ricardo Graziano

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Enigma Variations, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Illuminations, Jazz Calendar, Marguerite and Armand, Méditation from Thaïs, Monotones II, Symphonic Variations, Valses nobles et sentimentales, The Walk to the Paradise Garden; Balanchine’s Diamonds, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Prodigal Son, Stars and Stripes, Western Symphony, Who Cares?; Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café; Darrell’s Othello; de Mille’s Rodeo; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; Fokine’s Les Sylphides; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; MacMillan’s Las Hermanas; Nijinsky’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Robbins’ The Concert; Samsova’s Paquita; Tharp’s In the Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Taylor’s Airs, Brandenburgs; Tuckett’s Changing Light, Lux Aeterna; Tudor’s Lilac Garden; Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide.

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2007

Victoria Hulland

Promoted to Coryphée in 2008 and Principal in 2009 Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, The Dream, Enigma Variations, Illuminations, Marguerite and Armand, Monotones II, Les Patineurs, Symphonic Variations, The Two Pigeons, Varii Capricci, A Wedding Bouquet; Balanchine’s Apollo, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Rubies, Serenade, Stars and Stripes; Bourne’s Boutique; Bruce’s Sergeant Early’s Dream; Cranko’s Pineapple Poll; de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress; Gomes’ Dear Life...; Fokine’s Petrushka, Les Sylphides; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; Graziano’s Before Night Falls, Symphony of Sorrows; Layton’s The Grand Tour; Kobborg’s Salute; MacMillan’s Concerto; Pavlova’s The Dragonfly solo; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Robbins’ The Concert; Taylor’s Airs; Tharp’s In the Upper Room; Tuckett’s Changing Light; Tudor’s Lilac Garden, Gala Performance; Walsh’s I Napoletani, Wolfgang for Webb; Wright’s Giselle.

T H E S A R A S OTA B A L L E T CO M PA N Y M E M B E R S Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2007

Ricardo Rhodes

Promoted to Soloist in 2010 and Principal in 2012 Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, The Dream, La Fille mal gardée, Jazz Calendar, Méditation from Thaïs, Monotones II, Les Rendezvous, Rhapsody, Scènes de ballet, Sinfonietta, Symphonic Variations, The Two Pigeons; Balanchine’s Apollo, Bugaku, Diamonds, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Rubies, Serenade, Stars and Stripes, Theme and Variations, Western Symphony, Who Cares?; Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café; Bruce’s Sergeant Early’s Dream; Darrell’s Othello; de Valois’ Checkmate; Fokine’s Les Sylphides; Gomes’ Dear Life...; Kobborg’s Salute; Graziano’s Symphony of Sorrows; Nijinsky’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune; North’s Troy Game; Nureyev’s Raymonda Act III; Robbins’ The Concert, Fancy Free; Taylor’s Brandenburgs; Tharp’s In The Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Tuckett’s Changing Light; Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved; Wright’s Giselle, Summertide.

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019

Luke Schaufuss

Previous Companies: Royal Danish Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, & Scottish Ballet Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Les Rendezvous; Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, Western Symphony; Graziano’s En las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness, Shostakovich Suite; Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker; Schaufuss’ La Sylphide pas de deux; Walsh’s I Napoletani Lead and Featured Roles with Other Companies include: Ashton’s Dante Sonata, Enigma Variations, La Fille mal gardée, Romeo & Juliet; Bintley’s King Dances, Prince of the Pagodas; Bourne’s Highland Fling; Bournonville’s A Folktale, Kermesse in Bruges, Napoli, La Sylphide, La Ventana; Cranko’s Card Game; Darrell’s Nutcracker; Helpmann’s Miracle in the Gorbals; Lopez’s A Streetcar Named Desire; MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations; Neumeier’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lady of the Camellias.

Character Principal Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2007 Promoted to Character Principal in 2014

Ricki Bertoni

Lead and Featured Roles include: Ashton’s The Dream, Enigma Variations, Façade, La Fille mal gardée, Jazz Calendar, A Wedding Bouquet; Balanchine’s Bugaku, Diamonds, Rubies, Prodigal Son, Western Symphony, Who Cares?; Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café; Bruce’s Sergeant Early’s Dream; de Mille’s Rodeo; de Valois’ Checkmate, The Rake’s Progress; Flindt’s The Lesson; Fokine’s Petrushka; Graham’s Appalachian Spring; Graziano’s Before Night Falls, Symphony of Sorrows; Layton’s The Grand Tour; North’s Troy Game; Robbins’ The Concert; Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B; Tharp’s In The Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs; Tuckett’s Changing Light, The Secret Garden; Walsh’s I Napoletani; Wheeldon’s The American; Wright’s Giselle.

SOLOISTS

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2012 Promoted to Soloist in 2016

Samantha Benoit

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s The Dream, Façade, Jazz Calendar, Les Rendezvous, Monotones I, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Varii Capricci, A Wedding Bouquet Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, Stars and Stripes Bintley’s Four Scottish Dances, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café Gomes’ Dear Life... Graziano’s In a State of Weightlessness Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker Samsova’s Paquita Taylor’s Company B Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Wheeldon’s The American Wright’s Summertide

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Previous Company: Bucharest National Opera Ballet

Marco Alessandro Corcella

Featured Roles with Other Companies include: Bombana’s Carmina Burana Clug’s Tango Cranko’s Lady and the Fool, Onegin, Romeo and Juliet Dumitrescu’s Coppélia Feco & Medvedev’s Le Corsaire, The Sleeping Beauty Iancu’s Swan Lake Neumeier’s Endstation Petipa’s La Bayadère, The Nutcracker, Trailescu’s Snow White Vilàn’s Amorul Vragitor, Tricornul Zanella’s Bolero, Opus 73, Romeo and Juliet, Le Sacre du printemps

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Promoted to Soloist in 2020

Marijana Dominis

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Rendezvous, The Sleeping Beauty Vision Solo, Valses nobles et sentimentales Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations, Theme and Variations, Western Symphony Graziano’s En Las Calles de Murcia, Shostakovich Suite Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker MacMillan’s Las Hermanas Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Walsh’s I Napoletani

T H E S A R A S OTA B A L L E T CO M PA N Y M E M B E R S

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Soloist in 2021

Yuri Marques

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, Façade, Les Patineurs, Les Rendezvous, Rhapsody, Varii Capricci, Valses nobles et sentimentales Balanchine’s Diamonds, Donizetti Variations, Theme and Variations, Stars and Stripes, Western Symphony Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness, Shostakovich Suite, Symphony of Sorrows Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker Robbins’ The Concert Taylor’s Brandenburgs Samsova’s Paquita Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Wheeldon’s The American

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Previous Company: The Australian Ballet

Richard House

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Apparitions, Birthday Offering, Les Patineurs, The Walk to the Paradise Garden Balanchine’s Diamonds, Stars and Stripes, The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony, Who Cares? Bintley’s Four Scottish Dances Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia, In a State of Weightlessness Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker MacMillan’s Concerto pas de deux Taylor’s Company B Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Walsh’s I Napoletani Wright’s Giselle, The Mirror Walkers Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2011 Promoted to Soloist in 2016

Ryoko Sadoshima

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Birthday Offering, The Dream, Monotones I, Méditation from Thaïs, The Sleeping Beauty Awakening Pas de Deux, The Two Pigeons, The Walk to the Paradise Garden, A Wedding Bouquet Balanchine’s Bugaku, Emeralds, The Four Temperaments, Serenade, Western Symphony, Who Cares? Bintley’s Four Scottish Dances, ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café Graziano’s Before Night Falls, In a State of Weightlessness MacMillan’s Concerto Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Tuckett’s The Secret Garden Tudor’s Continuo, The Leaves are Fading Wheeldon’s The American, There Where She Loved Wright’s The Mirror Walkers, Summertide

CORYPHÉE 90

Arcadian Broad

Asia Bui

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Previous Company: Cincinnati Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2015 Promoted to Coryphée in 2019

Featured Roles with Other Companies include: Hill’s Romeo & Juliet, The Firebird Petipa’s Don Quixote, Swan Lake Pink’s Dracula Robbins’ Fancy Free Tharp’s Sinatra Suite Caniparoli’s A Cinderella Story Webre’s The Wizard of Oz

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Les Patineurs, Rhapsody, Varii Capricci Balanchine’s Diamonds, Theme and Variations Hart’s John Ringling’s Circus Nutcracker Taylor’s Brandenburgs Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs Tuckett’s Changing Light, The Secret Garden Tudor’s The Leaves are Fading

Luis Gonzalez

Janae Korte

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Previous Company: Orlando Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Coryphée in 2020

Featured Roles with Other Companies include: Ashton’s Cinderella Lopez Ochoa’s Mammatus Morgan’s Cinderella Morris’ Moulin Rouge Neumeier’s Orpheus and Eurydice Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty Robbins’ Glass Pieces

Featured Roles include: Ashton's Birthday Offering, Les Patineurs, Façade Balanchine's The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony, Who Cares? Darrell's Othello Graziano’s In a State of Weightlessness Samsova's Paquita Wright's Giselle

T H E S A R A S OTA B A L L E T CO M PA N Y M E M B E R S

Lauren Ostrander Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018

Daniel Pratt

Promoted to Coryphée in 2020

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2012 Promoted to Coryphée in 2019

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Les Patineurs, Façade Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony, Who Cares? Graham’s Appalachian Spring Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia Taylor’s Company B Walsh’s I Napoletani

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Enigma Variations, Birthday Offering, Monotones II Balanchine’s Emeralds, The Four Temperaments Darrell’s Othello Graham’s Appalachian Spring Graziano’s Amorosa, En Las Calles de Murcia Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B Tuckett’s Lux Aeterna, The Secret Garden

Ivan Spitale Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Promoted to Coryphée in 2020

Featured Roles include: Ashton’s Enigma Variations, Façade, Rhapsody Bourne’s The Infernal Galop Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, Western Symphony Graham’s Appalachian Spring Taylor’s Brandenburgs, Company B Walsh’s I Napoletani, Clair de Lune Wright’s Giselle 91

CORPS de BALLET

Mihai Costache Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Previous Company: Los Angeles Ballet

Eric Figueredo Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2020 Previous Company: Texas Ballet Theater

Claire Glavin 92

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Previous Company: Oklahoma City Ballet

Harvey Evans Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Trained at Elmhurst Ballet School

Samuel Gest Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Trained at The Royal Ballet School

Mikayla Hutton Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Previous Company: Atlanta Ballet 2

T H E S A R A S OTA B A L L E T CO M PA N Y M E M B E R S

Dominique Jenkins Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (18/19) & Richmond Ballet

Thomas Leprohon Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2020 Previous Company: National Ballet of Canada

Anna Pellegrino Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Trained at Eastern Connecticut Ballet

Ethan Kimbrell Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Previous Company: Cincinnati Ballet Second Company

Yuki Nonaka Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (18/19) & English National Ballet School

Emelia Perkins Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019 Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (18/19) & Kansas City Ballet

CORPS de BALLET

T H E S A R A S OTA B A L L E T CO M PA N Y M E M B E R S

Taylor Sambola Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2021 Previous Company: Orlando Ballet

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Previous Company: Atlanta Ballet 2

Juliano Weber

Kelly Williams

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2019

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2016 Trained at The Washington School of Ballet

Previous Company: Intuição Companhia de Ballet

Paige Young 94

Lenin Valladares

Joined The Sarasota Ballet in 2018 Trained at the School of Pennsylvania Ballet

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APPRENTICES

T H E S A R A S OTA B A L L E T CO M PA N Y M E M B E R S

Kennedy Falyn Cassada Second Season Apprentice Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (19/20) & The JKO School at American Ballet Theatre

Andrea Marcelletti Third Season Apprentice Trained at English National Ballet School

Morgan Rust Previous Company: The Washington Ballet

Melanie Wells 96

Second Season Apprentice Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (19/20) & Ellison Ballet Professional Training Program

Evan Gorbell Trained at Miami City Ballet School

Olivia McAlpine Second Season Apprentice Trained at The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company (18-20) & Canada’s National Ballet School

Macyn Vogt Second Season Apprentice Previous Company: Charlotte Ballet II

Studio Company As part of the Education Department, The Sarasota Ballet Studio Company provides an opportunity for young dancers to prepare for a professional career. The Studio Company provides a comprehensive training curriculum for dancers to refine their artistic and technical skills alongside gaining valuable performance experience. Studio Company members have the chance to rotate into main Company class and understudy main Company roles. Fifty-five percent of the 2021-2022 Studio Company members are graduates of The Margaret Barbieri Conservatory’s Trainee Program. Performing in the local community is an important part of the Studio Company’s outreach. In previous years, the Studio Company has performed as part of a collaboration with Key Chorale, Liechtenstein Nights at Marie Selby Gardens, and at retirement communities including Plymouth Harbor and Valencia Lakes. Former Studio Company members are now dancing with The Sarasota Ballet, Ballet Austin, Croatian National Ballet, Ballet Hispanico, New York Theatre Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and The Washington Ballet among others.

2021-2022 Studio Company: Kenny Allen Savannah Campbell Israel Ellis Willa Frantz

Colin Moser Bel Pickering Cynthia Ryan Hailey Stinchcomb

Calen Sutherland Terri Jean Thomson Emmanuelle Watkins

(Back Row) Kenny Allen, Savannah Campbell, Israel Ellis, Terri Jean Thomson, Calen Sutherland, Willa Frantz, Colin Moser (Front Row) Emmanuelle Watkins, Bel Pickering, Cynthia Ryan, Hailey Stinchcomb 98

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In Loving Memory of Ronald Gamer

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Valerie Gill

Renee Hamad

Gerald & Deborah Hamburg Family Foundation

Ineza Hart

Anne Klisurich

Lydia Landa

Peter G. & Patricia D. Laughlin

Peter & Teresa Masterson

Betty Menell

Carla & Michael Miller

Drs. Joel & Gail Morganroth

Gloria Moss

Eugene Noble

Dr. Sarah H. Pappas

Paige Petersen & Curtis Jordan

Marilynn Petrillo In Loving Memory of Marsha Johnson 115

Devotee Circle $5,000 - $9,999

Gabriel & Valerie Schmergel

John & Rita Steele

Sallie Carter Tyler

Tom & Teresa Walsh

William & Karen Watt

Richard Wires

Fremajane Wolfson

Charles O. Wood, III & Miriam M. Wood Foundation

Sheila and Merrill Wynne

In Loving Memory of Blair Wolfson

Sora Yelin In Loving Memory of Cary F. Yelin

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Gifts are current as of September 15, 2021. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

Advice. Beyond investing.

W. Scott Parker Senior Vice President– Wealth Management 954-527-6337 scott.parker@ubs.com

Coastal Partners UBS Financial Services Inc. 401 East Las Olas Boulevard, Suite 2300 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301 954-527-6342

advisors.ubs.com/coastalpartners

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PERFORMING THE ART OF CONSTRUCTION SINCE 1972

WILLISSMITH.COM 941.366.3116

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Golden Circle $2,500 - $4,999

Christopher and Natalie Armstrong James Brooks Peter and Judy Carlin Syble Dolan-Di Girolamo Bruce and Betsy Finley Kevin Fulcher and Kim Deme-Fulcher Thomas I and Linda Z Klein Philanthropic Fund Peter E. Kretzmer Anne Musekamp Charles and Charlotte Perret Susan Rawson Clive and Teresa Samuels Ed Town and Steve Rubin Adrienne and Gianluigi Vittadini Kim Wheeler

Silver Circle

Jean M. Martin Mary Alice McGovern Eric and Mafalda Neikrug Sue and Doug Neumann Howard and Barbara Noble, Jr. Charmian and Earl Noel Paula Norwood Lenee and Conrad Owens Linda Prowten and George Mitchell Pamela Revels Sara and Benjamin Robinson Susan L. Robinson Bob and Diane Roskamp Wylie Royce Sam Samelson Barbara B. and Jeffrey C. Shivers Jake and Paula Sorg Malcolm Stevenson Greg Stikeleather Peggy Sweeney Jacqueline and John Thompson Anna Maria Troiano Florence Wildner

$1,000 - $2,499

Charlie and Heather Annaloro Alexandra Armstrong Carol Arscott Margaret and Isaac Barpal James and Lynnette Bennett Jon and Kris Berg Barbara Blumfield Beverly and Michael Budin Bob and Jan Clark Natalie and Alan Cohen Diana Smith and Barry Cohen Katie Couchot Jeanie Davis Amy and Michael Drake Barbara and Bill Epperson Robert and Iris Fanger Steve and Wendy Fisk Michael and Jean Freed Barbara Vanderkolk Gardner Wanda Garofalo Jennifer Gemmeke Roz Goldberg Alene Hazeltine Janet Hyman Joseph and Teresa Kadow Merrill Kaegi Richard Kemmler Tassana and Michael Landy Joan Switt Langbord Dorothy Lawrence Melvy Erman Lewis Margaret Maguire Guy and Maria Mandler Louis and Carolou Marquet 118

Gifts are current as of September 15, 2021. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

P OWER

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Enthusiasts $500 - $999

Anonymous Caroline Amory and Marjorie Floyd Gaele Barthold and Larry Weiss Lenore Shapiro and Glen Behrendt Marc Behrendt In Loving Memory of Everett and Shirley Behrendt Ina and Carl Born Claudia Cardillo Lynn Chancer Louis and Marianne Cohen Stanley and Norma Cohen Glenn and Evelyn Cooper Margie and Kelvin Cooper William Cotter Dan Denton Hermione Gilpin In Honor of Marcia Jean Taub and Peter Swain David Glorius Bonnie and David Goldmann Barbara K. Grauer Dr. Audrey Heimler Bob Hemingway Allen and Stephanie Hochfelder Barbara Jacoby Robert Jones Marvin Kadesh Robert Kloss Bruce Lehman Sandra Levy Mr. and Mrs. Terrance L Lindemann John Lindsey Gerda Maceikonis Kay Mathers Dianne McLoughlin Nancy Milbauer Marie Monsky Michael and Michelle Morris James Newman Susan Newsome In Loving Memory of Jon Newsome DJ Arnold and Richard Prescott Pamela Reiter

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Stanley and Jo Rutstein John and Myra Schmidt Elizabeth Shalett Jane Sheridan Frances and Steve Siegler Ira and Carole Singer Thomas and Carol Smith Audrey and Walter Stewart Martin and Hadassah Strobel Lance Stubbs Joan Tatum Penny and Paul Thomas Leslie Weinstein Robert J. Wilk Ann Williams In Honor of Kelly Williams Jane Woods Stanley Zielinski

Gifts are current as of September 15, 2021. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Admirers $250 - $499

Anonymous Amy Barkin Dennis Ciborowski and Meryl Gale Sandra Fink Barry and Judy Fireman Suzanne Freund Martha Friedman Suzan and Barry Friedman Julian and Barbara Hansen Robert T. Hildebrand Christopher Hird Dr. Terry Hynes

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Ronald Karns Marlene Kitchell Nancy J. Laird Arthur and Marcella Levin Carol Lewis Chad and Ruth Morrison Paul and Karen Morton Jennifer Oser Margot and Jack Robinson Molly Schechter James Scholler Eileen Toolin

Gifts are current as of September 15, 2021. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

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Advocates $100 - $249

Anonymous Julia Aaron Bob and Billie Baren Marjory Barksdale David and Pamela Bechtol Barbara Blackburn Bob and Margaret Boeke Veronica Brady and Keith Monda Mary Buckley Kim and Brian Calka Barbara Callahan Colette Canavan Cheryl and Herb Carlson Julie Carmody Alexander and Irene Cass Betty Curnow Jacqueline and Harold D’Alessio Diane DiBenedetto Kathi Doepfner Monika Dorman Susan Eckert Brian and Victoria Eckl David Eichlin and Bob Griffiths Christina and Brian Endicott Elizabeth Ferguson David and Carol Furer Thomas John Galek Laura Gaythwaite Susan Girese Sheila Gleason Rita and Paul Glosser Suzanne Guyette and Bill Citara Ann E. Hall Sistie Fairweather-Harmes Doris Hasson William Hatz Tom and Charlotte Hedge Marcia Hendler Ruth Herrman John and Nina Hockenberry Judith Hoerr John Holyland Stephanie Horeis Jean and Peter Huber Ellen Hufe Sue Jacobson Millicent B. Jaekle Oliver and Suzanne Janney Jeffrey A. Jannuzzo Susan K. Johnson Jennifer Marie Kacur Bruce Kalt Roger and Kristy Kaufman Ilene and David Klein Rosalyn and Paul Kline 124

Robert Kristman Dorid Lamb Barbara Lawrence Christine Watkins L’Hermine Horace and Lorrie Liang Gail Lisi Francine Luque Dr. Lisa Mann and Dr. Rocco Marotta Amanda Marie Mason Matthew McAleer Jeanette Mcintosh Joanne Meighan Lisa and Richard Merrill Drs. Gordon and Antigone Merritt Cyndi Miller Jean Miller Sandra Miranda Hank Mlynarski Linda Mohanty Marian Moss Elizabeth and Luke Nicholas Mary Olha Margaret D’Aiuto Palacio Joe and Diane Palermo Diana L. Paver Bertha P. Person Dr. Marc and Carol Pohl Kevin Pustay Helen and Ron Rayevich Jimmye Reeves Jerry and Carole Reid Dr. Michael V. Reitano Victor Rendano Ronald and Marci Rhodes William Richlin Marta T. Riordan

Alan Roer and Patricia Heyman Jennifer and Rob Rominiecki Beverly Root Sally Ross Dr. Jack and Nancy Rozance Lydia and John Russo Sidney and Marcia Rutberg Phyllis Schaen Paul Scire Richard Vergine and William Sloan Wesley Spencer and Pauline Wood Judilee Sterne Bogdana Tchakarova Carroll Tobin Walt and Carole Ulin Carolyn K. Warren Gisela Weinland Iris G. Wenglin Case Wewerka Lisa Wicks David Wood Jay Young

Gifts are current as of September 15, 2021. Gifts and pledges (of $500 or more) received after this date will be recognized in the Performance Programs.

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

941.359.0099

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In Memoriam The following members of our Sarasota Ballet Community have passed away in the last year. We celebrate their lives and honor them for their generosity and patronage.

Ronald Gamer

William Berliner Charles Bimba Ronald D. Ciaravella Jean DeLynn Beverly Fendrick Robert Hart

Curt Swenson

Dorothy Ann Hill-Roth Allen Jelks, Sr. Alan Milbauer Jon Newsome George Pappas

The In Memoriam page above is presented to the best of our knowledge. We truly apologize if we have not recognized members of our Ballet community that have recently passed away. Please contact the Development Department so that we may update our records.

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Foundation & Public Support $100,000+ THE MURIEL O’NEIL FUND FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

At the Community Foundation of Sarasota County

$50,000+ ALFRED & ANN GOLDSTEIN FOUNDATION

Jean Allenby Goldstein Touring Fund

126

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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Foundation & Public Support $20,000+

CORNELIA T. BAILEY FOUNDATION

LELA D. JACKSON

FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS

$10,000+ BANK OF AMERICA CLIENT FOUNDATION

CHARLES HENRY LEACH II FUND At Duquesne University

$5,000+ CORDELIA LEE BEATTIE FOUNDATION

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Foundation & Public Support $1,000+ FAY A. SCHWEIM

ANNETTE J. HAGENS

MEMORIAL CHILDREN'S DANCE FUND

MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

GILBERT WATERS CHARITABLE FUND II

Gulf Coast Italian Culture Socitey

JELKS FAMILY FOUNDATION

WOMEN’S OUTREACH MINISTRY

CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER

Additional Support Provided By Care Institute Designing Women Boutique Florida State University

128

The Leda Freedman Fund Manatee County Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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Corporate Partners Corporate Sponsors $10,000+

BANK OF AMERICA CLIENT FOUNDATION

CHARLES HENRY LEACH II FUND

Corporate Principal Circle $7,500-$9,999

129

Corporate Partners Corporate Devotee Circle $5,000-$7,499

Corporate Platinum Circle $3,500-$4,999

Corporate Golden Circle $2,500-$3,499

BANK OF AMERICA CLIENT FOUNDATION

130

CHARLES HENRY LEACH II FUND

2021 - 2022 S E A S O N

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Corporate Partners Corporate Silver Circle $1,000-$2,499 GOLDMAN BABBONI FERNANDEZ MURPHY & WALSH

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Corporate Enthusiasts Circle $500-$999

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