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METROPOLITAN
CLASSICAL BALLET ANNOUNCES The eleventh season of Excellence on Stage! Highlights
include gala performance, world and company premieres, |
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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE ARLINGTON, TEXAS - Following a touring performance to the Cullen Theater in Houston on October 26th, Metropolitan Classical Ballet will launch the 2007 – 2008 Season. Artistic Directors, Paul Mejia and Alexander Vetrov have announced the repertory and performance schedule which begins on October 29th, 2007, and runs through June 21, 2008. It will include one world premiere, two company premieres, the return of several acclaimed favorites to include Carmen Suite and Romeo and Juliet, and a gala evening with divertissements from rich traditional classical Russian ballets. The season will include works by Mr. Mejia and Mr. Vetrov, George Balanchine and other acclaimed choreographers. The Metropolitan Classical Ballet Orchestra under the direction of Music Director Ron Spigelman will accompany most performances during the season. All performances will be presented at the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth with the exception of the full-length The Nutcracker which will be presented at Texas Hall in Arlington. Two familiar special guest artists will return to perform with the Company during the season. Marianna Ryzhkina, Bolshoi principal ballerina will dance in the fall repertory program, and violinist Eric Grossman will perform in the spring repertory program. Gleb Ivanov, the sensational new pianist from Russia who is rapidly gaining great critical acclaim in the United States, will also perform in the fall program. |
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The 2007-2008 Season Overview:
FALL
REPERTORY
Album
for the Young
Scriabin
Sonata
Carmen
Suite Album for the Young, which opens the evening, was choreographed by Mr. Mejia and premiered to great acclaim in 2005. The music is by Mr. Lowell Liebermann, one of todays most frequently performed and commissioned composers. Twenty-three year-old Russian born pianist Gleb Ivanov, will play the piano accompaniment for the ballet.
Set to Scriabin’s romantic Sonata No. 3 in F# minor, Op. 23, the Scriabin Sonata is a passionate ballet choreographed for one woman, danced by Olga Pavlova, and a corps of men. It was first performed for the Company in 1999.
Carmen Suite will close the performance. Both the arrangement and the choreography for Carmen Suite were created especially for the great Soviet ballerina, Maya Plisetskaya, former soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet Theatre. Guest dancer, Marianna Ryzhkina, principal dancer with the Bolshoi since 1989, will perform the title role. Ms. Ryzhkina bears the prestigious title Honored Artist of Russia. THE
NUTCRACKER (full-length, two acts) Set to the timeless score by Tchaikovsky, Alexander Vetrov's choreography of The Nutcracker is both unique and captivating. Influenced by the Bolshoi, with choreography in part by Yuri Grigorovich, it has been pleasing audiences and garnering great critical acclaim since it was first premiered in December 2003. The production will feature the entire Company and students from Metropolitan Ballet Academy who will dance the numerous children roles. SPRING
REPERTORY World Premiere
Donizetti
Variations
Violin Concerto The music from Donizetti Variations is from excerpts from the opera Don Sebastian written in 1843. Balanchine choreographed the ballet for a principal couple and a corps of six women and three men. It premiered November 16, 1960, New York City Ballet, City Center of Music and Drama, New York. The evening will close with Mr. Mejia’s Violin Concerto. The ballet premiered in Fort. Worth in 1991, and Mr. Mejia is restaging it for ballerina Olga Pavlova. Written in 1878, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 is one of the best known of all violin concertos. It was his only concerto for violin and is considered to be among the most technically difficult works for violin. Eric Grossman will play the accompaniment for the ballet. SUMMER
GALA
Romeo and
Juliet
Great Classical
Divertissements The Summer Gala will open with Romeo and Juliet. A fantasy overture composed by Tchaikovsky in 1869, it was one of three compositions inspired by Shakespeare. Paul Mejia became intrigued by all three of the overtures because of the musical impression of each story as a whole, in terms of their emotional and psychological impact, and challenged himself as a choreographer to bring them to life. Romeo and Juliet premiered in Guatemala in 1977. It was later performed by legendary ballerina Suzanne Farrell in New York City and has since been performed throughout Europe and the United States to great public and critical acclaim. The evening will conclude with a selection of divertissements from the Classics, which will offer great bravura dancing that will showcase the strong artistic personalities of the Company dancers and guests. Programming,
program order and casting for all productions is subject to change
without notice. In keeping with tradition, individual season subscriptions for all three performances of the Bass Hall series are value priced at: $30, $60, and $90. Subscribers have the option of adding The Nutcracker at 10% below single ticket prices. Season subscriptions and The Nutcracker tickets are available only through the administrative office of Metropolitan Classical Ballet, 500 W. Abram, Arlington, Texas 76010 or by calling (817) 275-0598 or (817) 465-4644 or online. Single ticket sales for the Bass Hall productions will be at $10, $25, and $38 and are available by calling Bass Performance Hall Ticket Office at (817) 212-4280 or by calling Metropolitan Classical Ballet at (817) 275-0598, or print an online order form at www.mcballet.org. Single ticket sales for The Nutcracker at Texas Hall in Arlington are $10, $20, and $30. Group discounts are available. Metropolitan Classical Ballet, recognized as one of the leading dance companies in Texas, was founded in 1997. Artistic directors Paul Mejia and Alexander Vetrov are two of the most recognized names in ballet. Mr. Mejia, former dancer with the New York City Ballet who danced principal roles in many Balanchine ballets, carries on Balanchine’s style and artistic vision though his acclaimed choreography. Alexander Vetrov, former leading male principal dancer with the prestigious Bolshoi has the distinction of being the recipient of the Honored People’s Artist of Russia, the highest honor given by the Russian President. Mr. Vetrov still maintains close connections with the Bolshoi today. Performances reach over 30,000 individuals each season. The Company performs at the prestigious Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, and presents its annual production of The Nutcracker at Texas Hall, at the University of Texas at Arlington. Located in Arlington, the administrative office and spacious state of the arts studios are unsurpassed in the North Texas area. Metropolitan Classical Ballet 2007 / 2008 is made possible in part by its generous sponsors: American Airlines, The University of Texas at Arlington, and the law firm of Hill Gilstrap. -END- Media Note: Further information may be obtained by contacting Maria Kudyakova at (817) 465-4644. Information can also be found on Metropolitan Classical Ballet’s website www.mcballet.org. . |
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