Ballet West’s inaugural Works from Within program proved to be an excellent showcase for highlighting the choreographic strengths of five of the company’s dancers. While the program featured worthy pieces by two dancers who already have carved out solid niches as choreographers, the three newcomers delighted the audience with choreography that produced some of the … Read more
When Adam Sklute joined Ballet West as artistic director in 2007, it had been nine years since the company had last produced any new work. But, that would change dramatically. For example, between 2011 and 2016, Ballet West presented 16 Utah premieres of works by past and present choreographers. By 2016, the company’s Innovations program … Read more
Stories such as Aladdin are timeless and great for all ages but the best opportunities to judge how interpretations of these classic tales in the performing arts resonate with young audiences is to ask them to take the reviewer’s seat. Recently, The Utah Review, with the assistance of Christal Jackson, an English teacher and ELL … Read more
If there was an overarching theme to the astonishing triple bill in Ballet West’s production that culminated in the riveting performance of The Rite of Spring, it would be contemplation, continuity and connection for humans living in a largely symbolic world. The opening night performance of works by three choreographers featuring the music of Stravinsky … Read more
The facts about the revolutionary character of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring are well known. Capitalizing upon the triumphs of The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911), Sergei Diaghilev commissioned The Rite for The Ballets Russes. A dream team had been assembled for its premiere and rehearsals had proceeded without incident: Vaslav Nijinsky developed the … Read more
For this weekend’s Ballet West revival of Aladdin as part of the company’s Family Classics Series, audiences will have an excellent opportunity to see some of the rising stars of ballet’s newest generation. For example, in 2018, when Aladdin was last presented, it featured many current Ballet West artists in early roles, including Principal Artist … Read more
“Out of old tales, we must make new lives,” the great literary scholar Carolyn Heilbrun once wrote. For London audiences still feeling weary after World War II, the Cinderella fairy tale took on a spectacular new life in the ballet choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton to the music of Sergei Prokofiev. Seventy-seven years later, Ballet … Read more
Few stories have been so versatile for adaptation than Cinderella. There have been versions for children’s theater, pantomime, opera, comic theater, vaudeville, burlesque, melodrama, risqué sendups, Christmas shows, rock music adaptations with Cinderella as antiheroine, television productions, mainstream and art films in many languages (more than 140 versions just of the fairy tale) and the … Read more
But I grew up in a landscape large enough to hold what I felt when the world of people pushed me away. There, where badgers roamed, where herons speared small fish in shallow pools, I found my place. I took my sketch pad and tackle box to the banks of that small creek and washed … Read more
For many in Salt Lake City, the greatest source of pride has been Willam Christensen’s efforts to make the first American version of The Nutcracker, which he transported from its San Francisco premiere in 1944 to the University of Utah in the 1950s and eventually to its permanent spot in the Ballet West repertoire. One … Read more