Ballet San Jose's 'Program of Premieres', April 13 - 15

Ballet San Jose’s PROGRAM OF PREMIERES includes four Company Premieres (two of which are also Bay Area Premieres), April 13-15 at San Jose Center for the Performing Arts in downtown San Jose. Jessica Lang’s pas de deux, Splendid Isolation III, and Stanton Welch’s Clear will be making their first appearances on the Bay Area stage. Joining them as Ballet San Jose Company Premieres is George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante and Clark Tippet’s Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1. The short, four-performance run… Show more plays Friday and Saturday nights at 8pm with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 1:30pm. Tickets are $30 - $100 with discounts for students, seniors and groups. The Saturday afternoon program is a Discount Matinee priced at $20 - $70. Tickets are available at the Ballet Box Office at 40 North First Street in downtown San Jose or by calling 408.288.2800 during regular business hours, M-F, 9am to 5pm. Tickets are always available online at www.BalletSJ.org.

THE BALLETS:

Allegro Brillante (Company Premiere)
Choreography: George Balanchine
Composer: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Music: Unfinished Piano Concert No. 3 in E flat, Opus 75
World Premiere: New York City Ballet at the City Center, New York, March 1, 1956.
Original Cast: Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallanes; Carolyn George, Barbara Fallis, Barbara Millberg, Barbara Walczak, Arthur Mitchell, Richard Rapp, Jonathan Watts, and Roland Vasquez.
SHORT BYTE: A work of expansive Russian romanticism, Balanchine said of Allegro Brillante, “It contains everything I know about the classical ballet in 13 minutes.” The ballet requires strong dancing, precise timing, and breadth of gesture. The piece is arranged for two principals and an ensemble and has no narrative idea, Balanchine only “wishing to have the dancers complement the music.” It is set to the last music Tchaikovsky ever composed.

Splendid Isolation III (Company and Bay Area Premiere)
Choreography: Jessica Lang
Composer: Gustav Mahler
Music: Adagietto
Costumes: Elena Comendador
World Premiere: Splendid Isolation III was originally created for NBA Ballet's Golden Ballet Co-Star Gala and was given its world premiere at Mielparque Hall, Tokyo, Japan on August 4, 2007.
Original Cast: Maria Riccetto and Koichi Kubo.
SHORT BYTE: A pas de deux of high theatricality with a woman in a luminous white gown that is a symbol of perfection and imprisonment.

Clear (Company and Bay Area Premiere)
Choreographer: Stanton Welch
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
Music: Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor and the first and second movements from the Violin Concerto in G minor
Staged by: Dawn Scannell
World Premiere: October 25, 2001 at City Center in New York City.
Original Cast: Julie Kent, Angel Corella, Maxim Belotserkovsky and Marcelo Gomes.
SHORT BYTE: Inspired by the tragedy of 9/11, Clear is an abstract study of life’s connections. A showcase for male dancers (and one woman) Welch began choreographing Clear for American Ballet Theatre two weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. Noted New York fashion designer Michael Kors created the costumes.

Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 (Company Premiere)
Choreography: Clark Tippet
Composer: Max Bruch
Music: Concerto No. 1 in G minor for Violin, Op. 26
Costumes: Dain Marcus
World Premiere: Orange County Performing Arts Center, Costa Mesa, CA December 1, 1987. Commissioned for American Ballet Theatre
Original Cast: Leslie Brown, Susan Jaffe, Cheryl Yeager, Amanda McKerrow, John Gardner, Ricardo Bustamante, Wes Chapman, Clark Tippet
SHORT BYTE: Clark Tippet’s second ballet (following Enough Said) resembles a conventional plotless tutu ballet in the classical mode, but highly experimental in its use of classical technique to comment on ballet conventions from a contemporary perspective. Set to the familiar concert work by Max Bruch with four principal couples and a corps of eight more couples, it has been called “an extended essay on the brisk, abstract, neo-classical style perfected by George Balanchine…full of perfectly timed canons and complex, stage-crossing patterns.”

Show less