Kansas City Ballet Presents 2009-2010 Season of Dynamic Dance
Highlights for 52nd Season Include a Jessica Lang World Premiere, Kansas City Premieres from A. Saint-Léon and Balanchine and Encores of Carmen and Lambarena

KANSAS CITY, MO (February 9, 2009) – Kansas City Ballet Artistic Director William Whitener today announced the 52nd season featuring its continued legacy of unparalleled variety, presenting classical geniuses as well as internationally recognized contemporary artists in a series guaranteed to entertain and inspire audiences. The Fall and Spring Performances will feature the Kansas City Symphony and The Nutcracker will feature the Kansas City Ballet Orchestra — both will be led by Kansas City Ballet Music Director Ramona Pansegrau.

“True to our mission, the Kansas City Ballet’s season offers classical ballets, dramatic works, and pieces that celebrate popular culture. Opening performances will include the company debut of Frescoes (from The Little Humpbacked Horse),” says Whitener. “I’m pleased that we are forging a relationship with Elena Kunikova, a distinguished stager and former ballerina from the Maly Ballet in Russia, who will be staging the ballet. An original work is being created for KCB by Jessica Lang, a bright new talent in the dance world whose ballets grace the repertories of many American dance companies. And later in the season, Balanchine’s charming ballet Who Cares? enters our repertory and will accompany a diverse blend of favorite works from the past by José Limón, Todd Bolender, Bruce Marks, Robert Hill, Val Caniparoli and myself.”

Fall Performance
Frescoes (from The Little Humpbacked Horse) opens the 52nd season of the Kansas City Ballet’s Fall Performance October 15 – 18, 2009 at the Lyric Theatre. Originally staged for the Imperial Russian Ballet of St. Petersburg by Arthur Saint-Léon and set to the music of Cesare Pugni in 1864, this piece has been revived under many Russian ballet masters. In Frescoes scene of the ballet, the enchanted Humpbacked Horse has given Ivan a magic whip that brings to life the spirited female murals painted on the walls of the Kahn’s palace.

Pugni’s music is known for its charming melodies and light, rhyming themes. Its appealing mid-19th century form makes it a perfect pretext for dance.

The Fall Performance continues with a World Premiere by acclaimed choreographer Jessica Lang, one of the country’s most successful young dance artists. Known for her inventive vision, deep artistry and emotionally spellbinding work, Lang’s choreography has been performed throughout the United States, Japan, France, Mexico, and South Africa. Lang has created work on numerous companies including American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, Colorado Ballet, Richmond Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, and Washington Ballet. Lang received the Choo San Goh award for choreographic excellence in 2003 and two recent NEA grants presented by Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts to Richmond Ballet allowing Lang to set creations on the company. Lang began her career as a member of Twyla Tharp’s company “THARP!” where she performed in major dance festivals around the world. She also worked with Ms. Tharp in her Diabelli Project that premiered in Palermo, Italy in 1998. Lang has taught, coached and choreographed on universities and prestigious institutions and currently teaches Modern dance at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre as well as for ABT’s summer programs in NYC.

Closing the Fall Performance and back by popular demand, Carmen, choreographed by Kansas City Ballet’s Artistic Director William Whitener, features the musical themes of Georges Bizet in an arrangement by Rodion Shchedrin. The ballet tells the tale of a fickle yet fiercely independent gypsy woman, Carmen, in the thick with murderers and thieves. Carmen seduces a highborn soldier, Don José, and becomes the catalyst for his ignoble act of murder. This impressionistic piece, featuring the entire company, traces the pleasantly familiar music and storyline and yet probes the stirring emotional subtext.

The artistic team of critically acclaimed set, lighting and costume designers includes fiber artist Jason Pollen, lighting designer Kirk Bookman and Judanna Lynn, noted costume designer and accomplished painter. Composer, arranger and guitarist Beau Bledsoe has contributed musical passages in the Flamenco style and will perform on stage as part of the ballet. Internationally acclaimed Flamenco dancer, Sara de Luis, has provided additional choreography.

The Nutcracker
From December 16 through 27, 2009, Kansas City Ballet will present The Nutcracker, at the Music Hall.  Kansas City Ballet is proud to present this holiday classic that will warm the hearts of all ages. The Nutcracker, featuring the music of Peter I. Tchaikovsky and choreography of Todd Bolender, returns for 15 public performances and one matinee for schools. This full-length ballet continues to delight audiences with its magnificent sets, costumes and special effects. Three casts of Kansas City Ballet dancers, plus more than 200 local youngsters ages 7 to 17 selected from Kansas City Ballet School, tell E. T. A. Hoffman’s story. Tickets will go on sale to the public on October 26, 2009.

THE NUTCRACKER
MUSIC HALL
DOWNTOWN KANSAS CITY
301 West 13th St.
Kansas City, MO  64105

*The Sugar Plum Fairy Luncheon will be held at the Marriott Hotel from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Winter Performance
February 25-28, 2010, the Winter Performance opens with an encore production of Robert Hill’s ballet, Piano Concerto #2. Commissioned by KCB and last seen by Kansas City audiences in Spring of 2005, the piece introduced the work of choreographer Hill and composer Lowell Liebermann to area audiences. Mr. Hill, a former principal dancer with American Ballet Theater, has quickly made a reputation as a talented and exciting young choreographer on the American ballet scene.  Lowell Liebermann is perhaps the most widely performed and commissioned composer of our time. His Piano Concerto #2, which won a 1998 GRAMMY Award nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, has been called by the Baltimore Sun “perhaps the best piece in the genre since Samuel Barber’s Concerto.” When the ballet premiered, Kansas City Star dance critic, Paul Horsley noted, “This engaging four-section piece, in its world premiere, had the passion of Russian ballet, the deft clarity of Balanchine and a loose, fresh, modern quality. Hill’s choreography was a dynamic and natural outgrowth of the hyper-romantic music...”

Continuing the program is José Limón’s masterpiece, The Moor’s Pavane. A sublime and human drama that captures the passion of Shakespeare’s Othello in a timeless portrayal of love, jealousy and betrayal, the piece is set in the form of a Renaissance dance called the pavane. Limón distills the legend of Othello into a taut, one-act human drama. Featuring the noble Othello (called “The Moor”), the innocent Desdemona (called “The Moor’s Wife”), the treacherous Iago (called “His Friend”), and his sensuous spouse Emilia (called “The Friend’s Wife”), Emilia unwittingly provides the evidence with which Iago goads Othello to tragedy. Set to the music of Henry Purcell, their various passions smolder, erupt, and move them towards the inevitable conclusion, ironically contrasting propriety and violence up to the disastrous final moment. Upon The Moor’s Pavane debut in 1949, audiences sat in stunned silence, overcome by its power.

Closing the Winter Performance is Val Caniparoli’s Lambarena, a joyous celebration of dance and an exhilarating integration of cultures. Lambarena is set to selections from an unusual score of the same name that combines traditional African rhythms with the melodies of Johann Sebastian Bach. The score, an homage to Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer, unites the two integral elements that formed Schweitzer’s “sound world” — the music of Bach and the native melodies and rhythms of his adopted homeland, Gabon. Schweitzer is well known for his interpretation of Bach’s music and also for his work establishing a hospital and dedicating his life to service as a mission doctor in Lambarena in the province of Gabon, Africa.

“It would have been obvious to do classical steps with the Bach and ethnic movement with the African,” said Caniparoli. “But the score is a marriage of these two kinds of music, and I wanted the choreography to be the same thing. I wanted to show that you can do either kind of movement to both kinds of music. It’s very much a ballet, and it’s my own vocabulary, but it’s influenced by African movement.” Striving to keep the style as accurate as possible, Caniparoli consulted with African dance specialists Zakariya Sao Diouf and Naomi Gedo Johnson-Washington to help him blend African dance with ballet.

Spring Performance
The season will conclude with the Spring Performance May 6-9, 2010 at the Lyric Theatre with the gypsy gaiety of the Donizetti Pas de Deux — the work of Todd Bolender featuring the music of Gaetano Donizetti. Bolender’s full ballet was first staged in 1967 on the guest artists appearing with the State Opera and Ballet Company in Frankfurt, Germany, and the pas de deux has since been performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and in 1991, by the Kansas City Ballet. The music for the full work is a compilation of operatic themes including Donizetti’s La Favorita.

Lark Ascending, choreographed by Bruce Marks and set to the score of Ralph Vaughn Williams’ The Lark Ascending, returns to the Lyric stage. Last performed in Spring 2007, this ballet had audiences spell-bound. It is a metaphor for the struggle to achieve, to create, to triumph by reaching one’s potential. Bruce Marks said, “Lark is about the journey of life, that eternal fight against gravity. Each time I see the lark ascend I know why we dance.” Vaughan Williams based the score on English poet George Meredith’s poem by the same name and included this portion of the text with his published work:

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instills,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup,
And he the wine which overflows
To lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

—George Meredith (1828–1909)

Closing the season is the delightful crowd pleaser from George Balanchine, Who Cares? In 1937, George Gershwin asked Balanchine to come to Hollywood to work with him on Samuel Goldwyn’s Follies. Tragically, Gershwin was felled by a brain tumor before he completed the ballet music for the film. Thirty-three years later, Balanchine choreographed Who Cares? to 16 songs Gershwin composed between 1924 and 1931, including “Strike Up the Band,” “Sweet and Low Down,” “Somebody Loves Me,” “Bidin’ My Time,” “’S Wonderful,” “That Certain Feeling,” “Do Do Do,” “Lady Be Good,” “The Man I Love,” “Build a Stairway to Paradise,” “Embraceable You,” “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” “Who Cares?,” “My One and Only,” “Liza,” and “I Got Rhythm.” Hershy Kay’s orchestrations draw extensively on Gershwin’s own piano arrangements of his songs. Balanchine used the songs not to evoke any particular era but as a way to portray an exuberance that is both broadly American and charged with the distinctive energy of Manhattan.

Sponsors
Kansas City Ballet’s 52nd season is supported by the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation, the Hallmark Corporation Foundation, the Kansas City Ballet Guild, and the Missouri Arts Council—a state agency.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

SEASON SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION
To make ballet affordable for everyone, the Series Subscription Package includes major savings and patron benefits for the Fall, Winter, and Spring Shows including: ticket discounts, savings on single ticket prices, priority seating, free ticket exchange and the chance to purchase discounted tickets for The Nutcracker before they go on sale to the general public. Subscribers save up to 33% off individual show tickets. Parents, note this great opportunity to introduce the arts to your children: patrons under 21 can purchase season tickets for half price with an adult subscription order. Season tickets range in price from $60 to $180. A Lyric Theatre facility charge will be added to all Ballet subscription packages. For ticket information, please call Kansas City Ballet ticket box office at 816.931.2232 or visit our website at www.kcballet.org.

STUDENT AND SENIOR DISCOUNTS
Students and Seniors who arrive at the Lyric box office one to two hours prior to Fall, Winter or Spring Repertory Programs, may purchase any available seat for just $12 with a valid I.D. Rush prices are
not valid at any of The Nutcracker performances.

BARRE:  Kansas City Ballet’s Young Friends Group
Kansas City Ballet BARRE is a subscription group for ballet enthusiasts, ages 21-40.  They invite you to share a dynamic season with other young professionals from the community who support the arts.  The BARRE motto: “Art you can party with,” truly describes what they are all about.  Kansas City Ballet BARRE members enjoy a Friday night season ticket that includes pre-show happy hours, a dance party, discounted Nutcracker tickets, backstage tours, meeting the dancers and mingling with other members at special events — all while supporting Kansas City Ballet.  This group is setting its schedule for 2009-2010 and will release it later this summer.  For more information, please contact Karen at 816.931.2232 ext.1304, email barre@kcballet.org, or visit the website at www.kcbbarre.org.

 Kansas City Ballet
2009-2010 Calendar of Events

Fall Program
October 15-18, 2009 | Lyric Theatre
Featuring the Kansas City Symphony

Frescoes                                 Choreographed by: A. Saint-Léon

(From The Little                     Music by: Cesare Pugni
Humpbacked Horse)

World Premiere                     Choreographed by: Jessica Lang

Carmen                                   Choreographed by: William Whitener
Music by: Rodion Shchedrin after Georges Bizet

The Nutcracker
December 16-27, 2009 | Music Hall
Featuring the Kansas City Ballet Orchestra

Choreographed by: Todd Bolender
Music by: Peter I. Tchaikovsky

Winter Program
February 25-28, 2010 | Lyric Theatre

Piano Concerto #2                 Choreographed by: Robert Hill, Music by: Lowell Liebermann

The Moor’s Pavane               Choreographed by: José Limón, Music by: Henry Purcell

Lambarena                             Choreographed by: Val Caniparoli, Music by: Bach and traditional African rhythms

Spring Program
May 6-9, 2010 | Lyric Theatre
Featuring the Kansas City Symphony

Donizetti Pas de Deux           Choreographed by: Todd Bolender, Music by: Gaetano Donizetti

Lark Ascending                      Choreographed by: Bruce Marks, Music by: Ralph Vaughn Williams

Who Cares?                            Choreographed by: George Balanchine, Music by: George and Ira Gershwin

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