April 26-27, 2024

P7 – INSPIRATIONS

Featuring Wheeldon’s The American, Lang’s Lyric Pieces, and Ashton’s Sinfonietta

[Sinfonietta] The increased degree of physicality deepens the impact, and makes it much more interesting – essentially taking Monotones to another level. And the cast was wonderful.

Jerry Hochman

Critcal Dance

Program Seven begins with Tony Award winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s The American. Created to Dvořák’s wondrous string quartet, both score and choreography bring to life the tranquility and open sky of America’s Great Plains. Continuing on the creative relationship between acclaimed choreographer Jessica Lang and The Sarasota Ballet, the Company Premiere of Lyric Pieces presents an engaging and visually dynamic creation that wonderfully and artfully animates its dancers. Closing the 2023 – 2024 Season will be Sir Frederick Ashton’s Sinfonietta, an exciting and fiendishly difficult abstract work. A ballet in three parts, describing its second movement, dance critic Alastair Macaulay wrote for The New York Times that it was “remote, lunar, a brilliantly formal ceremony in white picked out against surrounding darkness.”

Repertoire will include:

The American
Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon
Music by Antonín Dvořák

Lyric Pieces
Choreography by Jessica Lang
Music by Edvard Grieg

Sinfonietta
Choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton
Music by Malcolm Williamson