The Colorado Ballet will again present 54 performances in 2008-09, but the breakdown of programs will be slightly different than this season and it will appear for the first time at the University of Denver’s Newman Center for the Performing Arts.
The company will offer performances Sept. 12-14 of a three-work repertory program in the Newman Center’s Gates Concert Hall, which seats 977 people compared to 2,268 at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, its principal venue.
Its program there will consist of revivals of two works the ballet has presented earlier — Clark Tippet’s “Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1” and Jessica Lang’s “From Foreign Lands and People” — as well as its first performance of Peter Anastos’ comedic “Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet.”
“We love doing the repertory at the Ellie, and we’ll keep doing that,” said Artistic Director Gil Boggs. “But for the pieces we have in our repertoire, to be able to bring those back and present them in a different setting should be exciting for us.”
The Newman Center program will take the place of the company’s semi-annual presentation of Michael Pink’s “Dracula,” which will be on hiatus. Boggs does not know when it will return.
“I haven’t made a decision on that,” he said. “I just thought that we did need to give it a rest. For me, it’s important to do theatrical pieces like that, but, also, I want to build our repertoire programs.
“They’re some of our most exciting evenings of dance and not the most well attended. So I just want to get them out there a little bit more, so people really get a feel for what those evenings are like.”
The addition of a second repertory program means that company will be doing one less story ballet in 2008-09 than it has in recent seasons.
The ballet’s second repertory program will open March 7, 2009, and will feature world premieres by Amy Seiwert, a dancer with Smuin Ballet, and Edwaard Liang, a chorographer who had a piece performed by Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company at last summer’s Vail International Dancer Festival.
Also on the program will be the company debut of Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room,” which was first presented in 1986.
“It’s just such a high-energy ballet,” said Boggs, a former principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre in New York City. “It’s one of my favorites. I danced it many, many times. It’s stunning.”
Another highlight of the season will the revival of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which the company debuted in 1997 when Christopher Wheeldon, now one of the world’s most sought-after ballet choreographers, was still emerging.
Eight performances of the piece, which Wheeldon revised for a 2002 revival, will open Feb. 28, 2009.
“It’s family-friendly,” Boggs said. “Obviously, when putting a season together, I wanted to appeal everybody.”
Rounding out the season will be “Swan Lake,” running Oct. 11 through Oct. 26, and the annual return of “The Nutcracker.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
