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Upcoming Events:
Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
Previous Events:
Merce Cunningham Dance Company | Compaņia Flamenco José Porcel
Royal Winnipeg Ballet | Lar Lubovitch Dance Company
Russian National Ballet Theatre | Batsheva Dance Company | Limón Dance Company
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Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
Onegin
Friday April 24, Saturday April 25—8:00 p.m.
 
$65, $52, $42, $33
“Boris Eifman doesn’t just choreograph ballets, he creates dynamic, theatrical, visionary works that delve into characters’ lives in the most exiting, probing, titillating and wondrous ways.” --Los Angeles Times
 Performance Preview | Join us in Studio 4 in the basement of Northrop, 7:15 - 7:45 pm, where Northrop Director Ben Johnson will interview Artistic Director Boris Eifman.
Eifman Ballet, based in St. Petersburg, has revolutionized the concept of Russian classical dance—with its rigor, purity and exquisite line—by fusing those traditions with expressive modern investigations of narrative and character.
Fast on the heels of his Red Giselle, Russian Hamlet and Anna Karenina performed in previous Northrop engagements, the prolific Boris Eifman has now turned his choreographic attention to another work of literature: Pushkin’s 19th-century novel of love, morality and loyalty, Onegin, which Tchaikovsky also scored as an opera.
In the tale a jaded aristocrat comes to regret his spurning of a lovelorn girl, which Eifman explores in his new ballet with psychological acuity and emotional drama.
Sumptuous costumes, magical staging and atmospheric lighting generate a theatrical spectacle in which the corps de ballet ebb and swirl with dramatic intensity, while the soloists embody their characters with artistic integrity and emotional truth.
A singular company, the Eifman Ballet speaks the language of Russian ballet, but with a contemporary inflection all its own. In Onegin, Eifman transforms another classic with an expressive power unique to dance and his original vision.
Past performances at Northrop: 2000, 2002, 2007
Company Website
 Funding provided in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
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Previous Events
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Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Ocean
September 11-13
Rainbow Quarry, Waite Park, near St. Cloud, Minnesota
(an hour northwest of Minneapolis)
“Inspired by the writings of James Joyce, ‘Ocean’ is a work of spiritual elation and refined eroticism, incipient narratives, historical echoes, and glowing classical beauty.”
—Lynn Garafola, Dance Magazine.
“Ocean is a work dance lovers might long to see often, for this piece for 14 dancers is a gorgeous spectacle, conceptually complex yet sensuously gratifying . . . . Like the sea itself, Ocean teems with life. It is a vision of creation constantly reshaping itself into ever more wondrous forms.” —The New York Times
Merce Cunningham: Talking Dance
Sunday, September 7, 2 pm
Free tickets available at the Hennepin Lobby desk from 1 pm
McGuire Theater
Legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham joins friend/patron/dancer Sage Cowles
for a conversation about his relationship with the Walker during his 50-year career as
a dance-maker. Stories about innovative artistic collaborations for which Cunningham
is known set the stage for a discussion about one his most ambitious works just days
before it is performed. This talk is an exciting opportunity to hear about the upcoming
performance of Ocean directly from its creator.
This lecture is made possible by generous support from Aaron and Carol Mack. The
Gertrude Lippincott Talking Dance Series is made possible by Judith Brin Ingber.
Experience Merce Cunningham and John Cage's monumental Ocean like never before--on the floor of Rainbow granite quarry 100 feet below the earth's surface. This once-in-a-lifetime production of Cunningham's most ambitious work, produced in such an audacious and breathtaking manner, involves not just the full 14-member Cunningham company, but an electronic score by David Tudor, and Andrew Culver's orchestral score inspired by John Cage, performed by 150 classical instrumentalists from the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra, along with other guest players from across the state of Minnesota who will encircle the audience at the bottom of the quarry.
Acclaimed filmmaker and longtime Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas will stage a five-camera shoot of the entire production which will become a living record of this stunning work.
Recognized as among the most artful and physically fluent dancers in the world, Cunningham's dancers embody his exquisite abstractions and choreographic inventions with a virtuosic elasticity, fluidity and precision. Marsha Skinner took her inspiration for the lighting from Moby Dick and for the costumes from Homer's "wine-dark sea."
People who don't drive on their own can take chartered busses from the Walker Art Center to Rainbow Quarry. The performance begins before people step off the busses that descend the winding roads leading from the surface to the bottom of the quarry bowl. There, they will emerge not into a theater but an environment. A stage, circular seating, and scenic design above the stage are being built for this production, along with lighting trusses, concessions, and bathrooms. More information on bussing and dining options will be available soon.
Coproduced by the Walker Art Center and the Cunningham Dance Foundation, with the Benedicta Arts Center of the College of Saint Benedict and Northrop Dance at the University of Minnesota. Major support is generously provided by Sage and John Cowles and the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpieces: Presenting program. Additional support provided by The Minneapolis Foundation: Goodale Arts Fund, Leni D. & David Moore, Jr. / The Moore Family Fund for the Arts, and the Dale Schatzlein and Emily Maltz Fund; HRK Foundation: Hayes Fund, Hynnek Fund, Art and Martha Kaemmer Fund, Pugsley Fund, and the Mary H. Rice Foundation; Russell Cowles; Josine Peters; Molly Davies; Michael J. Peterman and David A. Wilson; Penny Rand Winton; the Sewell Family Foundation; and Mavis and Robert Voigt.
Media partner Charter Communications. Special thanks to Martin Marietta Materials and the city of Waite Park.
This revival of Ocean is a co-commission of the Benedicta Arts Center of the College of Saint Benedict, St. Joseph, MN and Dance Umbrella. Major support is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and members of the Board of Directors of the Cunningham Dance Foundation. The filming of Ocean is made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support provided by The Ford Foundation and Save America’s Treasures, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service, Department of the Interior.
The Walker Art Center’s Dance Season is sponsored by Gray Plant Mooty.
Past Performances at Northorp: 1981, 1987, 1989, 1993, 2000, 2005
Funding provided in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
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Compañia Flamenco José Porcel
Alma Flamenco
Tuesday, October 7
“Tall and thin, executing his dance from within, [José Porcel] interpreted a paso de dos with delicacy and pride…. The public, on its feet, didn’t rip their shirts, but applauded to the point of exhaustion.” —Salvador Domiguez, Theatre Criticism
Born in Seville, José Porcel began performing the passionate folkloric dances of his Spanish ancestors at the age of 13. Today, the charismatic Porcel leads his own internationally renowned flamenco company, with a focus on unique choreographic interpretations of traditional flamenco styles.
In this rarely performed program, Alma Flamenco, Porcel and company present a range of flamenco styles with tremendous vivacity and nuance. The selections range from a taranto (a sensual duet of intertwinement) and a rondena (a colorful women’s section of light, harmony and rhythm), to the farruca and solea, joyous group works of choreographic complexity.
The evening also includes Porcel in two dynamic solos: the virile seguirilla and a largely improvised alegrias, with which he secures his connection with the audience through robust footwork and powerful personality.
Key to the company’s success is its respect for the flamenco trinity: song, music and dance. Throughout the program, the company’s spirited singers, guitarists and percussionist power the dancers’ bodies, minds and hearts.
Company Website: http://www.joseporcel.com/
Funding provided in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
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Royal Winnipeg Ballet
Carmina Burana, Concerto Barocco
Saturday, November 8
Program available here
Preformance Preview available here
“The company has never looked more resplendent, more assured, or more ravishing... a jewel box of sumptuous dancing...at every moment, the energy and youth radiating from the stage is palpable.” –Vancouver Sun
Founded in 1939, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet holds the triple distinction of having a royal title (bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II), enjoying its status as Canada’s premier ballet company, and being the longest continuously operating ballet company in North America. The company, currently under the artistic director of André Lewis, is nonetheless critically and popularly acclaimed for its adventurous programming, and its artistically versatile, technically astute and youthful dancers.
This program includes resident choreographer Mauricio Wainrot’s much-loved version of Carmina Burana, based on Carl Orff’s powerful and recognizable score. (Just the chorus “O Fortuna,” is one of the most-sampled pieces of music in history, and has been used in countless commercials and film scores.)
Inspired by medieval texts discovered in a monastery, the songs of Carmina Burana are alternately despairing and contemplative, uplifting and passionate as they express universal themes of the human condition. Wainrot’s singularly bold and fluid choreography embraces such themes with a lush lyricism. His Carmina Burana is widely noted as a cornucopia of movement richly set in Carlos Gallardo’s industrial tableaux of metal framing and translucent panels.
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet will complement Carmina Burana with Concerto Barocco. George Balanchine's precise, inventive choreography for ten women and one man is a vivid interpretation of Bach's ‘Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor'. The piece exemplifies the American classical style in its extraordinary poetry, pristine beauty and musicality.
Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet acknowledges, with appreciation and thanks, the support of the International Cultural Relations Division of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Province of Manitoba, Ministry of Culture, Heritage and Citizenship. Without this support this tour would not have been possible.
Past Performances at Northorp: 1969, 1971, 1972, 1976, 1977
Company Website: http://www.rwb.org/
Funding provided in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
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Lar Lubovitch Dance Company
Concerto Six Twenty-Two
Jangle:
Four Hungarian Dances
Dvorak Serenade
Friday, December 5
Concerto Six Twenty- Two (30 min)
Intermission (15 min)
Jangle: Four Hungarian Dances (18 min)
Intermission (15 min)
Dvorak Serenade (24 min)
Program available here
“[The pieces] demonstrate Lubovitch’s musicality, plus his gift for creating clever steps and filling the stage with patterns that swirl and reconfigure like an errant constellation viewed in speeded-up time.” —The Village Voice
Forty years ago, Lar Lubovitch started his own modern-dance company in New York City, and continues to enjoy popular and critical acclaim around the globe. While he’s watched many dance trends come and go, Lubovitch’s own lush aesthetic has remained constant, entrancing audiences with waves of passionate movement performed by dancers whose technical rigor complements their open-hearted expansiveness.
Recognized as one of the nation’s leading modern-dance choreographers, Lubovitch has also created choreography for jazz-dance companies, ballet troupes, Broadway shows and Olympic-medalist ice dancers. But it’s Lubovitch’s poetic modern-dance works, imbued with his singular musicality that audiences have enjoyed for decades.
Choreographed in 1986 by Lubovitch, Concerto Six Twenty-Two will exhilarate audiences with an inventive portrayal of male dance duets, combining formality with playfulness and sophistication with verve. “Repeatedly, the new choreography produces new steps, new movement, new patterns, new twists on highly sophisticated formal structures -- and all with a vibrantly alive human passion that emanates from the dancers at every moment. Why beat around the bush? The truth is that this is what dance is really about. " Kisselgoff, The New York Times.
The soft brightness and sepia tones of Dvorak Serenade result in the impassioned response of four movements from Dvorak’s melodic “Serenade in E Major.” The two lead dancers, Drew Jacoby and Scott Rink, guide a springy quartet and a corps of six dancers who swirl around in unexpected patterns serving as a shifting tidal background. Working in unison, the ensemble displays various types of bodies and varieties of attack, turning the work into a humanistic statement.
Lubovitch’s new piece titled Jangle: Four Hungarian Dances features the company costumed in casual street wear reacting to folk-tinged pieces by Bartok. Ranging from twirling figures with upheld arms to wild flights and unconventional lifts, the robust piece is surely on its way as another masterwork by Lar Lubovitch.
Past Performances at Northrop: 1977, 1983
Company Website: http://www.lubovitch.org/
 
Funding provided in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
This presentation is supported by the Performing Arts Fund, a program of Arts Midwest funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, with additional contributions from Minnesota State Arts Board, General Mills Foundation, and Land O’Lakes Foundation. |
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Russian National Ballet Theatre
Sleeping Beauty
Friday January 30
Saturday January 31
“Joyful! A corps de ballet of beauty and style, led by stylish and gifted principals.”—Moscow Daily
 Performance Preview | Join us in Studio 4 in the basement of Northrop, 7:15 - 7:45 pm, where Northrop Director Ben Johnson will interview Yuri Vetrov, Chief Choreographer for the Russian National Ballet Theatre.
Performance Length: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Act 1: 1 hour, 5 minutes
Intermission: 20 minutes
Acts 2 and 3: 58 minutes
Founded in Moscow during Perestroika in the late 1980s, the Russian National Ballet is a vibrant company dedicated to the timeless traditions of classical Russian ballet and the invigoration of dance as an art form in Russia. Since the appointment of Sergei Radchenko, a legendary soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet, as artistic director in 1994, the Russian National Ballet has renewed its focus on upholding the grand, national tradition of the major Russian ballet works.
For this engagement, the Russian National Ballet’s first in Minneapolis, the 50-member troupe performs Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty to Tchaikovsky’s score. A full-length ballet in three acts based on Charles Perrault’s well-known fairy tale, The Sleeping Beauty was the crowning jewel of Petipa’s illustrious career and is often considered one of the finest achievements in classical ballet.
A spectacular yet refined blend of traditional mime, expressive pas d’action and rigorous divertissements, the extraordinary choreography takes place within a lavish theatrical setting. Kings and queens, villains and fairies, a beautiful princess and a charming prince combine with magical stage effects and courtly splendor in perfect evening of ballet.
Company Website: http://www.sara-artists.com/RNBT/russian_nat_ballet_eng.htm
Funding provided in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
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Batsheva Dance Company
Shalosh (Three)
Wednesday, February 18
Co-presented with Walker Art Center
Presented in association with
David Eden Productions, Ltd. and H-Art Management.
Run Time: 70 mins
“[In] the mercurial, shape-shifting world of Ohad Naharin’s Batsheva Dance Company, dancers inhabit a vacillating physicality that takes them from human, to dancer, to animal, to machine, all in one phrase…. and it is genius.” Countercritic.com
Batsheva Dance Company returns to Northrop with artistic director Ohad Naharin’s masterwork, “Shalosh” (Three). Hailed as raw and elegant, violent and tender, the 70-minute work for 17 dancers includes three provocatively titled sections: Bellus (“beauty”), Humus (“earth”) and Secus (either “this” or “not this”), performed to music from Brian Eno and the Beach Boys to Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
Founded in 1964 by the Baroness Batsheva De Rothschild and Martha Graham, the Tel Aviv-based company has flourished under Naharin’s direction. Naharin trains his dancers in his own rigorous physical method called Gaga, a movement language designed to free the body while making it flexible, strong and self-aware.
Whether hurtling through space, assuming a precarious balance or elastically sculpturing their bodies, the dancers remain exquisitely attuned to one another, resulting in a breathtaking sensuality and emotional power. Naharin’s artistic integrity and innovation have earned Batsheva an accolade-wreathed reputation.
One of most riveting and sought-after dance companies in the world, Batsheva presents works of exquisitely rendered complexity, and the sublime Three is a work to linger over.
Contains partial nudity.
Watch a preview of Three
Past performances at Northrop: 1995, 2004
Company Website: http://www.batsheva.co.il/
This activity is made possible in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature.
Funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Additional funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and MetLife Foundation.
Support for this performance of Shalosh (Three) is provided by Leni and David Moore, Jr. / The Moore Family Fund for the Arts of The Minneapolis Foundation. The Walker Art Center's Dance Season is sponsored by Gray Plant Mooty.
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Limón Dance Company
Into My Heart's House, The Traitor, Missa Brevis
Thursday, March 19
“[‘Missa Brevis’] is a song of a strong and simple people, a song of thanksgiving for deliverance from the unspeakable horrors of war. Its dances express a deep awareness of the wonder of life, and the transcendent joy at its resumption…. Here the movement seems to spring directly from the heart.” -Dance Magazine
 Like the arch-betrayer Judas Iscariot, the protagonist in the dance drama, The Traitor (1954), symbolizes all those tormented men who, loving too much, must hate; these men who to our own day must turn against their loyalties, friends and fatherlands, and in some fearful cataclysm of the spirit, betray them to the enemy. Against a musical score of dissonant violence, passion and tenderness, the tragedy of Judas is portrayed as if it were taking place in our time.
Into My Heart’s House by Clay Taliaferro, former principal dancer and assistant artistic director with the Limón Dance Company, was commissioned to celebrate Limón’s 100th birthday, and was inspired by Limón’s love for the music of J.S. Bach. Taliaferro has had extensive involvement with American dance, earning an international reputation as an award-winning performer, teacher, and choreographer.
In 1958, Mexican-born choreographer José Limón created his masterpiece Missa Brevis, in response to war and the indomitable spirit of humanity. Limón and his fledgling company had just toured Poland, where against a background of war-ravaged cities they discovered people whose optimism and willingness to rebuild were profoundly inspiring. In honor of the people’s “heroic serenity,” as Limón wrote, he created Missa Brevis, a communal hymn against war and in celebration of the human spirit.
Set to Zoltan Kodaly’s magnificent Missa Brevis in Tempore Belli (for organ and choir), blends Limón’s expressive modern-dance idiom with folk-dance patterns and Christian iconography rendered through gesture. In this dance mass of affirmation and rebirth, communities cluster and circle in fear and hope, while single dancers burst forth in solos of anguish, passion and spiritual uplift.
Witness not only a part of dance’s artistic heritage created anew, but a timeless work of perseverance and faith. For this performance, students from the University of Minnesota’s Dance Department will join the 12-member Limón Dance Company. The Oratorio Society of Minnesota will perform Kodaly’s score.
The Oratorio Society of Minnesota is a 60-voice choral ensemble based in the Twin Cities. Since its inception in 1980, the Oratorio Society of  Minnesota has been delighting audiences with performances of the great works of choral literature Society members are of all ages and from all walks of lifeand all have considerable choral singing experience. The 2008-09 season is the first under new Artistic Director, Matthew Mehaffey, and will feature music from five centuries of choral literature. For more information please visit http://oratorio.org.
Past performance at Northrop: 1976
Company Website: http://www.limon.org
Funding provided in part by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and private funders.
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