Press Release: Scottish Ballet announces USA west coast tour of A Streetcar Named Desire in Spring 2017

[Jan McNulty]

SCOTTISH BALLET TO TAKE AWARD-WINNING PRODUCTION OF A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE TO WEST COAST OF AMERICA IN SPRING 2017

 

Scottish Ballet will return to the USA in May 2017 with its multi award-winning production of A Streetcar Named Desire, marking the 70th anniversary year of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

 

Scottish Ballet's A Streetcar Named Desire will receive its west coast premiere at the University of California, Berkeley before being performed at The Music Center in Los Angeles. This marks Scottish Ballet’s first performance on the west coast of America since 2011 and comes after the Company’s massively successful USA tour of A Streetcar Named Desire in Spring 2015, which included performances in Chicago, Washington DC, Charleston, San Antonio, Houston and Pittsburgh.

 

Scottish Ballet CEO / Artistic Director Christopher Hampson:

“We are thrilled to bring our production of A Streetcar Named Desire back to America in Spring 2017 and it makes it extra special that we are returning to perform it in its 70th anniversary year. We received such a warm response from American audiences on our previous USA tours in 2013 and 2015 and we hope Californian audiences will enjoy our interpretation of this evocative and powerful story. We are proud to continue to fly the flag culturally for Scotland overseas and to help expand Scottish Ballet’s reputation as one of the world’s most innovative dance companies.”

 

This vibrant take on the classic story was created for Scottish Ballet by choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and theatre and film director Nancy Meckler and received its world premiere in 2012. Set to a specially commissioned jazz-inspired score, A Streetcar Named Desire pushes the boundaries of narrative ballet by delivering a powerful infusion of drama and dance.

 

Scottish Ballet’s A Streetcar Named Desire was nominated for an Oliver Award for Best New Dance Production in 2013 and was awarded a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award (Best Classical Choreography) and a South Bank Award for Dance in 2013.

 

Credits:

Direction: Nancy Meckler

Choreography: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

Music and sound: Peter Salem

Set and costume design: Niki Turner

Lighting: Tim Mitchell

 

Reviews from Scottish Ballet’s previous A Streetcar Named Desire tours:

“ … (a) very grown-up piece of entertainment that does Williams’s 1947 masterpiece full justice, repeatedly tugging at the heart-strings even as it shreds the nerves.”

The Telegraph

“The result is everything you could want of Tennessee Williams. – florid, poetic, poisonously beautiful.”
The Evening Standard

“Persuasive, exhilarating, moving and ingenious, Streetcar is the latest feather in the cap of Scottish Ballet”

The Sunday Times  

“They almost had to hose down the audience at intermission of Scottish Ballet’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Harris Theater in Chicago on Thursday night. Erik Cavallari’s Stanley had just had make-up sex with Sophie Martin’s Stella, and choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s imaginative way with the erotic pas de deux had everyone hot and bothered.”

The Huffington Post

“As you’d expect from Williams’s play, fragility and brutality danced a dark, halting waltz throughout the evening. The reward of this ballet was that not only did we see it — we felt it, too.”

Washington Post

“In a brilliantly structured reimagining of the Tennessee Williams classic, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, aided by theater and film director Nancy Meckler, wasted not a moment or a step as she created empathy with Blanche (no easy task) and with the story's gay lovers (unseen in the play)…The Scottish Ballet dancers, making their Chicago debut, were wonderful.”

Chicago Tribune