Press Release: Scottish Ballet announces 2017/18 Season programme

[Jan McNulty]

SCOTTISH BALLET UNVEILS 2017/18 SEASON PROGRAMME

 

Scottish Ballet’s 2017/18 Season features a vibrant and diverse programme including an innovative Digital Season, an ambitious American tour as well as performances in London, a World Premiere and a Stravinsky double bill.

 

 

Christopher Hampson, Scottish Ballet CEO / Artistic Director:

 

“The diversity of the repertoire presented in our upcoming 2017/18 Season is testament to the creative vitality that lies at the heart of Scottish Ballet. I am excited to share a world first, an entirely digital season of dance, taking place in Spring 2017. This ground-breaking inaugural Digital Season will explore where dance lives in a digital world through a series of innovative creative projects. For the 2017/18 Season, I am proud to present our award-winning productions internationally alongside works created by some of the world’s greatest dance makers such as Christopher Bruce, Crystal Pite, Kenneth Macmillan and Peter Darrell.”

 

 

Watch the Season launch promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR6wEInsAR4

 

 

Digital

 

The new Season kicks off with Scottish Ballet’s inaugural Digital Season in Spring 2017, which aims to explore digital as a new way to present dance and features a series of pioneering projects. Scottish Ballet’s inaugural Digital Season – Under the Skin - will be unveiled in Spring 2017. It marks the first time a ballet company has curated a month-long programme of bespoke projects exclusively for a digital format.

 

 

Scotland

 

Dance International Glasgow

 

New Work by Uri Ivgi and Johan Greben

 

Tramway, Glasgow

21 & 22 April 2017

 

For its second appearance at Dance International Glasgow, Scottish Ballet will be performing a World Premiere at Tramway. The new work is a co-commission with Tramway and will be created by Ivgi & Greben, a Dutch and Israeli choreographic partnership that will push Scottish Ballet into new realms of movement and theatre.

 

 

Autumn Season 2017

 

Le Baiser de la Fée by Kenneth MacMillan & The Rite of Spring by Christopher Hampson

 

Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen & Inverness

October & November 2017

 

Scottish Ballet will mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Scottish born choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan with a recreation of his early narrative work Le Baiser de la Fée. Using Stravinsky’s score (itself a homage to Tchaikovsky) MacMillan reveals the darker depths of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ice Maiden. Le Baiser de la Fée was originally created in 1960 and has had only one revival since. Scottish Ballet will be working with the Benesh Notator, Diana Curry and designer Gary Harris to recreate the original production.

 

Paired with Le Baiser de la Fée, and in complete musical contrast, is Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Scottish Ballet’s own production by Artistic Director, Christopher Hampson, uses only three dancers to convey a present day story of two brothers destined for different paths to enlightenment. Hampson has created a version that is relevant to our time; his The Rite of Spring is a brutal and physical response to the Stravinsky score, an exploration of rivalry and betrayal.

 

 

Winter Season 2017/18

 

The Nutcracker by Peter Darrell

 

Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, Newcastle & Belfast

December 2017, January & February 2018

 

Christmas 2017 sees the return of Scottish Ballet’s much-loved production of The Nutcracker by Scottish Ballet founder and Artistic Director, Peter Darrell. This festive favourite was revived in 2014 after an absence from the repertoire of over twenty years. Audiences can once again share this dream-making production with families and friends, over forty years since it first premiered.

 

Crafted for Scotland by the Company’s founding Artistic Director, a famous story-teller and an incredible dance-maker, this Nutcracker is full of magical memories.  Lovingly recreated for audiences, the dancers of Scottish Ballet embrace Darrell’s classical writing to bring a timeless story of Clara and her Nutcracker doll. Scottish Ballet will once again welcome a very special cast of young, local dancers to the ranks of the Company's professionals for this inspiring production.

 

 

London

 

Emergence by Crystal Pite and MC 14/22 (Ceci est mon corps) by Angelin Preljocaj

 

Sadler’s Wells, London

7 – 10 June 2017

 

This exciting double bill was first performed by Scottish Ballet to great critical acclaim at Edinburgh International Festival in August 2015. Scottish Ballet will now bring this double bill of two radically different, but equally powerful works to Sadler’s Wells in June. Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Crystal Pite transforms the 36-strong corps de ballet into a swarming horde of insects for Emergence – a journey into a subterranean hive where classical ballet transforms into strange insect-like behaviour. Angelin Preljocaj’s rarely performed work MC 14/22 (Ceci est mon corps) is a hymn to the male body. Preljocaj evokes biblical imagery through the 12 male dancers who surrender to both tender care and wretched cruelty in this glorification of masculinity.

 

 

International

 

Scottish Ballet has become a regular visitor to the USA where the Company are known for their innovative productions. Scottish Ballet will embark on an ambitious American tour in Spring 2017, touring to Minneapolis, New York and California.

 

 

Minneapolis

 

Highland Fling by Matthew Bourne

 

Northrop Auditorium, Minneapolis

8 April 2017

 

Highland Fling is a ‘romantic wee ballet’ originally produced in 1994 by Olivier Award-winner Matthew Bourne. Presented exclusively by Scottish Ballet, Matthew Bourne’s Highland Fling is a wonderfully imaginative reworking of the classic romantic ballet La Sylphide with a wickedly wry Scotch twist.

Highland Fling follows the antics of James – a young Scot with sex and love and rock and roll on his mind. Recently married to his beloved Effie, his addiction to excess finds him in the fateful company of a beguiling gothic fairy. As his love for the strange and beautiful sylph becomes an obsession, he embarks on a fateful journey that takes him from the mean streets and nightclubs of Glasgow into a magical world beyond reality and reason.

 

 

New York

 

Sinfonietta Giocosa by Christopher Hampson, Motion of Displacement by Bryan Arias & Ten Poems by Christopher Bruce

 

Joyce Theater, New York

11 – 15 April 2017

 

For the Company’s New York debut, Christopher Hampson, CEO/Artistic Director brings a sharp-eyed snapshot of Scottish Ballet’s versatile and expressive dancers with works that all have a connection to the USA. 

 

Hampson's Sinfonietta Giocosa was originally created for Atlanta Ballet (2006). He was greatly inspired by the energy and attack of the American classical technique. It is a dynamic response to Bohuslav Martinů's joyous and rhythmically complex score, which was completed and premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1942.

 

New York native, Bryan Arias, created Motion of Displacement for Scottish Ballet in 2015. He delivers a contemporary exploration and response to his own mothers’ journey from her native land to America. Arias’ work uses the dancers’ bodies to show the time elapsing and the humanity of support in the form of linking and breaking of chains of movements. 

 

The last work has three distinctive voices; Christopher Bruce's unique choreographic language coupled with Richard Burton's impassioned reading of Dylan Thomas poetry. Both Burton and Thomas have strong and well-documented connections to New York. Ten Poems is a beautifully crafted work focusing on humanity, loss, war and peace, all told with Bruce's unique charm and reverence.

 

 

Los Angeles & Berkeley, California

 

A Streetcar Named Desire by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Nancy Meckler

 

Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley

10 – 12 May 2017

 

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles

19 – 21 May 2017

 

Scottish Ballet will bring its multi award-winning production of A Streetcar Named Desire to California for the first time in May 2017. Marking the 70th anniversary year of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play, 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. Scottish Ballet’s A Streetcar Named Desire was created in 2012 through collaboration with theatre and film director Nancy Meckler and international choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and is a powerful infusion of drama and dance.

 

 

 

[Jane S]

 

 

 

Le Baiser de la Fée by Kenneth MacMillan & The Rite of Spring by Christopher Hampson

 

Scottish Ballet will mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Scottish born choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan with a recreation of his early narrative work Le Baiser de la Fée. Using Stravinsky’s score (itself a homage to Tchaikovsky) MacMillan reveals the darker depths of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ice Maiden. Le Baiser de la Fée was originally created in 1960 and has had only one revival since. Scottish Ballet will be working with the Benesh Notator, Diana Curry and designer Gary Harris to recreate the original production.

 

 

Does this imply new decor or a recreation of the lovely Kenneth Rowell original, do you think?