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Dancing under the stars in Grand Park, Los Angeles Ballet performed George Balanchine's Agon and Rubies, both to the music of Igor Stravinsky, on July 6th in its first partnership with The Music Center. Home / News / New Item Over 3,500 Attend LAB's Performance in Grand Park July 1, 2013 Los Angeles Magazine Dancing under the stars in Grand Park, Los Angeles Ballet performed George Balanchine's Agon and Rubies, both to the music of Igor Stravinsky, on July 6th in its first partnership with The Music Center. The free performance was part of The Music Center's LA's Rite: Stravinsky, Innovation and Dance. An enthusiastic audience of more than 3,500 were in attendance.

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Season 2006-2007 George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine George Balanchine Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Christensen and Neary / Tchaikovsky Previous Gallery All photos by Reed Hutchinson Click on image for a fullscreen presentation. Next Gallery

Los Angeles Ballet Artistic Directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary will tour its acclaimed rendition of the beloved classic The Nutcracker to five venues for the very first time. Home / News / New Item The Nutcracker in its Seventh Season at Five Venues November 1, 2012 LAB Public Relations Los Angeles Ballet Takes The Nutcraker to Five Venus to Launch its Seventh Season (Los Angeles, CA) Los Angeles Ballet [LAB] Artistic Directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary will tour its acclaimed rendition of the beloved classic The Nutcracker to five venues for the very first time. Each weekend in December will feature evening and matinee performances at a different location, including the Alex Theatre, Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, Royce Hall (UCLA), Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach and Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge. “Seven years ago, The Nutcracker served as LAB’s introduction to the City of Los Angeles, and as the years have gone by it continues to produce new fans of all ages to the world of ballet,” said Christensen. “With this ambitious expansion to five venues, LAB will have the opportunity to reach new audiences and give them a chance to participate in what has become a holiday tradition.” Added Neary, “The Nutcracker is such a great showcase for our principal dancers Allynne Noelle and Allyssa Bross.” An original production choreographed by Christensen and Neary set to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s illustrious score, The Nutcracker will see principal dancers Allynne Noelle and Allyssa Bross reprise their role as Marie at alternating performances, as well as principal dancers Christopher Revels and Kenta Shimizu as The Prince. Featuring sets with Los Angeles flair by LA designer Catherine Kanner and costumes originally designed by Mikael Melbye, The Nutcracker has become a staple for the city of Los Angeles, and LAB is excited to be able to bring this endearing ballet to broader audiences and new venues. DOWNLOAD PDF

Los Angeles Ballet presents a company of outstanding dancers from local communities and around the world. LAB dance artists master classical as well as contemporary techniques. David Renaud Hometown Schools Companies Albany-Berkshire Ballet, Eglevsky Ballet, Columbia City Ballet Los Angeles Ballet

Thordal Christensen choreographed a Romeo and Juliet pas de deux for SYTYCD competitors Melissa Sandvig and Ade Obayomi that aired on July 1st, 2009. Home / News / New Item Thordal Christensen, Los Angeles Ballet's Co-Artistic Director, Makes His Choreographic Debut on SYTYCD July 1, 2009 Company News from the Staff at LAB Thordal Christensen choreographed a Romeo and Juliet pas de deux for SYTYCD competitors Melissa Sandvig and Ade Obayomi that aired on July 1st, 2009. This marked the first time classical ballet was introduced as a component of the competition.

Los Angeles Ballet photo gallery presents a complete suite of season performance photos beginning with LAB’s inaugural season in 2005. Los Angeles Ballet performance photographer: Reed Hutchinson Media Gallery / 2019/2020 Photo Gallery / 2019/2020 Photo Gallery The Nutcracker Balanchine Black & White

Los Angeles Ballet's diverse program forms a robust whole. It's hard enough for dancers trained in different styles of ballet — sometimes in different countries — to form a unified ensemble. Home / News / New Item The new company's diverse dancers form a robust whole in a program of Balanchine and Bournonville. March 17, 2007 Los Angeles Times by Lewis Segal Los Angeles Ballet's diverse program forms a robust whole. It's hard enough for dancers trained in different styles of ballet — sometimes in different countries — to form a unified ensemble. It's harder still to display that unity in the distinctive dance languages of two choreographic masters. Born just four months ago, Los Angeles Ballet passed that test in its first repertory program Thursday at UCLA's Freud Playhouse — maybe not perfectly, maybe not without a pervasive sense of effort, but splendidly enough to make three challenging pieces come alive for a large, enthusiastic audience. Classical Balanchine, contemporary Balanchine and buoyant, Romantic Bournonville all received scrupulous performances in stagings by company artistic directors Colleen Neary (a Balanchine specialist) and Thordal Christensen (an alumnus of Bournonville's Royal Danish Ballet). Whether or not it can survive in our traditionally inhospitable dance landscape, their Los Angeles Ballet is the real thing, a force for many kinds of excellence that deserves the community's attention and support. One could wish that as the company moves from Westwood to Redondo Beach and then to Glendale this month, the dancers might relax into their roles and enjoy their dancing as much as the audience does. It's not a matter of smiles (of which there were plenty Thursday) but of the sense of interpretive freedom within the choreography that only Melissa Barak and a very few others showed opening night. Barak's individual and often spontaneous attacks came in Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco," which always seems to be a showcase for conservative classical purity until you look more closely and see the innovative body-foldings, partnering experiments and other creative wonders that Balanchine devised in 1941 to music by Bach. Mirroring Barak in the outer sections and becoming the work's focus in the central duet, Corina Gill gave a rapt, secure performance, partnered with great nobility by Oleg Gorboulev. Gill and Gorboulev also brought their remarkable ability to deliver a string of choreographic fireworks as one brilliantly sustained phrase to Balanchine's "Agon," an inspired 1957 game of neoclassic one-upmanship played with and against Igor Stravinsky. All fire and ice, whimsical forays into off-balance balance and a modernistic milestone, the choreography can look a lot jauntier than it did Thursday, but Neary's deadpan staging did allow all the non sequiturs to take you by surprise. As with "Concerto Barocco," the company as a whole often managed the complex passages more artfully than the simplest steps, but Lauren Toole endowed both with a serene confidence in her technical control. Sergey Kheylik threw himself into his solo with complete abandon, but neatness definitely counted here, and his wild vivacity proved far more useful in the divertissements from Bournonville's "Napoli." With music by Helsted and Paulli, the celebratory "Napoli" pas de six and tarantella date from 1842, before classical bravura acquired the edge of aggression it gained, for better or worse, in Russia. If "Agon" is consummately spiky and "Concerto Barocco" supremely flowing, this quasi-Italianate showpiece is indomitably fluffy, marked by major shifts in tempo and pressure (to which the company needs greater attention) but always light and genial. On Thursday, exposed balances in extension sometimes proved shaky and terminations not always ideally clean. But it was fascinating to see what elements of Bournonville style attracted the individual soloists and dominated their performances. Guest Rainer Krenstetter of the Berlin Staatsballett had the sparkle, Masahiro Suehara the precision, Gill the sweetness and Toole the calm center. Kheylik, as always, brought invigorating energy to the party. The excerpt also displayed the talents of Peter Snow, Kelly Ann Sloan, Alexandra Blacker, Nancy Richer and Erin RiveraBrennand. Everyone looked yummy in Soren Frandsen's prismatic abstractions of folk costumes and behaved as if an L.A. company dancing a Danish interpretation of Italian folklore was, somehow, natural casting. Taped music accompanied all the pieces on the program. lewis.segal@latimes.com DOWNLOAD PDF

Five slender women in flesh-toned leotards emerge from shadows into powerful spotlights. They unpin their ballet buns. Long brown, black and blond hair cascades down. Home / News / New Item Sonya Tayeh Tells Her Dancers to Keep Their Hair Down. Why Is That So Radical? March 14, 2014 L.A. Weekly by Ann Haskins Five slender women in flesh-toned leotards emerge from shadows into powerful spotlights. They unpin their ballet buns. Long brown, black and blond hair cascades down. Leaning toward the audience, they sweep their hair over their faces; for most of the next 20 minutes, Los Angeles Ballet's classically trained ballerinas dance with their hair covering their faces during a dress rehearsal for Sonya Tayeh's Beneath One's Dignity, her fourth LAB commission. It's one of two world premieres and two company premieres in LAB's Quartet, onstage at Glendale's Alex Theater this Saturday and UCLA's Royce Hall next week. Tayeh first drew widespread attention for her ferocious combat-jazz choreography on television's So You Think You Can Dance, but she has been extending her artistic horizons since her first LAB commission enhanced her cred as a multifaceted choreographer. She relocated to New York City to choreograph Kung Fu, an off-Broadway musical bio about martial arts movie legend Bruce Lee, but returned to create Beneath One's Dignity for LAB.] Known for her own distinctive, often asymmetrical hair – sometimes shaved, sometimes punctuated with red and blue – Tayeh keeps her long, wavy dark mane pulled to one side, low-key for her, as she watches the dress rehearsal. When her dance ends, Tayeh bounds onto the stage. As she gives the dancers notes, her flannel shirt and combat boots contrast starkly with the women in their flesh-colored leotards and the quintet of men in diaphanous, long black skirts. During the ballet, the women don dresses in the same black see-through material, but at this moment the dresses lie crumpled around the stage, shed and kicked away by the women, with the men repeatedly retrieving and throwing the dresses back at the women, who continue to furiously kick the dresses away. In the final moments, they finally move their hair away from their faces. After notes, in an interview, Tayeh talks about the hair and the dresses as props. “My starting point was in the title; acts or behaviors I've done, sometimes repeatedly, that I felt uncomfortable about or even shame, things beneath my dignity, but that I found myself repeating and the shields I built up to hide behind to protect myself and keep going,” Tayeh explains. “I wanted the women to start out like newborns but then put on the dress, develop the emotions and the realization of something demeaning, something beneath their dignity. The hair is like a protective mask – they want to go without it but retreat behind the hair for protection.” Tayeh says she knew working with their hair in their face was asking a lot of the dancers. “Dancing blind” was LAB principal dancer Alyssa Bross' description.”But we have come to trust Sonya,” Bross adds. “Many ballet choreographers come in, tell us the steps, turn on the music and we dance. Sonya certainly has a direction in mind, but she wants feedback. She asks us to try things and then asks what we need to be comfortable to take it further. Finding that comfort level with her allows us to find the forceful movement and even more powerful emotional levels she wants from our dancing.” The hair made unison dancing particularly difficult. “Working with the music helped, and Sonya developed breathing cues, so we were listening to each other rather than relying on visual cues,” Bross explains. The next night at the premiere, the audience cheers. Tayeh is pleased. “I had a tear in my eye,” she admits. “The dancers captured my struggle and I feel I can make my own positive changes.” Like her dancers, kicking the dress away. READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 2015 Balanchine / Tchaikovsky Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani with Kate Highstrete and Laura Chachich LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Christopher Revels LAB Ensemble Previous Gallery All photos by Reed Hutchinson Click on image for a fullscreen presentation. Next Gallery

LAB is excited to announce that in December of 2014 it will present four performances of The Nutcracker at its newest venue - the prestigious Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Home / News / New Item LAB to Perform The Nutcracker at Dolby Theatre June 1, 2014 Company News from the Staff at LAB LAB is excited to announce that in December of 2014 it will present four performances of The Nutcracker at its newest venue - the prestigious Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The addition of this venue continues LAB’s mission to offer world-class professional ballet to greater LA.

A delightful party in honor of Los Angeles Ballet was held at the historic South Pasadena home of Paige and Scott Hornbacher, generously co-hosted by Ariel and Jeff Carpenter. Home / News / New Item Event for LAB with the Cast of “MAD MEN” May 1, 2009 Company News from the Staff at LAB A delightful party in honor of Los Angeles Ballet was held at the historic South Pasadena home of Paige and Scott Hornbacher, generously co-hosted by Ariel and Jeff Carpenter.