Power of Performance (POP!) 2021/2022 Season > Power of Performance (POP!) Los Angeles Ballet’s Power of Performance (POP!) Since its debut in 2006, Los Angeles Ballet’s Power of Performance! (POP!) Outreach program has provided a minimum of 10% of tickets to all performances, free of charge—to Los Angeles County’s underserved communities. Contact: Rachel Malkenhorst (310) 477-7411 rmalkenhorst@losangelesballet.org ​ BOOK YOUR ORGANIZATION Book POP! for Your Organization Participating organizations include: Aviva Family and Children’s Services Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles Veteran Tickets Foundation Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD) WISE and Healthy Aging Hope Street Family Center (Dignity Health) Lula Washington Dance Theatre Everybody Dance! artworxLA Create Now Beit T’Shuvah Performing Arts Guild Alliance PRIORITY ACCESS 2022/2023 Season Los Angeles Ballet’s 2022/2023 Season will be announced in June 2022. The breathtaking Season includes contemporary masterworks, LAB Premieres including an LA Premiere of romantic splendor, plus LA’s holiday tradition The Nutcracker . Be first to access best pricing and pre-sale of the Season. I WANT PRIORITY ACCESS LAB OUTREACH PROGRAM A Chance to Dance (ACTD) ACTD is presented two Sundays each month during Los Angeles Ballet’s season at LAB Center. LAB dancers teach free ballet classes, alternative dance/fitness classes, and more! All ages are welcome. VIEW ACTD SCHEDULE

In-person Ticket Sales Group Sales Venues Acccessibility Gift Certificates Tax-Deductibe Donations Terms & Conditions of Sales In-house Policies Privacy Policy Our Commitment to You Please review our COVID-19 Ticketing Policy REVIEW POLICY 2021/2022 Season > Ticket Information > Group Sales Group Sales First Name Last Name Email Phone Number Address What Section of the House are you interested in? Section A – Center Orchestra Section B – Front Orchestra, Prime Balcony Section C – Main Orchestra, Balcony Circle Section D – Orchestra Ring, Balcony Center Section E – Balcony Side, Rear Balcony, Rear Orchestra Please leave any comments or questions that will allow us to better serve you. Number of Children Number of Adults SUBMIT Standard Ticket Prices Section A – $109 Section B – $81 Section C – $63 Section D – $50 Section E – $34 15+ Seat Discounts ​ Section A – 10% Off Section B,C,D,E – 20% Off 50+ Seat Discounts ​ Section A – 20% Off Section B,C,D,E – 25% Off The Nutcracker – Alex Theatre Saturday, December 4 – 6pm Sunday, December 5 – 2pm The Nutcracker – Redondo Beach PAC Saturday, December 11 – 12pm Saturday, December 11 – 5pm Sunday, December 12 – 5pm The Nutcracker – Royce Hall, UCLA Friday, December 17 – 8pm Saturday, December 18 – 12pm Saturday, December 18 – 5pm Sunday December 19 – 12pm Sunday December 19 – 5pm The Nutcracker – Dobly Theatre Los Angele Ballet Orchestra Thursday, December 23 – 8pm Friday, December 24 – 12pm Sunday, December 26 – 11am Sunday December 26 – 4pm Bloom – The Broad Stage Thursday, April 21 – 7:30pm Friday, April 22 – 7:30pm Sunday, December 12 – 5pm The Sleeping Beauty – Redondo Beach PAC Saturday, May 28 – 7:30pm The Sleeping Beauty – Royce Hall, UCLA Friday, June 3 – 7:30pm Saturday, June 4 – 2pm The Sleeping Beauty – Alex Theatre Saturday, June 11 – 7:30pm Select one of the following performances you are interested in: The Nutcracker Bloom The Sleeping Beauty Select a date 2021/2022 Season Schedule Please indicate preferred show time. House Seating & Discount Breakdown Please provide the following information and the Los Angeles Box Office will contact you to assist with your Group details. ​ Group Principal Contact DOWNLOAD ORDER FORM

Balanchine Casts a Spell March 13, 2017 Dancers who were new to every role gave the challenging three-part program by Los Angeles Ballet on Saturday the thrills of a high-wire act without a net. Would anyone fall? (Yes, once.) Would anyone succeed brilliantly? (Yes, more than once.) Emergency casting added another edge to the experience at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. An injury to principal dancer Allyssa Bross caused the company to fly in Lia Cirio to take on major roles in two ballets. A principal with Boston Ballet, Cirio not only displayed refined technique but an ability to give herself to the music that took you deeply into the choreography. Since all of the choreography was created by George Balanchine, the stakes were high indeed. It was a shrewd programming ploy to include on the same bill Balanchine’s 1956 “Divertimento No. 15” and his 1970 “Who Cares?” Though radically different in style, these plotless showpieces share structural similarities and, especially, a string of complex, effervescent women’s solos. “Divertimento” is danced to Mozart and seems to belong in an 18th-century royal court; “Who Cares?” is danced to Gershwin and seems to belong on a 20th-century Broadway stage. Cirio appeared perfectly at home in both environments — as did the regal Bianca Bulle and the lyrical Julia Cinquemani. A company premiere, “Divertimento” will need more performances to erase the sense of strain periodically evident on Saturday. But Madison McDonough brought ease and refinement to some exceptionally difficult steps in her variation. What’s more, the staging by company co-director Colleen Neary kept the fabled musicality of the ballet firmly in focus. Although the company has programmed “Who Cares?” before, the new cast and Neary’s staging enforced elegance as well as pizzazz. As the resident dreamboat wooing all the principal women, Tigran Sargsyan was clearly working through some of the intricate partnering issues, but eventually his remarkable generosity as a dancer came into view. He had a tough night: Along with Kenta Shimizu and Dustin True, he also danced strongly in “Divertimento” and “Prodigal Son.” True’s stellar breakthrough came earlier this season in “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” and on Saturday his cautious diligence occasionally yielded to moments where he again really inhabited the choreography and made it personal. As for Shimizu, he remained faultless as a cavalier in “Divertimento” (no surprise there) but displayed unexpected dramatic powers in the title role of “Prodigal Son.” Impeccably staged by Patricia Neary (Colleen Neary’s sister), this 1929 story ballet set to music by Prokofiev had a cohesion and surety on Saturday that made you relax and fall under its spell. Debut performances? Who could guess, when Shimizu claimed the role at full intensity? There’s a dimension of ironic comedy here that remains to be discovered — and perhaps Shimizu externalized the character’s pain too overtly in the final scene. But his interaction with the impossibly glamorous Elizabeth Claire Walker as the Siren overcame a minefield of technical hazards with no loss to his character’s helpless confusion or her over-the-top hauteur. The seductive, greedy Siren was always as much a living cliché as the stern but forgiving Father (Zheng Hua Li). But Balanchine used these stereotypes to define in the shortest possible time the prodigal’s all-too-human arc from rebellion to contrition. And the dancers exploited their opportunities skillfully. In the 1920s, the Russian ballet world considered Balanchine a radical, and “Prodigal Son” has plenty of evidence: experimental gymnastics, realistic pantomime, bizarre character dancing and plenty of sex. The academic classical vocabulary for which he’s celebrated can be found if you look for it, but a couple years shy of its 90th birthday, the work still looks newly minted — and now one of the great Los Angeles Ballet triumphs. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ Los Angeles Ballet’s ‘Balanchine — Master of the Dance’ When: 7:30 p.m. March 18 at Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach. Also 2 p.m. March 26 at Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive Tickets: $31-$99 Information: (310) 998-7782, www.losangelesballet.org Follow The Times’ arts team @culturemonster. ALSO Spring preview: What to see in dance, theater, art, classical and more Alvin Ailey translates MLK speeches into dance 'Runway' finalist’s costumes create character for Jessica Lang Dance Movement as bleak theater, with some terrific Pharrell music too Los Angeles Times by Lewis Segal READ AT SOURCE 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item

Los Angeles Ballet Featured in Dance Magazine - August 2010 Issue August 1, 2010 Chehon Wespi-Tschopp was an intense Hilarion, a villager also in love with Giselle. His prestissimo spins to his death at the hands of the Wilis were terrific. The company tours the greater LA area each season, performing at Glendale's Alex Theatre Performing Arts & Entertainment Center, Royce Hall at UCLA Live, the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, and-new this season-the Richard & Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach and the Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge. "It's important we establish [ourselves in] LA first, before we tour anywhere else," says Christensen. The Nutcracker, this season's festive opening ballet, is "very important to present around the holidays," says Neary. "Kids love it; the dancers love it, and so do we." Dance Magazine ​ 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item

‘The Nutcracker’ is a Triumph for Los Angeles Ballet December 12, 2011 Los Angeles Ballet stepped into its sixth season with a delightful holiday performance of The Nutcracker at The Alex Theatre in Glendale last weekend. LAB alternately charmed and thrilled its audience with dancing that conveyed emotional depth, and bravura displays that combined strength and grace. Act I, Scene One (hallway) features wonderfully expressive acting by Clara (Mia Katz) and her annoying brother Fritz (Aidan Merchel-Zoric). The charm continues into Scene Two (The Party) with engaging choreography and a stunning performance by the Cossack Doll (Chehon Wespi-Tschopp): ten consecutive turns (tour a la seconde) followed by a quadruple pirouette. And Scene Three is both playful and serious in its dispatch of the Mouse King. Act II, Scene One is a feast of superb performances that range from exquisite to vigorous. And the final scene when Clara awakens marks Mia Katz as a gifted actress as well as dancer. Like The Wizard of Oz would do in the 20th century, Tchaikovsky’s 19th century masterpiece celebrates the amazing worlds a young woman unleashes in her dreams. In The Wizard of Oz, the heroine Dorothy creates a world that enables her to work through relationship issues with the adults around her. In The Nutcracker, our heroine Clara is a bit more ambitious. She dreams of a romantic ideal. The scene opens just before the guests arrive at the Christmas Eve party at the Stalbaum Family’s festive home.Clara is being tormented by her brother Fritz, who attempts to wrestle her baby doll away from her. Later on, when the party is underway, we see Fritz and other boys waving toy guns and running through the crowd as Clara and the girls hug their dolls all the more tightly. And so we see, through a child’s eyes, society’s central problem: how to harness the male energy so that it protects fragile life rather than destroys it. Clara’s dear Uncle Drosselmeyer presents Clara with a life-sized Nutcracker, an example of male energy properly harnessed: the Nutcracker is able to crack the shell without destroying the nut. And was it just a coincidence that Fritz got knocked over in his presence when he persisted in teasing Clara? That night, Clara’s dream is that of an innocent young girl, not yet sailing into the storms of adolescence. So, her vision of men behaving badly is not a gang of wolves or even rats, but overgrown mice. Uncle Drossmeyer, personifying the civilizing tradition, summons The Nutcracker, symbolizing the young hero who must defend civilization anew. The Nutcracker dispatches the Mouse King; man’s better nature has triumphed over his baser one. As a result, Uncle Drossmeyer can now usher both Clara and her Nutcracker into a world where the delicate things—like snowflakes—can safely dance. A world where strength serves beauty and grace. The Nutcracker is a young girl’s wonderful dream of civilization as it might be. And for a few hours, Los Angeles Ballet made that dream a glorious reality. If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to become more culturally involved, put LAB on your list. Then you’ll have at least one resolution you’re likely to keep long after the pounds have returned. The Nutcracker plays at Royce Hall, UCLA on Saturday the 17th and Sunday the 18th, at 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 pm. Then it plays at the Redondo Beach performing Arts Center on Thursday the 22nd at 7:30 p.m., Friday the 23rd at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday the 24th at 1:00 p.m. Call the Box Office at 310-998-7782 or visit www.losangelesballet.org . BurbankNBeyond by Greg Simay 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item

Balanchine's Palm-Fringed Muse May 17, 2013 LOS ANGELES — Unlike certain 20th-century artists who found themselves miserable in Hollywood — F. Scott Fitzgerald comes to mind — George Balanchine was fond of the place in the 1930s. He loved the orange groves, Romanoff’s glamorous boîte and choreographing dances for movies. But after founding New York City Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein in 1948, the man who changed America’s dancescape became synonymous with the East Coast. Now, 30 years after his death, Mr. Balanchine is having another West Coast moment, through the prism of different ballet troupes. The Balanchine repertory is standard fare for the Los Angeles Ballet, founded in 2006 by the husband-and-wife team of Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen. Yet this year, having grown to 35 dancers from 21, with an annual operating budget to $2.5 million, the directors felt the time was right for a full-fledged Balanchine Festival. The festival, which opened in March, is presenting seven works over four months. The remaining performances in the second and final installment, featuring “La Valse,” “Agon” and “Rubies,” will be presented at three theaters in May and June. The latter two works, set to Stravinsky, are also part of the program for July in Grand Park, in line with the Los Angeles Music Center’s yearlong Stravinsky celebration “Balanchine loved this city,” Ms. Neary said in an interview, “and it is my wish that the passion he felt in his work is given to L.A. in these programs.” Ms. Neary, 60, first met Balanchine as an 8-year-old student at the School of American Ballet, the official school of New York City Ballet. She joined City Ballet in 1969 and was a soloist from 1975 to 1979. In 1985 the George Balanchine Trust authorized her to teach and stage his ballets. Ms. Neary says she feels a responsibility to the choreographer, who created more than 400 works. “It’s my job to help dancers get to know him,” she said during a rehearsal break at the company’s Westside headquarters. “It’s not only teaching steps he taught us, and the intention, but also the ballets’ different styles. One thing I always say he told us is, ‘You shouldn’t save anything — you should give all your energies to what you’re doing now.’ ” On a recent afternoon in the Los Angeles Ballet’s 12,000-square-foot studios, Ms. Neary scrutinized her dancers, who range in age from 19 to 31, as they rehearsed the fiendishly difficult steps of “La Valse,” a 1951 ballet about death set to Ravel’s work.“Don’t bounce, glide,” Ms. Neary urged Allyssa Bross, the female lead in white, while Mr. Christensen, 47, leapt onto a chair to observe the unsettling funereal circling in the finale. Ms. Neary and Mr. Christensen’s 28-year partnership has included dancing with City Ballet, and their exchanges in the studio veer from detail-oriented simpatico to the occasionally prickly. “She’s been my boss, and I’ve been hers,” he said, “but because we know each other so well, there’s a certain aesthetic we try to pull from the dancers together.” Renae Williams Niles, the Music Center’s vice president for programming, suggested in an interview that promoting Balanchine’s legacy is strategically smart for a young dance company seeking a bigger profile. “When I think of Balanchine here, I think of Colleen, one of our local treasures,” she said. Preconcert talks are also part of the Balanchine Festival, and they help to shed light on the time he spent in Southern California. Audiences learn that Balanchine adored the climate, food markets and movie culture of Los Angeles, where he choreographed five films, all featuring Vera Zorina, then his wife, from 1938 to 1944. For the first, “The Goldwyn Follies” (1938), he worked with the composer Vernon Duke, a friend who wrote music for the “Water Nymph Ballet,” a Botticelli-esque sequence in which Ms. Zorina rose from a pool. The sequence is said to have been beloved by Samuel Goldwyn, the film’s producer. Hollywood also proved congenial for Mr. Balanchine’s collaborations with Stravinsky, with whom he worked on some 40 pieces over the years. Conversing in their native Russian over many a meal, the pair worked on masterpieces like “Orpheus,” which had its premiere in 1948 with Maria Tallchief. Another Los Angeles troupe seeking to lay claim to part of Balanchine’s legacy is the American Contemporary Ballet, now in its second season. The 10-member company is directed by the choreographer Lincoln Jones, a native Angeleno who returned here in 2010 after spending seven years performing and teaching in New York. While laying the groundwork for forming the company, he spent hours devouring all things Balanchine at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. “Dance is fairly limited as a storytelling medium, but as a musical one that works in a visual realm, it’s unlimited,” Mr.Jones said in an interview. “It was Balanchine’s realization of this — and his development of its musical vocabulary, aside from the works themselves — that was his greatest contribution.” Mr. Jones said he was drawn back to Los Angeles by its widening classical music scene. He took along his muse, the ballerina Theresa Farrell, who is now the company’s associate director; seeking to expand the audience for dance, they soon paired with Da Camera Society, a group that was founded four decades ago and performs chamber music at historic sites. Its top musicians accompanied American Contemporary Ballet last year when it gave its first concerts — two instrumental works interspersed with a pair of dances — in a warehouse in the city’s mid-Wilshire area. Next month four more concerts are scheduled over two nights. “The fact that they’re so good and just getting started, I feel I owe it to the art of dance to help build whatever I can,” said Martin Chalifour, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s principal concertmaster, who donates his time to performing with the troupe. “Lincoln caters to the complexities of the musical score and, like Balanchine, that’s his inspiration. Music transports you, and when you augment that with beautiful dance, it becomes a unique sensory experience.” Another troupe with Balanchine ties is the Barak Ballet, founded by Melissa Barak, a Los Angeles native who danced with New York City Ballet for nine years. For now, no Balanchine works are planned for the ballet’s inaugural concert in October, she said, “but my choreography is influenced by him, and I’d like to think he may have seen something special in me.” While Los Angeles has metamorphosed into a sprawl-to-the-wall metropolis since Balanchine walked its palm treelined streets, his spirit lives on here for these choreographers. “When we’re teaching and talking about him, Mr. B is with us,” Ms. Neary said. “I believe that.” New York Times by Victoria Looseleaf DOWNLOAD PDF 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item

Los Angeles Times Covers LAB Gala 2018 February 1, 2018 At the Los Angeles Ballet’s annual gala, the classical dance company honored three multi-talented, multi-hyphenates — Jenna Dewan Tatum, Derek Hough and Adam Shankman — all of them dancers among other accomplishments and passionate on the subject of dance. “Dance is my everything,” Dewan said during the cocktail hour. “All roads lead back to dance for me,” added the actress, dancer and host of “World of Dance.” “No matter what I do in my career, no matter what I do in my life, being a dancer informs me. It’s who I am.” A judge on “World of Dance,” Hough, an actor-dancer-author-choreographer, said he took his first official lesson at age 10, “but if I look at old home videos of myself and my family, and I can see we were dancing in our living room since we were born.” Hough holds a record on “Dancing With the Stars,” having won six mirror balls. Shankman said later from the podium, “As the story goes, I actually emerged from my mother doing cartwheels with a top hat and cane. … I dance to live and I live to dance, and God willing, I’ll die doing a cartwheel, still clutching my cane.” (The producer-director-choreographer’s current project is the “Enchanted” sequel, “Disenchanted.”) The Los Angeles Ballet celebrated “Swan Lake” on Feb. 24 with a black and white themed-gala at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. More than $1 million was raised for its programming and educational outreach. Artistic directors Colleen Neary and Thordal Christensen introduced the dancers, who performed excerpts from “Swan Lake.” The interpretation of Spanish, Neapolitan, Hungarian and Russian folk dances and elegant black swan pas de deux were then followed by a young troupe from “A Chance to Dance,” Los Angeles Ballet’s program of free classes. Disney star Sofia Carson said earlier in the evening that she had recently taught one of these classes, which are offered to children ages 2 and older. Attending the gala with her sister Paulina, Carson said, “I was 3 when I took my first dance lesson, and it changed my life forever.” (She also said that her film “Descendants 3” would shoot in Vancouver this summer.) Mark L. Walberg, host of “Antiques Roadshow,” emceed the affair, with presenters Nigel Lythgoe, Brad Goreski and Mark Ballas; guests Camilla Belle, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Kimberly and James Van Der Beek, and others. Kirsten Sarkisian and Leslie Kavanaugh were co-chairs of the event, along with honorary committee chairs Sharon and Gray Davis, Marilyn and Robert Day, Ghada and Ray Irani, Lori and Michael Milken, Linda La Kretz-Duttenhaver and Richard Merkin. Tickets for the 325-plus guests began at $500, and tables ranged to $100,000. Proceeds also included a silent auction and additional donations. After suggesting that the crowd raise a glass to Los Angeles Ballet, “our beloved home team,” which he’d earlier described as “my Dodgers,” Shankman spoke, not only of his love of dance but also of the importance of supporting the arts. “If we are to leave any legacy of value to the next generations,” he said, “then it is our responsibility to support in every way imaginable institutions like the Los Angeles Ballet, and to do everything in our power both to bring people to us, and also to go into the communities, and to help this generation know that there is more to life than darkness and division and the arduous fight for justice, or even simply to be seen to feel safe.” LA Times by Ellen Olivier READ AT SOURCE 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item

"Ballet is Woman" but, Aha, The Men Revolt" March 1, 2010 The Peasant Pas de Deux was danced by Allynne Noelle and Zheng Hua Li (who alternates in the role of Prince Albrecht). Noelle was sunny and graceful. Li had crisp, flashing legwork, but tended to land badly. The corps looked well-schooled, although earthbound. The company danced to pre-recorded music. Huffington Post by Donna Perlmutter DOWNLOAD PDF 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item

L.A. Ballet rounds out Tchaikovsky trilogy with 'The Sleeping Beauty' February 26, 2015 With the addition of “The Sleeping Beauty” to its repertory, the Los Angeles Ballet rounds out its Tchaikovsky trilogy, having launched the company with “The Nutcracker” in 2006 and staged “Swan Lake in 2011.” Taking on these three touchstones of classical ballet is a considerable achievement for any company but especially one only 9 years old. “We consider ourselves a classical company. We’re trying to shape the repertory so that we include everything that will also make the dancers that much better,” company co-artistic director Colleen Neary said recently by phone with Thordal Christensen, the other artistic director, and her husband. “It really is wonderful to see the growth within the company with this repertoire.” She and Christensen choreographed this premiere “after Petipa,” blending their own choreography with the well-known touchstones of French ballet master and choreographer Marius Petipa that have been passed down through ballet generations since 1890. They both had experience performing in — as well as staging — the work with the Royal Danish Ballet, which Christensen directed, while Neary worked as principal ballet mistress. “It’s the quintessential classical ballet,” Neary said. The duo researched other productions and made choices based on their specific approach and on what worked best for their 37-member company. The expansive ballet calls upon the full roster, with most dancers taking on multiple roles. “We tried to tell the story in an organic, magical way — tried to keep it fairly light,” Christensen said. “‘Sleeping Beauty’ can sometimes have a tendency to be very heavy in its storytelling. I think we tried to lighten it a little bit.” Christensen, a Dane, and Neary, an American whose extensive performing career began with New York City Ballet, recognize the important role that mime plays in the ballet. “You have to be true to the tradition of Petipa, but you’re not telling the mime in an old-fashioned way. It is very real in its storytelling,” said Neary, who performs the crucial character role of Carabosse, the irate fairy whose vengeful spell sets the plot in motion. Their new “Sleeping Beauty,” being presented in four Los Angeles-area venues, features sets and costumes designed by David Walker, originally for a 1977 Royal Ballet production. Neary emphasizes that the Los Angeles Ballet’s intention is “to bring ourselves to the communities of L.A.” “That’s what we have been about for the past nine years,” she adds. “It’s been a recipe that has worked extremely well, and we have really developed our audiences in all these venues. We’re very excited to bring a piece that’s this big and this wonderful to these audiences.” Los Angeles Times by Susan Reiter READ AT SOURCE 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item

L.A. Ballet's Balanchine Festival follows in master's steps March 8, 2013 March 8, 2013 | By Susan Josephs Colleen Neary will never forget the day when George Balanchine articulated the blueprint for her life’s work. She was in her early 20s, then a respected New York City Ballet dancer. “He put me in to teach company class,” she says. “He said to me, ‘This is what you will do in the future.’ I said I wanted to dance, but he said, ‘You won’t dance forever. You will teach dancers my ballets.” Fast forward to 2013, to a rehearsal of Balanchine’s 1941 “Concerto Barocco” at the Westside headquarters of Los Angeles Ballet. Neary, now 60 and the company’s co-founder, surveys her dancers with microscopic scrutiny as they attempt to master the rigorously precise footwork, high-energy unison phrases and tricky group formations of the 18-minute dance. Both critical and encouraging, she invokes the words of her mentor during the section where three female dancers must weave around the sole male dancer in the work, interlocking hands and arms to create sculptural yet quickly dissolving tableaux. “Balanchine always used to say, ‘You should be walking around like Grecian goddesses,’ “ she tells the female dancers. “You’re missing this thing. In all his ballets, there’s this thing that’s more than the steps. It’s about feeling beautiful within yourself, and I can’t teach you that.” Neary, however, can remember how the famous choreographer known as Mr. B made his dancers feel beautiful, and it’s this firsthand experience that serves as the guiding force behind her company’s Balanchine Festival 2013. “Colleen has this great gift for challenging dancers to embody the Balanchine aesthetic,” says Ellen Sorrin, director of the George Balanchine Trust, which authorizes the staging of Balanchine’s ballets worldwide. “It’s an enormous responsibility to do what she’s doing, to disseminate Balanchine’s works as fully and wonderfully as possible.” Los Angeles Times by Susan Josephs DOWNLOAD PDF 2021/2022 Season > News > Previous Item Next Item