Choreography by Paula Weber

Music by Carl Orff             Costumes by Victile Donahue  

Featuring a dramatic score by Carl Orff  and spellbinding choreography expressing the universal themes of love and springtime, revelry and darkness by Paula Weber.  When premiered by the State Ballet of Missouri in April 1996, the St. Louis Dispatch described the ballet as a "compelling masterwork of dance, music and song".  

In order to set her choreography to Orff's unorthodox work, Ms. Weber studied the history from which Carmina Burana is said to derive. The poems were selected by Orff from writings by medieval poets known as goliards who wrote satirical verse in the so-called "gutter Latin" and were performed by minstrels and jesters, much of it blatantly profane, seasoned with pagan ritual, despite the widespread Christianity of the time.

The poems were preserved over the centuries by Benedictine monks, for whatever reason and the choreographer employs the metaphoric presence of the monks as she develops the delicate tread of a storyline. 'The monks read the poems," she explains, "And they think the poems."  This image of the monks' thinking the poems is the spiritual force driving the work forward. They appear on the stage in the ominous opening passage as dark-cloaked figures. Springtime is approaching and the monks must release the poems from their minds for the earth to reawaken to seasonal growth. Four monks remain on-stage, sitting and thinking while the remainder disrobe, revealing nude-appearing bodies in flesh-colored leotards. The cycle of life begins to play itself out as Adam and Eve, the wheel of fortune, good luck and bad luck – until the conclusion of the work with the onset of winter, when the poems must be reabsorbed into the minds of the monks to be preserved for the next seasonal cycle.

"...a strong statement to an equally strong piece of music."   ...Berkshire Eagle

Original choreography by John Butler, original costumes by Ruth Morley. First performed at the New York City Opera, November 19, 1959, by Carmen DeLavallade, Glen Tetley, Veronica Mlaker and Scott Douglas. Ruth Morley. First performed at the New York City Opera, November 19, 1959, by Carmen DeLavallade, Glen Tetley, Veronica Mlaker and Scott Douglas.

[Performance Photos]    [Perfomance Schedule]

Mushabiyyah

Choreography: Madeline Cantarella Culpo        Music: Christopher Culpo

Sets: Marie-Pierre Carozzi

Mushabiyyah is an Arabic art term which defines wooden lattices made of turned bobbins, used as windows in Arab houses to admit light and air, yet preserve privacy. The windows are used as an integral part of the choreography, they are eloquent objects interacting with the dancers. This sculptural work uses form, light and color to examine the 'windows of the souls'. [Photos]

 [Perfomance Schedule]

Light On The Water
World Premiere - Summer 2002

Choreography: Mary Giannone-Talmi      Music: Mickey Hart

... an abstract contemporary work to the exotic rhythmic music of  "Planet Drum".  Mickey Hart was formerly a drummer for the "Grateful Dead".

 [Perfomance Schedule]

Adventures in A Perambulator

Choreography by Madeline Cantarella Culpo        Music by John Alden Carpenter

This charming ballet conveys scenarios that might occur in the mind of a child experiencing the "large world" beyond the perambulator.  Spend a day in the park as seen through the eyes of a young child.  A flock of seagulls, a group of playful dogs, and even a Hurdy Gurdy man enchant our young narrator, as he and his nursemaid enjoy an outing in a neighborhood park. 

 [Perfomance Schedule]

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Choreography by Robert Atwood           Music by Paul Dukas

...an enthralling story ballet about power.  Audiences will be mesmerized by the apprentice who becomes impressed with his new-found power, only to lose control of it and be rescued by his master, the sorcerer. The Sorcerer's Apprentice expresses as a range of emotions as it teaches about the uses and abuses of power.

 [Perfomance Schedule]

 
Chatter Traffic

Choreography by Gus Solomons Jr.       Music: Billy Squier

Chatter Traffic, performed by two groups of six dancers, is a fast-paced, modern, geometrically established dance set to pop-soul star Billy Squier's "Emotion in Motion" and  "Everybody Wants You.  The eleven minute piece, which the dancers perform in running shoes,  got its name because the "eight series" of steps and passing bodies reminded the choreographer of chatter.  Chatter Traffic premiered at the American University in Washington DC in 1982.

       [Perfomance Schedule]

 
The Rockwell Suites

Choreography by Madeline Cantarella Culpo

The Albany Berkshire Ballet’s Rockwell Suites were created in 1994 and 1995 with the intention of bringing Norman Rockwell’s classic Saturday Evening Post covers to life through dance. Each work was choreographed to reflect the story depicted in the painting – the historical and social background, as well as the music and popular dance genres of the time. Each work opens and closes with a “live” reproduction of the cover, complete with sets and scenery by the late Greenfield architect Thurston Munson.

The earliest of the works –  Girl in the Mirror and The Marriage License were premiered at the 1994 opening ceremonies of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, to critical acclaim. Girl in the Mirror, with music by Leroy Anderson, portrays an adolescent girl looking wistfully at a picture of a beautiful movie star, wondering if perhaps she, someday, might be such a star herself.  In The Marriage License, the engaged couple dances romantically to music by Howard Hanson while the disinterested clerk naps.

Dolores and Eddie: the Gaiety Dance Team, illustrates the plight of a couple of young dancers caught in the rapid demise of vaudeville in the 1930s. They sit dejectedly on their travelling trunk, broke and looking for work. The piece reprises a sampling of the tunes that were part of their act. Lastly, Rosie the Riveter portrays the feisty gal who epitomized the thousands of women who worked in factories, shipyards and other war-material industries during World War II. In 1942, songwriters Redd Evans and J.J. Loeb created the legendary Rosie, along with the unabashedly patriotic lyrics. It became an instant hit on the airwaves and Rockwell’s appeared on the Post’s cover May 29, 1943. The music for this piece was specially arranged by Music Director John Culpo and was recorded locally by area musicians.

The Rockwell Suites are also the center-piece of the Albany Berkshire Ballet’s Arts-in-Education Rockwell Program for middle school students, which aims to help students integrate their academic knowledge and artistic experience

  [Press Release]

 
The Carnival of the Animals

Choreography by Robert Atwood        Music: Camille Saint-Saens

The Albany Berkshire Ballet announces a world premiere presentation of Carnival of the Animals, our newest ballet for young audiences.  In August 2000, the ABB welcomes guest teacher and choreographer Robert Atwood, Dance Professor at Fordham University in New York City. Mr. Atwood will use ABB dancers and fifteen local children to bring to life,  Saint-Saens' classic score.  Narrator Leonard Bernstein examines the composition of each musical piece, relating each to its animal counterpart with reverence and imagination.  This ballet is an enjoyable event for the entire family.  [Press Release]

 
Petrouchka

Choreography by Michel Fokine          Music by Igor Stravinsky

Considered revolutionary in its time, this simple, but moving story ballet is a representation of the universal comic-tragic character.     Petrouchka, a carnival puppet, comes alive and experiences human emotions, but those around him do not believe he is real.  He falls in love with a ballerina doll and  competes for her affections, but  is unsuccessful, and dies at the hands of a rival puppet, The Moor.  In the end, Petrouchka triumphs over those who disbelieved him when his soul rises over the theater.

A perfect marriage of music and choreography, this ballet is the triumph of one of the great artistic collaborations of 20th century theater.  First performed in 1911, Petrouchka was originally set on the Albany Berkshire Ballet in 1976 by Vitale Fokine, the only child of Michel Fokine. Petrouchka was last performed in the Berkshires in 1984. [Photos]

Our Town

Choreography by Philip Jerry        Music by Aaron Copland

This work is Albany, NY native Philip Jerry's tribute to the creativity of American artists.  Based on Thornton Wilder’s great American play, Our Town, the characters in the famous turn-of-the-century New Hampshire town, come to life on stage.   We see George and Emily Webb, their parents, an adorable little sister, a mischievous bratty brother, the drunken preacher, and the town hypochondriac along with other colorful characters. The ballet presents the story of the young couple, George and Emily, falling in love, their marriage, and Emily’s death after giving birth to their son. Grief and the sense of loss are softened in the finale as Emily realizes and accepts her transcendence from her mortal life to a life of ethereal immortality.

"This ballet comes from the heart," wrote Dance Magazine of its debut in 1991 and the Berkshire Eagle averred two years later that "This ballet is a beautiful work, beautifully danced; it's not to be missed."  

Mr. Jerry choreographed this ballet as a tribute to the creative spirit of American artists.  Albany Berkshire ballet is performing this work in an early commemoration of the Aaron Copland centennial in the year 2000. [Photos]

 

Choreography by Michel Fokine;    Restaged by Nancy Ropelewski Pierce

Music by Frederic Chopin      Costumes by Rita B. Watson

Les Sylphides has been described as the pure, distilled essence of the dance. One of the first plotless ballets ever created, Les Sylphides creates its deep emotional impact through the sheer brilliance of the dancing and the almost mystical grouping of the dancers in ensembles and sub-ensembles, solos, and pas de deux as episode after episode unfolds. Set to a group of short piano pieces composed by Chopin (orchestrated), Les Sylphides is among the outstanding ballets created by the master Michel Fokine. While Fokine choreographed many famous ballets, including Prince Igor, Petrouchka, Spectre de la Rose, and Scheherazade, none of them have ever conveyed the purity of the art of the dance that is seen in Les Sylphides. In this work, Fokine was able to demonstrate an early concept he had evolved--that the art of ballet comes not from the skill of the dancers' footwork, but instead begins with the expressiveness of the body and the group or ensemble, which had to move always on one combined emotional impact.

The setting for Les Sylphides is moonlight and the atmosphere is one of reverie, lightness and ethereal fantasy. The deep emotional provocation received from Les Sylphides occurs as one views these sylph-like, white-clad dancers moving as almost one person from one figure to the next, and against this background, beholds the beauty of the solo dances that are part of this ballet. [Photos]

"Les Sylphides" was first presented at a charity performance in St. Petersburg in the spring of 1908 under the title Chopiniana.  Diaghilev's Ballet Russes performed the ballet at the Maryinsky Theatre the following year, with Pavlova, on March 4, 1909.   Diaghilev, the great impresario, renamed the piece Les Sylphides.  Rochelle Zide-Booth first staged this ballet for the Albany Berkshire Ballet in 1975.

 

   
Rhapsody in Blue

Choreography: Francis Patrelle        Music: George Gershwin

Costume Design and Execution by Rita B. Watson

A tribute to George Gershwin on the 100th anniversary of his birth,  Mr. Patrelle's work is a collage of the 1920's.  The Rhapsody has become a lavish scene with ballroom dancers in evening clothes and a vaudeville turn in which the choreographer sees the composer himself as a sort of "hoofer" with four different personalities.  Rhapsody in Blue was presented in New York City by the Dances...Patrelle Company in 1988 and has since been seen all over America, Europe and Mainland China.  The Albany Berkshire Ballet will present their premiere performance of Rhapsody during their '98 Summer Season.  [MIDI Music File -124KB] [Photos]

Production by courtesy of Dances Patrelle...Co, Francis Patrelle - Artistic Director.

Original funding by the Board of Directors of Dances...Patrelle, The Hardness Foundations for Dance, and Barbara Selz.

Dedicated to Dick Andros

 

Red Ellington

Choreography by Francis Patrelle        Music by Duke Ellington

Albany Berkshire Ballet celebrates the 100th anniversary of Duke Ellington’s birth with its premiere of Mr. Patrelle's stunning piece. "This ballet, inspired by the Ellington scores "Jeeps Blues" and "Newport Jazz Festival Suite," celebrates all that is free, American and --Jazz!"

   
Caprice

Choreography: Madeline Cantarella Culpo       Music: Camille Saint-Saens

Costumes: Catherine Condon

A celebration of movement and classical technique, this work was created for Albany Berkshire Ballet under Madeline Cantarella Culpo’s second choreography fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A lyrical classical ballet without a story-line, Caprice is joyous and unencumbered by dramatic convention. [Photo]

After Midnight, Before Dawn

Choreography: Mary Giannone-Talmi       Music: Christopher Culpo

Set to an original composition by Paris-based composer Christopher Culpo, this sophisticated, powerful work evokes a tension and momentum met head-on by the movement and the music.  Deceptively simple motions are turned inside-out in a composition of musical and emotional implications about the period after midnight and before dawn.

 
Autumn

Choreography by Mary Giannone-Talmi
      Music by George Winston - Piano Solos from "Autumn" and "Winter into Spring"

An exploration of change, this stunning and sensual contemorary ballet displays Ms. Giannone's expressive phrasing and deep emotional commitment to her work.  With dancers moving in phases of light and speed, George Winston's lyrical piano improvisations provide the perfect vehicle for the freedom of the modern dance idiom.

 
Arrow of Time

Choreography by Laura Dean        Music by Totem

Choreographed by internationallly recognized choreographer Laura Dean for the Albany Berkshire Ballet in 1989, this piece explores concepts about time as a force.  With her works in the repertoires of the New York City Ballet, Frankfort Ballet and Ohio Ballet, Newsweek has pronounced Dean "....one of the most exciting choreographers of her generation."

 

  
Temple Caves

Choreography:  Mary Giannone
Score: Mickey Hart     Costumes:  Jana Fugate

Created for and premiered by the Albany Berkshire Ballet in 1994, Mary Giannone-Talmi dedicated this work to her father. It represents an exploration of movement, rhythm, and spiritual reflection on the passage of time. Creation of this work was originally funded by the New York State Council on the Arts.