NEW YORK THEATRE BALLET brings ballets by Antony Tudor & Martha Clarke to the 92Y Harkness Dance Festival

New York Theatre Ballet (NYTB) brings its highly acclaimed Legends & Visionaries series to the 92Y Harkness Dance Festival from February 24-25, 2017 at the The 92Y, located at 1395 Lexington Avenue, NYC 10128. This year’s program features three ballets from the legendary Antony Tudor: Soirée Musicale (1938), the Pas de Deux from Romeo & Juliet (1943) and Les Mains Gauches (1951); presented alongside two ballets from his mentee, Martha Clarke: Nocturne (1978) and The Garden of Villandry (1979). Performances are February 24, 2017 at 8pm and February 25, 2017 at 4pm and 8pm.

and can be purchased at https://www.92y.org/Event/Legends-and-Visionaries.aspx

The Legends & Visionaries Program at the 92Y

Antony Tudor’s Soirée Musicale (1938) is a charming divertissement set to Benjamin Britton’s suite based on pieces by Rossini. Legend has it that in conceiving the choreography, Tudor had in mind four of the great ballerinas of the Romantic period: Lucille Grahn for the Canzonetta, Marie Taglioni for the Tirolese, Fanny Elssler for the Bolaro and Fanny Cerrito for the Tarantella. The Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing was an organization that supervised the quality of dance teaching in England. Tudor himself had several certificates from them, and these permitted him to teach certain grades of ballet and character dance. He explained that Soirée was not created as a ballet: “It was done as a demonstration piece for the Cecchetti Society (Imperial Society of Dancing) for an annual meeting.” Tudor’s 1951 Les Mains Gauches revolves around the issue of a man’s and woman’s fate. She receives a rose that represents love, and he receives a noose that symbolizes death. In an ironical ending, she discovers that he is not her love, and he realizes that she was not his death. Set to Delius’ “Walk to the Paradise Garden” (as opposed to the far more familiar Prokofiev composition), Tudor’s 1943 Romeo and Juliet (from which the pas de deux was revived by NYTB for the first time in 2004) tells an honest story of young love “communicated through unstressed small gestures in performances of heart-rending simplicity and delicate precision by Elena Zahlmann and Kyle Coffman. There are no big, ardent lifts and no roaring about the stage, capes fluttering. Instead everything is said through such moments as Juliet touching her eyes with the hem of her dress and Romeo resting his head tenderly in her lap. Shakespeare’s lovers were children, and Tudor remembers that.” - The New York Times, 2008