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May 22, 2007 CASSIE PATTERSON MCCLUNG
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Stanton Welch Creates “An Ode to New York City,”
Set to the Music of Gershwin,
Coming February 2008
From February 21 – March 2, 2008, Houston Ballet presents Gershwin Glam, the company’s winter repertory program featuring a new work by Stanton Welch, an ode to New York City set to the music of legendary American composer George Gershwin and inspired by Broadway musicals of the 1940s. Also on the program are Christopher Bruce’s dramatic masterpiece Swansong, and George Balanchine’s enduring signature work, Serenade.
Mr. Welch’s new work will be set to Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, the classical composition for orchestra and piano which many consider his finest orchestral work. Piano Concerto in F is closer in form to a traditional concerto than Gershwin’s earlier jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue. What set Gershwin apart as a musician was his ability to manipulate forms of music into his own unique voice. He took the jazz he discovered on Tin Pan Alley into the mainstream by splicing its rhythms and tonality with that of the popular songs of his era.
Holly Hynes will design the costumes for Mr. Welch’s new work, and Thomas Boyd will create the scenery. The dancers will appear in authentic-looking costumes from the 1940s, and the ballet will unfold against a backdrop of New York City skyscrapers, peopled with classic iconography of New York, including lamp posts and fire escapes.
"When Stanton first approached me about designing a Gershwin ballet with lots of American iconic characters, I had recently designed Christopher Wheeldon's An American in Paris for the New York City Ballet. That was set in France (obviously) in the 1950's. Stanton had decided to place his Gershwin in New York City in the shadow of World War II,” commented Ms. Hynes.
“Working on a ballet with such ‘big’ music like Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F is a blast because not only do I get to live in the 1940's but it takes me back to my start in theater working on big Broadway musicals in New York.
“My research has been pouring over black and white photographs of the 1940's and, ironically, cartoon images from the 1940's and early 1950's. So far this project has been a wonderful treat."
Mr. Welch has collaborated with Ms. Hynes on six previous productions: Brigade (2006) for Houston Ballet; Falling (2005) and Tu Tu (2003) for San Francisco Ballet; Don Quixote (2003) and Firebird (2005) for BalletMet; and Orange (2001) for Dance Galaxy. An accomplished costume designer, Ms. Hynes has created more than 100 ballets, forty-five of which are in New York City Ballet’s repertory. Companies with her designs in their repertories include: The Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, and Pennsylvania Ballet.
Christopher Bruce’s Swansong is a powerful work which deals with the timeless themes of human rights and the brutality of political interrogation. Created for English National Ballet in 1987 and set to an electro-acoustic score by Phillip Chambon, Swansong is a tour-de-force for three male dancers which depicts the struggle between a political prisoner of conscience and his military interrogators. Set on a bare stage, the prisoner is tormented and brutalized by his two captors, who, in the process of trying to extract information from their victim, succeed only in bringing about his death. The intentionally unspecified setting could be a cell in Abu Graib, Iraq or Guantano Bay, Cuba.
“I consider Swansong Christopher Bruce’s masterpiece. It’s one of my personal favorites,” observed Mr. Welch.
The title of the work refers to the attempts of the prisoner, when left alone, to free himself, both physically and spiritually. His solo passages echo the arm and head movements of a wild bird’s desire for freedom. The two guards perform movements reminiscent of soft shoe and tap-dancing; their syncopated footwork suggesting the rhythm of question and answer. Their interrogation tactics are slyly sadistic. Mocking slaps and fake bonhomie slip without warning into vicious sequences in which the prisoner is kicked and rolled across the floor, strung upside down and bundled helplessly through the air.
“There were two basic inspiration points from which Swansong sprung,” commented Mr. Bruce. “One is reading about and being very aware of the work of Amnesty International and wanting to say something about the situation of the prisoner of conscience. The other image was saying goodbye to something – and for me, it was saying goodbye to dancing. And having enjoyed a very exciting dance career, it’s not an easy thing to say goodbye.”
Houston Ballet presented the American premiere of Swansong in 1991, and the work was last seen in Houston in 1992. Mr. Bruce was appointed Houston Ballet’s associate choreographer in 1989, and has staged ten acclaimed works for the company, including Cruel Garden (1977), Ghost Dances (1981), Sergeant Early’s Dream (1984) and Rooster (1991). He has created four works especially for Houston Ballet: Gautama Buddha (1989), Journey (1990), Nature Dances (1992), and Hush (2006). Over the last eighteen years, Houston Ballet has emerged as Mr. Bruce’s artistic home in America.
Set to Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings in C, Serenade was the first ballet that George Balanchine choreographed upon his arrival in the United States in 1934 following an early career in Europe. He created the work as a classroom exercise for the students of the School of American Ballet to give his dancers an idea of how dancing on stage differs from class work and rehearsal. Balanchine began to choreograph the piece, relying solely upon the number of students he had in a given class to determine how many dancers would be used in each movement and how the work would take shape. He incorporated everything from a girl arriving late to rehearsals to a girl falling down while exiting the stage. Despite its humble origins, Serenade has emerged as one of Balanchine’s most beloved and widely performed works.
