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AUGUST 11, 2009                                                         KIM ESPINOSA
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Without Boundaries
Features a World Premiere and Two Company Premieres

From September 24 - October 4, 2009, Houston Ballet presents Without Boundaries, its fall mixed repertory program featuring three works that easily traverse the boundary between classical ballet and modern dance.  The program features pieces by three of the most acclaimed dance makers working in the world today:  the world premiere of Elements by Stanton Welch and two company premieres:   Twyla Tharp's breathtaking tour-de-force, In The Upper Room, and Jiří Kylián's mesmerizing and multilayered study in motion and minimalism, Falling Angels. 

Mr.  Welch's Elements is inspired by the idea of Mother Earth and her four sons who represent the four elements:   earth, wind, fire, and water. Elements, which is Mr. Welch's fifteenth work for Houston Ballet, will showcase the company's men.   The music for Elements is from Paul Hindemith's symphony Mathis der Maler, (Matthias the Painter) which Hindemith adapted from his 1934 opera of the same name.   The symphonic version of Mathis der Maler was introduced on March 12, 1934 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler, and is considered by many to be Hindemith's best work for full orchestra.  Mr. Hindemith was a theorist, teacher, violist, conductor, and composer regarded as one of the most significant German composers of his generation.

Houston Ballet's stable of works by Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián continues to grow.  Falling Angels is a part of Mr. Kylian's black-and-white ballets which were created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and features eight female dancers dressed in black leotards.  Created in 1989, it is set to the first movement of Drumming composed by Steve Reich based on ceremonial ritual music from Ghana in West Africa. For Mr. Kylián, the fascinating aspect of Reich's composition lies in its rhythmical structure, specifically in the stylistic device called phasing. It creates a floating underground where the choreography is free to develop independently. Mr. Kylián customarily considers music as the primary source for his choreography, meaning that he sets his work to an existing musical structure.  However, with Drumming he felt challenged to give unabridged priority to the dance. Premiered by Netherlands Dance Theater in The Hague on November 23, 1989, Falling Angels features a combination of classical lines and sharp percussive movements.

Mr. Kylian commented that Falling Angels is "a piece about our profession." It depicts female dancers in their struggle to achieve perfection and their experiences of ambition, seduction, pregnancy, birth, death, motherhood and self-awareness. Mr. Kylián was influenced by surrealism and minimalism during the creation of this work and the black-and-white ballets.

A native of Prague, Mr. Kylián began his training at the Prague Conservatory and London's Royal Ballet School. In 1968, he joined Stuttgart Ballet where he worked alongside the legendary English choreographer John Cranko. Mr. Kylián choreographed his first ballet in 1970 for Stuttgart Ballet. After being invited by Netherlands Dance Theater in 1973 to be a guest choreographer, Mr. Kylián joined the company and served as artistic director from 1978 to 1999. During that time he created over sixty productions for the company, including such works as: Sinfonietta (1978) Forgotten Land (1981), Bella Figura (1995) and Last Touch (2003).  Falling Angels is the seventh work by Mr. Kylián to enter Houston Ballet's repertory after Soldiers' Mass in 2009, Petite Mort and Svadebka, which entered the repertory in 2007, Forgotten Land in 2005, Sinfonietta in 1995 and Symphony in D in 1983.

Another premiere on the program is Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room, the first work by the one of America's most acclaimed choreographers to enter Houston Ballet's repertoire. After graduating from Barnard College in 1963, Ms. Tharp founded her dance company, Twyla Tharp Dance in 1965. A leading choreographer of modern dance and ballet, Ms. Tharp rose to prominence during the dance boom of the 1960s and 1970s. In the mid-1970s, she began to cross over into ballet choreography, most notably with Deuce Coupe created in 1973 for The Joffrey Ballet and dancers from Tharp's own company to music by the Beach Boys. Push Comes to Shove and Once More, Frank were the two works that grew out of her collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov and American Ballet Theatre.  Her dance style is a combination of modern dance and ballet and is set to a variety of music types, including classical and popular.  In addition to choreographing for her own company and ABT, she has created works for other companies including Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance, The Martha Graham Dance Company, Miami City Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet.

One of Tharp's most frequently performed works, In the Upper Room received its premiere in 1986 by Twyla Tharp Dance, in Highland Park, Illinois. Set to the driving pulse of Philip Glass's music, In the Upper Room mixes Norma Kamali's vibrant black-and-white striped costumes with their blood-red accents, and an innovative lighting plot by Jennifer Tipton to create a multi-layered work that alternately advances, recedes, explodes and implodes in an "escalating display of prowess as heroism." (The Village Voice)  Writing in The Washington Post on January 28, 2006, dance critic Sarah Kaufman observed, "Legend has it that Tharp named her 1986 opus for a Mahalia Jackson recording that refers to the upper room where Jesus and his disciples gathered for the Last Supper. In Tharp's view, a dance floor is a similarly exalted space. Her place of reverence is a wide-open stage, with ballerinas in flippy skirts and pointe shoes sharing the spotlight with the other dancers in trousers and sneakers. The effect is not ironic, but harmonious." The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Dance observed of In the Upper Room, "It is one of Tharp's most popular works, contrasting the power and energy of modern dance with the speed and aerial dexterity of a more classical language." 

In her distinguished career, Ms. Tharp has choreographed more than 135 dances, five Hollywood movies, directed and choreographed three Broadway shows, written two books and received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the Jerome Robbins Prize, and The Kennedy Center Honors. Her choreography can be seen in the movies Hair, Ragtime, Amadeus, and White Nights. On Broadway in 1985, she choreographed a version of Singin' in the Rain, and in 2002 she choreographed and directed Movin' Out, a pioneering musical told completely through dance, movement, and twenty-four Billy Joel songs for which she won a Tony Award for best choreography.