Nicolo Fonte Creates His First Work for Houston Ballet in
Made in America in May 2012

From May 24-June 3, 2012, Houston Ballet presents its spring mixed repertory program titled Made in America featuring a world premiere by Nicolo Fonte, a company premiere of Mark Morris's Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes, and a revival of George Balanchine's tribute to Imperial Russian Ballet, Theme and Variations.

"I am excited for Made in America because all three works will truly be made in America. We are looking forward to having Mark Morris in Houston and we have built up our Balanchine repertoire significantly over the years so it will be nice to return to Theme and Variations. The piece was one of the first Balanchine works we performed after I became artistic director, along with Apollo and La Valse. It will be nice to see how far we have come in understanding Balanchine's work," remarks Mr. Welch.

Nicolo Fonte will create his first piece for Houston Ballet. Mr. Fonte is known for his daring and original approach to dance, noted by critics for a unique movement language as well as a highly developed fusion of ideas, dance and design.

"Fonte is an exhilarating choreographer, and I have enjoyed the works I have seen by him. His works are typically very challenging for the male dancers and will be very stylistically challenging for all our artists," states Mr. Welch.

Born in Brooklyn New York, Mr. Fonte started dancing at the age of 14. He studied at The Joffrey Ballet School in New York, San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet Schools while completing a Bachelor's Degree of Fine Arts at SUNY Purchase. After graduation, Mr. Fonte danced with Peridance in New York City, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal and Nacho Duato's Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid.

In 2000 Mr. Fonte retired from performing and has gone on to choreograph for numerous international companies including The Dutch National Ballet and The Australian Ballet. He received a Choo San Goh Award for his 2002 collaboration with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Almost Tango, of which R. M. Campbell of the Seattle Post- Intelligencer wrote, "Fonte is a thinker, an architect who creates the new rather than reinvent the old. He is a master of manipulating space and creating relationships."

Inspired by the poem A Song to Celia, by Ben Jonson, Mark Morris's Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes is a work for 12 dancers set to 13 etudes for piano by Virgil Thomson. It was commissioned by Mikhail Baryshnikov as Mark Morris's third work for the American Ballet Theatre in 1988.

The dancers are dressed in white and perform Mr. Morris's choreography in small groups, solos and pas de deuxs that form together an unpredictable, yet mesmerizing piece. Allan Ulrich, dance critic for The San Francisco Examiner, observed, "The freshness of the inspiration, the consistent upturning of artistic convention, the sheer bravado of it all, is unprecedented, joyful and so volatile you fear it will evaporate before your eyes."

Mr. Morris's creativity began flourishing when he formed the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980. From 1988-1991 he was the director of dance at La Monnaie, Brussels and in 1990 he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov.  He has choreographed works for San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and Boston Ballet, among others. His work is currently in the repertory of Houston Ballet, Ballet West, Dutch National Ballet, New Zealand Ballet, English National Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and The Washington Ballet.

His opera credits include directing and choreographing productions for The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, English National Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera and the Royal Opera, London. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and the subject of a biography by Joan Acocella (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). In 2001, he opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, New York, his company's first permanent headquarters in the U.S.

Rounding out the program is George Balanchine's Theme and Variations, the grandest tribute to his alma mater, the Imperial Russian Ballet, which Houston Ballet last performed in 2004. Balanchine originally created the work for American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancers Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch, and it premiered on November 26, 1947 at the City Center in New York City.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Balanchine (1904-1983) is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer for New York City Ballet from 1948 until his death in 1983. Balanchine's more than 400 dance works include Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), The Nutcracker (1954), Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972), Vienna Waltzes (1977), and Mozartiana (1981).

Although Balanchine once said, "I am more American than Russian," he still turned to the music of the great Russian composers, notably Stravinksy and Tchaikovsky, for his ballets. My teachers were people who knew Tchaikovsky, who talked with him….My first time on stage was in a Tchaikovsky ballet….Thanks to The Sleeping Beauty, I fell in love with ballet. [Tchaikovsky] is like a father to me. In everything that I did to Tchaikovsky's music, I sensed his help."

Set to the music of Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3, in G, Theme and Variations explores classic ballet training, focusing on preparatory movements that were developed to train and warm-up the dancer's body. Taking these steps further, Balanchine produced some very challenging choreography.

Themes and Variations was intended, as Balanchine wrote, "to evoke that great period in classical dancing when Russian ballet flourished with the aid of Tchaikovsky's music." The final movement of the composer's third orchestral suite consists of 12 variations. The ballet opens to reveal a corps of 12 women and a principal couple. As the ballet moves from variation to variation, the solo performances of the ballerina and her cavalier are interspersed among the corps performances.