”Classical ballet today is in the hands of these three choreographers: Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon.
During the twentieth century, famous masters like Ashton, McMillan, Balanchine, Grigorovich, and Petit created ballets for the most important companies in the world: the Bolshoi, the Royal Ballet, the American Ballet Theater, and the New York City Ballet. These three choreographers are their successors.
Choreographing Today is an exceptional evening which will be practically impossible to repeat. No theater has ever provided the possibility of seeing their ballets performed together. The Spoleto Festival is offering its public a grand and unique opportunity to see classical ballet at the beginning of the new millennium.”
Alessandra Ferri

 

An exclusive production for the
Spoleto 52 Festival dei 2 Mondi

Program

 

RUSSIAN SEASONS
Choreography Alexei Ratmansky
Music Leonid Desyatnikov
Dancers Jared Angle, Jennifer Ringer, Abi Stafford, Jonathan Stafford, Wendy Whelan, Antonio Carmena, Adam Hendrickson, Rebecca Krohn, Amar Ramasar, Sean Suozzi, Alina Dronova, and Georgina Pazcoguin
Principal Dancer and Soloists from the New York City Ballet

 

AFTER THE RAIN
Choreography Christopher Wheeldon

Music Arvo Pärt Tabula Rasa (1977) (primo Movimento-Ludus), Spiegel Im Spiegel (1978)
Dancers Wendy Whelan, Maria Kowroski, Teresa Reichlen, Craig Hall, Jason Fowler, and Edward Liang
Morphoses | The Wheeldon Company
Artistic Director Christopher Wheeldon

 

ERAZOR
Choreography Wayne McGregor
Music Plaid (Andy Turner & Ed Handley)
Dancers Neil Fleming Brown, Catarina Carvahlo, Agnès López Rio, Paolo Mangiola, Ángel Martinez Hernandez, Anh Ngoc Nguyen, Anna Nowak, Maxime Thomas, Antoine Vereecken, and Jessica Wright
Wayne McGregor | RANDOM DANCE COMPANY

Director Wayne McGregor

 

Alexei Ratmansky was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and studied at the Bolshoi Theater Ballet School in Moscow.
He performed as Principal dancer with the National Ukrainian Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and the Royal Danish Ballet. He also created over twenty new works for the most important dance companies in the world: the Dutch National Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, the Royal Danish Ballet, the Royal Swedish Ballet, the New York City Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, and the National Ballet of Georgia. In 1998 his choreography Dreams of Japan, created for Nina Ananiashvili, won the prestigious Golden Mask Award presented by the Theatre Union of Russia. In 2005, he was awarded the Benois de la Danse prize as best choreographer of the year for Anna Karenina created for the Royal Danish Ballet.
In 2003 he created The Bright Stream for the Bolshoi Ballet. Thanks to its incredible success, he was nominated artistic director of the company the following year. During the years under his direction (concluded on December 31, 2008), he created other works for the company, including: The Bolt (2005), The Pirate (2007), and Flames of Paris (2008).
In both 2005 and 2007 the Bolshoi Ballet won the London Critics’ Circle award as best foreign Dance Company, and in 2006 it also won the Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for The Bright Stream. In 2007 Ratmansky won the Golden Mask Award as best choreographer for his production of Card Game also created for the Bolshoi Ballet.
In January 2009 Alexei Ratmansky was nominated Resident Choreographer of the American Ballet Theatre.

 

Christopher Wheeldon, the acclaimed and talented British choreographer, is the artistic director and co-founder of Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company. He attended the Royal Ballet School of London and, after graduation, entered the Royal Ballet. In 1991 he won the gold medal at the Prix de Lausanne, and in 1993 joined the New York City Ballet becoming a Soloist in 1998. In 2000 he decided to abandon dancing to focus exclusively on choreography. Between 2001 and 2008 he was the Resident Choreographer of the New York City Ballet. In 2007 he created Morphoses in order to introduce a new spirit of innovation to classical ballet, encouraging and promoting collaborations among choreographers, dancers, designers, visual artists, composers, and other artists who could instill some new vitality into ballet. Among his most famous creations for the New York City Ballet the public will remember: Mercurial Manoeuvers, Pholyphonia, Serious Variations, Morphoses, Carousel (A Dance), Carnival of Animals, Liturgy, After the Rain, An American in Paris, Klavier, and The Nightingale and the Rose. Other well-known companies commissioned works by Wheeldon, including San Francisco Ballet (Continuum), London Royal Ballet (Tryst and DGV Danse à Grand Vitesse), Pennsylvania Ballet (Swan Lake), Metropolitan Opera House (The Dance of the Hours and La Gioconda), and the Bolshoi Ballet (Misericors). In 2005 Wheeldon won the Dance Magazine Award as well as the London Critics’ Circle Award for the best creation of the season for his ballet Polyphonia, which also won the Olivier Award as best interpretation. In 2006 DGV Danse à Grand Vitesse was also nominated for the Olivier Award. Other important prizes have included the Martin E. Segal Award by the Lincoln Center and the American Choreography Award.
Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company
is a young dynamic dance company founded in 2007 by Christopher Wheeldon and Lourdes Lopez and established in New York and London. Its project is to widen the vision of classical ballet by focusing attention on innovation and sustaining creativity through artistic collaboration. The company made its debut at the International Festival at Vail in Colorado, followed by performances at London’s Sadler’s Wells and the New York City Center. Following these successes, the company was nominated as “resident company” in both London and New York. The company won the prestigious South Bank Show Award for the 2007 season. Christopher Wheeldon has created two new works for Morphoses: Fools’ Paradise and Prokofiev Pas de Deux. The repertoire also includes choreography by G. Balanchine, W. Forsythe, M. Clarke, L. Lorent, and E. Liang. The dancers in the Morphoses company come from some of the most famous in the world: New York City Ballet, Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, George Piper Dances, Hamburg Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the National Ballet of Canada.

 

Wayne McGregor is a widely-cultivated and unconventional artist. At 39 he has become a cutting edge name on the current British scene for his unique work: a dystonic vision of the human body that reflects the fragmented and dysfunctional world in which we live.
McGregor was inspired to enter the world of dance and choreography as a child when dazzled by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
He founded the Random Dance Company in 1992, at the age of 22, imposing his concept at international levels through his exploration of the relationship between dance and technology. His collaborations with multidisciplinary artists to create ground-breaking works have made his company a radical byword on the British scene. Winner of the “Time Out Live Award” in 2001, and again in 2003, McGregor is highly sought after in the international dance mainstream. He has received commissions from the Royal Ballet and the Rambert Dance Company, but also choreographed the movement scenes in the fourth episode of the Harry Potter film saga, The Goblet of Fire, and created the choreography for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, Woman in White, as well as site-specific installations for the Hayward Gallery, Canary Wharf, and the Centre Pompidou. He also directed and created the choreography of Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell at the Teatro alla Scala. This opera was performed again at the Royal Opera House in March 2009 alongside a new production of Acis and Galatea also directed and choreographed by McGregor. He was recently nominated as the Resident Choreographer at the Royal Ballet, the first in sixteen years and the only choreographer to come from the world of modern dance. However, although Wayne McGregor may be daring, he is no iconoclast, quite the contrary; he is a sustainer of “positive thinking in a positive body,” perfect harmony between the body and what can be achieved “thinking physically.” His aim is to bring the merits of artistic dance, in his case conceptual, within the hallowed halls of the establishment, which were previously open only to choreographers of the classical school, and this is certainly not his case.
In January 2009 the British Critics awarded him the prestigious South Bank Show Award for Infra, his latest creation for the Royal Ballet and for Entity created for his own company. On receiving the prize from “Strictly Come Dancing” judge, Arlene Phillips, McGregor made this comment: “I´m delighted to get this award. All the work that I do is completely collaborative in nature, so this is a shared award. I know I´m lucky enough to work with some of the most incredible dancers in the world—both from The Royal Ballet and from my own company, Wayne McGregor | Random Dance, and I´d particularly like to thank them for inspiring me."
Wayne McGregor | RANDOM DANCE COMPANY
was established in 1992 and became the instrument through which the British choreographer Wayne McGregor developed his drastically rapid and elastically articulated choreographic language. The company has become a symbol for its radical approach to new technologies, integrating animation, digital films, 3D architecture, electronic music, and virtual dancers into its dancing and choreography.
In Nemesis (2002), dancers fought a duel with giant prosthetic arms to a soundtrack into which phone conversations had been inserted. In 2004 Wayne McGregor’s fellowship with the Department of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University provided material for his AtaXia choreography, while in Amu (2005) the creative process was inspired by neurological heart dysfunctions. Entity (2008) was an independent choreographic project conceived in a sonic panorama created by Jon Hopkins who collaborates with Coldplay and by Jody Talbot who was also involved in creating the music for Chroma (2006).