Vail Dance Festival schedule

Opening Night The kickoff night offers a taste of the two weeks to come, headlined by Michelle Dorrance, a choreographer and dancer who has taken tap to new places and new levels; ballerina Lauren Lovette, a principal at the New York City Ballet, who is doubling later in the festival as a choreographer; and Lil Buck, whose Memphis “jookin,” a willowy and hypnotic street-style dance, has been a staple at the festival; and the L.A. Dance Project performing its Hearts & Arrows. Dorrance is the festival’s resident artist and the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. L.A. Dance Project If you want to see where dance is headed, watch the L.A. Dance Project. The company — founded in 2012 by Benjamin Millepied, a former principal dancer at the New York City Ballet and artistic director of the Paris Opera Balle —blends the avant-garde with classical style. A hallmark of the company is interesting collaborations in music, choreography and place. A recent project had LADP performing for a video-streaming audience from the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. The highflying company will arrive in Vail from Arles, France, and then head off to Dubai and Singapore. Millepied did the choreography for the movie, “Black Swan,” in which he also appeared as the prince and met his wife, Natalie Portman. Dancing in the Park: Colorado Ballet Bring your lawn chairs, blankets and picnic baskets to Nottingham Park for a family-friendly, free performance by the Colorado Ballet. The program will feature excerpts from the company repertoire highlighting the dancers’ artistry and athleticism. Gates open at 4:30 p.m. American Dance Classics: Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free” & George Balanchine’s “Serenade” This is one of the festival’s big nights featuring ballets by two of the 20th century’s greatest choreographers danced by some of the best dancers in ballet. Robbins’ 1944 “Fancy Free” was based on his observations of sailors on shore leave in Hell’s Kitchen bars during World War II. It is set to music by a 26-year-old Leonard Bernstein, with strains of his score 13 years later for the Broadway musical, “West Side Story.” The sailors are Robert Fairchild and Daniel Ulbricht, both principal dancers with the New York City Ballet, and Marcelo Gomes, a principal with the American Ballet Theatre. Tiler Peck, also a New York City Ballet principal, is a woman whom the sailors try to pick up. Balanchine is widely considered the greatest choreographer of the century, and “Serenade” was the first ballet he made in America, in 1934 to Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings.” Despite having just formed a company and without experienced dancers, this ballet became a classic that continues to be danced around the world. It depends heavily on the corps de ballet, which will be provided by the Colorado Ballet. The Breckenridge Music Festival Orchestra will accompany both ballets. UpClose: Jerome Robbins Curious about how a choreographer makes a dance and how dancers dance them? The “UpClose” series has, each season, attempted to answer those questions in a rehearsal-style performance. This year, UpClose will look at the some of Jerome Robbins’ greatest dances — “Fancy Free,” “Dances at a Gathering,” “The Cage” and “Afternoon of a Faun.” It will also look at the collaboration between Robbins and Leonard Bernstein on “Fancy Free” and “West Side Story.” Damian Woetzel, the festival artistic director, is the evening’s host and guide. Woetzel, a former principal dancer at The New York City Ballet who worked with Robbins, has been known to get up and work a few steps with the dancers. A pre-show reception and post-performance dinner with the dancers is also being held. (Tickets sold separately.) International Dance Evenings The International Dance Evenings are one of the centerpieces of the festival, a smorgasbord of styles and dancers from Lil Buck’s street “jookin” to classical ballerina Misty Copeland, these performances surprise. The program will include dancers from the American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, Royal Ballet and Boston Ballet, as well as flamenco dancer Elena Heiss. Festival artistic director Damian Woetzel has shown an uncanny knack for selecting styles and dancers, and pairing dance partners. This skill led The New York Times is describe him as “a matchmaker.” NOW Premieres: Celebrating Women Choreographers If there is a heart to the festival, this night is it. Damian Woetzel, the festival’s artistic director, is trying to make a statement in what many have seen as an imbalance in the dance world — particularly in ballet. Two young ballet choreographers, Lauren Lovette and Claudia Schreier will debut pieces. Lovette is a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, and her first work was performed by that company last September. Schreier began as an intern at the Vail festival and has worked her way up in the dance world, creating a dance for the festival last year and being awarded a Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Choreographers this spring. They will be joined by two accomplished female dance makers, moderndance choreographer Pam Tanowitz and tap genius (really she has a MacArthur Genius grant) Michelle Dorrance. Tanowitz has her own small, but highly visible company Pam Tanowitz Dance, with a post-modern take on classical dance. The New York Times said of Tanowitz, “at its best, her eccentric choreography has a thrilling, witting unpredictability.” Woetzel, showing his penchant for combining creative talents, is pairing the choreographers with the likes of poet Andrea Gibson, singer and musician Kate Davis and the eclectic Brooklyn Rider, the festival’s quartet-in-residence. Dance for $20.17 Another potpourri of artists and dances with the special draw of $20.17 reserved seating tickets, which are in high demand, and $10.17 lawn tickets. Among the groups performing with be Denver’s modern dance company, Wonderbound, with the hip-hop band, Flobots. Dancing in the Park: Wonderbound (Free Performance) Wonderbound has shown it can dance to just about anything — indie folk, rock, hip hop, traditional folk music, Baroque chamber music. Nottingham Park gates open at 4:30 p.m., bring your lawn chairs, blankets and picnic baskets. Dorrance Dance 2017 If when you think of tap dancing what comes to mind are old 1930s movies or the Rockettes or Shirley Temple, you’ll be surprised by Michelle Dorrance. She is no Shirley Temple. One of the most inventive choreographers in tap, Dorrance is trying to take what she has described as a “bastard dance form” to something hip and relevant. Her dances, like the Blues Project, are full length and complex. The New York Times critic Brian Seibert said that she has an “unusual talent of laying bare hidden emotions in the technique of tap.” As for her own dancing, Seibert said, she has a “let-it-all hang-out style — as much about knees and elbows as it is about her speedy feet, a contemporary physicality nothing like that of Fred Astaire” or Shirley Temple. While it may not seem so modern, modern dance in many ways began with Martha Graham in 1926. While there were earlier pioneer — Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis — Graham created a dancing technique that has been called the “cornerstone of modern dance.” Then there was her staying power. As a dancer, she performed until she was 76 and continued to choreograph until her death in 1991 at the age of 96. Graham strongly influenced modern-dance choreographers who followed her, such Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham. Some of her dances, like the iconic “Lamentation,” reflect the times in which she lived — the Great Depression, the rise of fascism. Graham also probed emotional and sexual themes and love in the dance “Diversion of Angels.” The Martha Graham Company brings all this to the stage, simultaneously trying to keep true to the steps and spirit of its founder, while testing their technique with new choreographers and new themes. They will dance a new piece “Lamentation Variations” choreographed by Memphis street dancer Lil Buck. It is his first commission by a major dance company. What do Bach and Amy Winehouse have in common? BalletX. The Philadelphia-based company dances to both. Founded in 2005, BalletX takes classical ballet techniques, strips away the flowery bits and goes looking for new music and new dances. It has hip takes on classical music and classical takes on hip music. The company has built a repertoire of more than 60 original works from more than 17 different choreographers. Prominent among them are the dances of Matthew Neenan, a BalletX founder and the resident choreographer of the Pennsylvania Ballet. Critics tend to use word like “fresh” and “offbeat” to describe BalletX dances. Last summer at Vail, BalletX performed “The Big Ones,” a Trey McIntyre piece to Amy Winehouse, which The New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay said is “truly weird, but it takes you inside its weirdness so soon and so surely that it shows many different humors: It’s funny, touching, poignant, stirring.” After the performance, there will be an onstage dance party for all.