Ballet company, Candlelight Pavilion to present Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’

Performances are scheduled from Saturday to March 10

Inland Pacific Ballet, in partnership with Candlelight Pavilion, is presenting Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” the Broadway musical based on the 1991 animated film, opening Saturday at the Lewis Family Playhouse, 12505 Cultural Center Drive, Rancho Cucamonga.

This stage version includes the songs from the film by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman and new songs by Menken and Tim Rice.

Six of the performances scheduled from Saturday to March 10 are sold out, but tickets are available for a performance just added, at 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $60 to $86 for adults and $35 to $42 for ages 12 and younger, available at ipballet.org/beauty-and-thebeast/.

After the Candlelight Pavilion in Claremont closed in 2022 after 37 years of pairing Broadway musicals with dinner, general manager Mick Bollinger let the public know that though the Candlelight Pavilion seeks a new home in the Inland Empire, it is returning to producing shows in 2024 by joining forces with Montclair’s Inland Pacific Ballet, a news release said.

Candlelight’s founder, the late Ben D. Bollinger, was a choral director and dean of performing arts at Citrus College in Glendora. He created the Citrus Singers, a group performing throughout the region in the 1970s and continuing today.

In 1985, Bollinger opened the Candlelight Pavilion, with group tables on the first floor and private dining rooms upstairs.

“This is the first time the IPB and Candlelight artistic teams are partnering to bring together the best dancers and finest artistic talent for a joint production,” Zaylin Cano, executive director of Inland Pacific Ballet, said in the news release.

The cast for the joint production of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” is composed of Inland Pacific Ballet professional company members, artists from past Candlelight Pavilion productions and artists selected by audition. The cast is supported by Inland Pacific Ballet Academy apprentices and trainees and students from the Inland Pacific Ballet Academy musical theater training program.

In the starring roles are Lissette Garrido as Belle and Jonathan Sharp as the Beast. Others are John Lalonde as Lumière, Allen Everman as Cogsworth and Debbie Prutsman as Mrs. Potts.

Inland Pacific Ballet, founded in 1994 by Victoria Koenig and Kevin Frank Myers, has been performing at Bridges Auditorium at Pomona College since 1995, and in 2010 began adding other Southern California venues to its regular season including the Lewis Family Playhouse in Rancho Cucamonga and the Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside.

For more information, go to ipballet.org.