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Highly pedigreed? You bet. Well-known in the dance world? No question. But Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary have also passed the acid test: As directors of the Los Angeles Ballet, now in its sixth season, they can take a collective bow for their thoroughly sterling production of “Swan Lake.” Los Angeles Ballet's 'Swan Lake' is full of grace March 12, 2012 Glendale News-Press by Donna Perlmutter Highly pedigreed? You bet. Well-known in the dance world? No question. But Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary have also passed the acid test: As directors of the Los Angeles Ballet, now in its sixth season, they can take a collective bow for their thoroughly sterling production of “Swan Lake.” Just remember, not any old company can stage this icon of classical ballet. Oh, many with lesser artistic resources try. But to put on a show of so fine a caliber normally takes a bigger-than-big budget, dancer bench-depth, masterly and dedicated coaching. What’s more, they mounted their full-length extravaganza with the requisite number of performances. “And that meant we had to find venues all over the city.” says Christensen, who led the eminent Royal Danish Ballet and is steeped in its standards of style and rigorous technique. “We had to travel to the audiences,” he adds, noting that people will venture out to an attraction, so long as it doesn’t mean long drives through congested traffic. So from Westwood to Long Beach, with a stop at the Alex Theatre on March 17, the company is showing off its current jewel, “Swan Lake,” all feathery finery, moonlit mirages, pathos born of misfortune, good-versus-evil conflict. Thus the mountain comes to Muhammad. And it is a mountain, what with the full-scale sets originally built at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Christensen’s last post before he decamped to Los Angeles. “In fact,” says the Danish-born danseur, “when you think about it, it’s madness, dealing with four separate acts. We’ve had to extend intermission lengths just to do the set changes,” and that took the crew a week of practice just to learn how to move things along faster, he added. But the décor is eminently beautiful, old-school poetic without looking old — or worn — and it accommodates to any standard proscenium. The costumes, too, are delicate pastels, setting off the pristine-white lakeside scenes. What catches attention, though, apart from these details, is the totality of the spectacle — the dancers’ total immersion in the action and feeling states, be they coryphees, peasants, courtiers, royalty. As to the coaching, well, it is meticulous — in contrast, even, to some A-circuit “Swan Lake” productions, like the last one American Ballet Theatre brought on tour to L.A., where we saw casts that suffered rehearsal deficits. In their prime, both Christensen and Neary danced the lead roles many times. With his deep background in Bournonville, not to mention her prominence as a member of the Balanchine Trust, it’s no surprise that the choreography they adapted from the Petipa/Ivanov model is wonderfully evocative and rational. So, too, is the mime clear, uncluttered and natural — a feat in itself for American dancers seldom exposed to courtly behavior. But then the troupe’s roster now stands higher than ever in its level of virtuosity — thanks mostly to Neary’s recruitment of dancers from companies on which she has set Balanchine works, among them ABT and Russia’s Mariinsky, formerly the Kirov. Still, holding on to them is difficult. “We lose roughly a third each year,” says LAB executive director Julie Whittaker. “But that’s par for the course with all companies.” Corina Gill was stolen by the Boston Ballet, she recalls. And some leave because of the low salaries. “Most of our dancers stay, though. The trick is to keep them performing and not laid off for any substantial period of time.” So far, artistry runs the gamut at Los Angeles Ballet. It also keeps the wheel turning. And this “Swan Lake” does the trick. DONNA PERLMUTTER is an ASCAP-Award winning music/dance critic and journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and many other publications. She is also the author of “Shadowplay: The Life of Antony Tudor.” Email her at donna.perlmutter@gmail.com . DOWNLOAD PDF Home / News / New Item

Dancing through its first nine seasons, Los Angeles Ballet has bravely tackled one rite of passage after another — not merely the major Balanchine and Bournonville choreographies that are its stylistic birthright but, increasingly, the top-of-the-list, full-length 19th century classics that can leave dancers in any company cruelly exposed. L.A. Ballet delivers a classically pure 'Sleeping Beauty' March 30, 2015 Los Angeles Times by Lewis Segal Dancing through its first nine seasons, Los Angeles Ballet has bravely tackled one rite of passage after another — not merely the major Balanchine and Bournonville choreographies that are its stylistic birthright but, increasingly, the top-of-the-list, full-length 19th century classics that can leave dancers in any company cruelly exposed. The latest example: a three-hour “Sleeping Beauty” Sunday afternoon in Royce Hall at UCLA that justified company (and civic) pride both as an index of growth and for sustained achievement. The Royce performance was the final of five performances over the last five weeks. With its tiny morsels of plot and cornucopia of formal dances, “Sleeping Beauty” is a daunting challenge that Marius Petipa, the original choreographer, intended not as a typical Romantic story-ballet but an evocation of a much older theatrical dance tradition. Shared purity of style is essential here, and long before the nominal leading dancers made their first entrances on Sunday, the women who performed short blessing-solos in the first half-hour of the ballet delivered the vibrant yet uninsistent classicism that co-directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary have made into a company signature. What’s more, Christensen and Neary boast backgrounds with the Royal Danish Ballet — long the acknowledged masters of 19th century ballet sign-language — so the vital mime conversations in “Sleeping Beauty” that can look clumsy or even ridiculous when other companies attempt them became utterly natural on Sunday. You try telling people, without speaking, that a baby is going to grow up, be beautiful, dance nicely yet prick her finger on a spindle and die. A lot easier to text it. You might argue that the last act of this version suffers from extensive cuts that leave only classical showpieces, omitting the character and comic specialties that Petipa included for variety. And you might also note that the company’s skimpy male roster definitely needs the guests that have been popping up here and there. A month earlier, at the Valley Performing Arts Center, Luke Schaufuss (son of ballet superstar Peter Schaufuss) danced a raw but powerful Bluebird in the production. And on Sunday, the role of King Florestan gained authority from the great dancing-actor of New York City Ballet, Adam Lüders. Of course, a young company that dances to recorded music in borrowed sets has more to worry about than guests, and, indeed, there were times on Sunday when the slow, canned Tchaikovsky and the cramped Royce Hall stage took their toll. For example, in Act 1 alone the Garland Waltz needed more musical oomph, and Aurora’s solo after the Rose Adagio needed more space in front of the scenery. But that’s about all Julia Cinquemani needed as Aurora. Gifted with a technique that made every high extension seem a major event, she had the unerring balances for the Rose Adagio, the dreamy inaccessibility for the Vision Scene and the radiant star power for the Grand Pas de Deux, all presented with a devastating freshness, as if she might be discovering the role as she danced it. Allyssa Bross displayed many of these same qualities as Aurora on Feb. 28 at the Valley Performing Arts Center, and she ably transferred them to the role of the Lilac Fairy on Sunday, standing up to Neary’s furious Carabosse with dramatic flair. Neary’s special achievement was letting you see how genuinely injured this character felt — deep human emotion clashing with the stylized sweetness surrounding her. Among the men, pride of place incontestably belonged to Kenta Shimizu, the one and only Prince Desire in every company performance. Admittedly he couldn’t do much with his dull, inexpressive I’m-so-lonely choreography in Act 2. But the mime, partnering and sense of urgency in the Vision Scene proved exemplary, and his elegance in the Grand Pas de Deux ideally complemented his Auroras, whether Cinquemani or Bross. Allynne Noelle wasn’t in the cast on Sunday, but at VPAC last month her Lilac Fairy had regal eloquence, and she also danced Aurora during the five-week run. Dustin True made a diligent, low-flying Bluebird opposite Bianca Bulle, who soloed impressively both here and in the first fairy variation of the Prologue. The other fairies and/or jewels included Ashley Millar, Madison McDonough, Chloé Sherman, Elizabeth Claire Walker and Kate Highstrete. Without them, the staging would have lacked credibility as a whole. A “Swan Lake” can thrill you with just a great Prince and Swan Queen, but “Sleeping Beauty” needs classical multitudes — especially sparkling women soloists. Heading toward its 10th season in September, Los Angeles Ballet clearly has them, and they may be sorely tested by the anti-classical modern dance and crossover repertory on their agenda this summer. For a company as ambitious as this one, the rites of passage never stop — and neither does the excitement. David Walker’s scenery for a Boston Ballet production looked ideally sumptuous on the wide stage of Valley Performing Arts Center, but whatever could be accommodated at Royce Hall framed the dancers richly. calendar@latimes.com READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE Home / News / New Item

Quartet 2014 Allynne Noelle, Christopher Revels & Alexander Castillo Allynne Noelle & Alexander Castillo Allynne Noelle & Alexander Castillo Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Julia Cinquemani, Kate Highstrete, Chelsea Paige Johnston, Alyssa Bross & Bianca Bulle LAB Ensemble Chelsea Paige Johnston, Alexander Castillo & Zheng Hua Li Alexander Castillo & LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Dustin True Allynne Noelle & Dustin True Chloe Sherman & Robert Mulvey Julia Cinquemani & LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani & LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani Bianca Bulle Allynne Noelle & Kenta Shimizu Kenta Shimizu Allyssa Bross, Kenta Shimizu & LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle, Christopher Revels & Alexander Castillo Allynne Noelle & Alexander Castillo Allynne Noelle & Alexander Castillo Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Allyssa Bross, Zheng Hua Li & Dustin True Julia Cinquemani, Kate Highstrete, Chelsea Paige Johnston, Alyssa Bross & Bianca Bulle LAB Ensemble Chelsea Paige Johnston, Alexander Castillo & Zheng Hua Li Alexander Castillo & LAB Ensemble Allynne Noelle & Dustin True Allynne Noelle & Dustin True Chloe Sherman & Robert Mulvey Julia Cinquemani & LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani & LAB Ensemble Julia Cinquemani Bianca Bulle Allynne Noelle & Kenta Shimizu Kenta Shimizu Allyssa Bross, Kenta Shimizu & LAB Ensemble Return to a Strange Land – Kylián / Janácek, Beneath One's Dignity – Tayeh / Sigurðsson, Cipher – Stowell / Agruss,Stars and Stripes – Balanchine / Kay after Sousa Previous Gallery Next Gallery All photos by Reed Hutchinson Click on image for a fullscreen presentation.

Los Angeles Ballet presents a company of outstanding dancers from local communities and around the world. LAB dance artists master classical as well as contemporary techniques. Lilly Olvera Hometown Venice Beach, CA Seasons with LAB 2024/2025 Lilly began her ballet training at the age of 4. She fell in love with dance while training at Westside School of Ballet and attending summer programs such as Boston Ballet. Lilly started at LAB as a trainee in the 2023/2024 season before joining the company and is excited to begin this season. Lilly has enjoyed performing in a range of classical, and Balanchine reps such as Serenade , Raymonda , Firebird , and The Nutcracker as well as several new contemporary works.

Los Angeles Ballet presents a company of outstanding dancers from local communities and around the world. LAB dance artists master classical as well as contemporary techniques. LAB Company 2024/2025 Season / LAB Company / Our 2024/2025 Season Company MEET THE ARTISTS LOS ANGELES BALLET Repertoire Learn about the comprehensive and varied seasons of Los Angeles Ballet since its debut in 2006. Repertoire includes stunning classical ballets, exceptional stagings of Balanchine repertory, and relevant works by many of today’s most innovative dance-makers. VIEW REPERTOIRE LOS ANGELES BALLET 2024/2025 Season This season includes a beloved fairy tale Cinderella , an experimental outdoor artist collaboration, the return of a critically acclaimed original by LAB Artistic Director Melissa Barak, and the Los Angeles holiday favorite, The Nutcracker . Subscriptions and Single Tickets on Sale Now! DOWNLOAD SEASON BROCHURE

A few weeks ago, as I sat in Walt Disney Concert Hall for a concert by the New York Philharmonic, I mused to my companion that – in our 60s – we were some of the youngest people there. That isn’t news. But this is: the much-lamented “graying” of the audience for classical music, opera and dance seems to have missed Los Angeles Ballet. Los Angeles Ballet's "NextWaveLA" May 31, 2012 CultureSpotLA by Penny Orloff May 31, 2012 | By Penny Orloff Category: Theater and Dance A few weeks ago, as I sat in Walt Disney Concert Hall for a concert by the New York Philharmonic, I mused to my companion that – in our 60s – we were some of the youngest people there. That isn’t news. But this is: the much-lamented “graying” of the audience for classical music, opera and dance seems to have missed Los Angeles Ballet. I looked around the lobby of Santa Monica’s Broad Stage as the audience assembled for the final performance of LAB’s “NextWaveLA,” a program of four – count ’em, four – world premieres by some of the brightest lights in contemporary dance. The presence of a few other silverhaired old dames kept me from feeling completely out of place among a vociferous throng largely composed of teens and 20-somethings, madly twittering on smartphones. LAB’s artistic directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary have commissioned new works in every year of the company’s six-year existence. Two years ago, they offered “NewWaveLA” – a wildly successful program of four world premieres. Attracting hordes of young dance aficionados weaned on TV dance shows, the sold-out shows necessitated adding performances to accommodate the demand for tickets. Capitalizing on that success, this season Christensen and Neary presented a similar production featuring pieces by Kitty McNamee, Sonya Tayeh, Josie Walsh and Stacey Tookey. “NextWaveLA” opened with McNamee’s “Colony,” to music of Anna Clyne. This mesmerizing work utilizes traditional elements of classical ballet in surprisingly unique combinations. A large, synchronous group moves in disciplined lines and circles, giving way to a quasi-traditional pas de deux… singly or in pairs or trios, characters conform to the group or risk ostracism. Six-year LAB veteran Kelly Ann Sloan offers a fiercely dramatic performance reminiscent of her brilliant work in LAB’s third-season “The Evangelist.” Woven through and beyond McNamee’s piece is a melancholy statement about the danger of individuality. Conformity may confine and chafe, but, in dancing to the beat of a different drummer, one risks a lonely life outside the safety of the circle. Kudos to McNamee. It takes courage to swim against the tide. “Duets in the act of —” is Tayeh’s third world premiere for LAB. Arguably one of the most innovative of contemporary choreographers, Tayeh uses her highly personal dance vocabulary to illustrate subtle layers of desire, action and memory as four couples explore the universal conflicts of love partnerships, to music of Olafur Arnalds. One gradually senses that each couple represents but one aspect of a single relationship. Company principal ballerina Allyssa Bross contorts in “the act of cold desperation,” struggling to hold on to an indifferent and increasingly repelled lover, danced by Zheng Hua Li. This duet morphs into “the act of artificial seduction,” as Julia Cinquemani manipulates Vincent Adams with an elastic sensuality. The parting lovers – now represented by Molly Flippen and Nicolas de la Vega – briefly remember the good times in an “act of fleeting nostalgia,” before “the act of false ego,” danced by Kate Highstrete (alternating with company principal Allynne Noelle) and Alexander Castillo, ultimitely destroys any chance of reconciliation. Tayeh brings all four couples together in a blazing finale suggestive of her groundbreaking work on the hit TV show, “So You Think You Can Dance.” After an intermission, the curtain opens on “Sirens,” from last year’s LAB choreographic workshop, by returning choreographer Walsh. Formerly an international ballerina, Walsh borrows from the 150-year tradition of the great supernatural Romantic ballets, in which female nature-spirits captivate and charm unsuspecting young men. A master of the narrative story ballet, she imbues every smallest gesture with meaning as she creates a watery matrix where nine Sirens seduce five hapless mariners onto the rocks. This is a highly complex work, and Walsh’s dancers are to be congratulated for superb ensemble work. The women’s corps de ballet exhibit their acclaimed precision and unity throughout; and the men’s ensemble, led by Nicolas de la Vega, is uniformly excellent. Composer Paul Rivera Jr. contributes crashing waves, Siren songs, creaking ship’s timbers and other sound effects woven through a driving, custom-designed rock score. The program ends with Tookey’s “Be Still,” to music of Matthew Banks and Johann Johannsson. Emmy-nominated for her work on “So You Think You Can Dance,” Tookey has synthesized a sui generis style incorporating ballet, jazz and contemporary dance. Largely abstract, her first work for LAB explores the human interaction with Time as both element and concept. “We are always faced with the inevitability of Time running out,” she says in the program notes. “We crave that perfect moment when we’re completely present and time stands still.” Her dancers appear trapped in the inexorable ticking of the clock; legs seem to describe the eternal pendulum; Ben Pilat’s lighting contracts, compressing and squeezing the dancers as the hourglass runs out. Bross, Li and Flippen sustain the dramatic tension of balancing on the razor’s edge of this extraordinary work of art. Highly effective original costumes for all four pieces are by LAB resident designer Kanique Thomas. Pilat’s sensational lighting design emerges as a character in each dance. —Penny Orloff, Culture Spot LA DOWNLOAD PDF Home / News / New Item

Los Angeles Ballet ended its benchmark 10th season in June as the first American company to dance Frederick Ashton’s distinctively intimate and poetic “Romeo and Juliet.” Unfortunately, that season left the company fiscally overextended, so the 11th season, which opened Saturday, has cutbacks in the roster and the repertory. Los Angeles Ballet At the Top of its Form October 20, 2016 Los Angeles Times by Lewis Segal Los Angeles Ballet ended its benchmark 10th season in June as the first American company to dance Frederick Ashton’s distinctively intimate and poetic “Romeo and Juliet.” Unfortunately, that season left the company fiscally overextended, so the 11th season, which opened Saturday, has cutbacks in the roster and the repertory. That’s disappointing, of course, but the situation forced artistic directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary to capitalize on their bedrock artistic strengths in an invigorating program at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. From Christensen’s Danish birthright came August Bournonville’s antique Pas de Six and Tarantella from “Napoli.” From Neary’s career at New York City Ballet came an authoritative staging of George Balanchine’s wondrous “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.” The directors’ longstanding commitment to new work brought Canadian modernist Aszure Barton’s quirky, challenging “Untouched” to the program too. The celebratory Bournonville divertissement began with a classical abstraction of folklore and then unleashed a nonstop barrage of bouncy, heel-and-toe folk steps. Technical strain from the women and hard landings from the men marred the opening section. But those shortcomings soon yielded to spot-on contributions from the excellent Julia Cinquemani and Kenta Shimizu, as well as Javier Moya Romero and Madeline Houk (replacing the injured Allyssa Bross), plus a stellar newcomer, Tigran Sargsyan, able to project Bournonville style effortlessly at opera house scale. The “Napoli” excerpt also confirmed the growing importance of Dustin True, a versatile soloist previously seen in subsidiary roles but given major assignments in all three works Saturday. In the Bournonville and Barton pieces, you could admire his skill and spirit without feeling he’d outclassed his colleagues. But in the “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” opposite Elizabeth Claire Walker (replacing Bross), the almost contemptuous force and sensuality of his dancing made it impossible to watch anyone else — even Shimizu and Cinquemani, efficient if subdued in their duet. In a tribute to his friendship with the composer, Balanchine initially reshuffled soloists and small ensembles, then explored two moody, intricate duets before launching a folk-accented finale requiring extraordinary precision from the whole cast. It is one of the prime neoclassic creations of the 20th century and, discounting a few lapses in stamina, the Los Angeles Ballet performance delivered its greatness impressively. Crammed with musical and movement eccentricity, Barton’s 2010 “Untouched” looked at the tensions between group identity and individual expression. For much of the work’s length, the title proved prophetic: Everyone danced in juxtaposition but with no contact. And even when fleeting interactions occurred, the participants remained untouched in a fundamental sense: locked in their own pain and processes. With everyone wearing Fritz Masten’s floral prints, the piece evoked an upscale party at which everyone expected relationships to form but nobody really connected. Along the way, newcomer Leah McCall dominated the stage in a dramatic solo, and Bianca Bulle endured partnering assaults stoically, but everyone in the 12-member cast took to Barton’s twisty, wiggly, off-kilter style as if ballet dancing always incorporated such oddities. Nicole Pearce designed the claustrophobic set (borrowed from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago). Obviously, few would rejoice at Los Angeles Ballet’s cutbacks. But the company’s value stayed resplendent Saturday with no need for more of anything — expect possibly live music. Indeed, this is why we need these dancers in Los Angeles, not for hand-me-down stagings of Russian warhorses but for sustaining the living legacy of modernism (even 19th-century modernism) that has distinguished it for the last decade. The L.A. Ballet program will visit other Southland venues in weeks to come; no doubt, other audiences will see what the Alex audience witnessed: an invaluable community resource suffering growing pains, perhaps, but still near the top of its game. ------------ Los Angeles Ballet In Redondo Beach: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd. In Westwood: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 29 at Royce Hall, UCLA Tickets: $29.50-$104 Info: (310) 998-7782, www.losangelesballet.org Follow The Times’ arts team @culturemonster. ALSO An ode to an avant-garde Japanese dance legend USC celebrates the opening of a $46-million building for dance 40 years of Martin Scorsese movies, mashed up as a concert-musical READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE Home / News / New Item

Los Angeles Ballet presents a company of outstanding dancers from local communities and around the world. LAB dance artists master classical as well as contemporary techniques. Lilly Fife Hometown Westfield, IN Seasons with LAB 2021/2022, 2022/2023, 2023/2024, 2024/2025 Lilly trained in her hometown at Central Indiana Academy of Dance and then went on to Boston Ballet as a trainee. After a year she went to Charlotte Ballet and spent 2 years as an apprentice. Lilly has danced with LAB since 2021.

Memoryhouse, Melissa Barak's first full evening length ballet, choreographed to the 2002 Max Richter album of the same name, was performed at Broadstage in Santa Monica for three nights, June 15-17, 2023, as the concluding pieces of Barak's first season as Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Ballet. Review: The Los Angeles Ballet Steps Out With Barak’s MemoryHouse July 5, 2023 Forbes Tom Teicholz Memoryhouse , Melissa Barak's first full evening length ballet, choreographed to the 2002 Max Richter album of the same name, was performed at Broadstage in Santa Monica for three nights, June 15-17, 2023, as the concluding pieces of Barak's first season as Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Ballet . Memoryhouse is a work whose subject is the Holocaust – however, it is not a narrative account of any one person's experience, nor does it try to render specific occurrences, rather it is a work that uses a series of vignettes (or scenes or movements) to convey a spectrum of Jewish experience during the Holocaust. In my conversations with Barak, both while in rehearsal, and then on stage following the Friday night performance, she shared some of her inspiration and process regarding Memoryhouse . She first heard the Max Richter album years ago, and it stayed with her. "It's so beautiful. It's very haunting. It's very dramatic," Barak said. "I don't remember exactly what I was doing or when it occurred to me what the ballet should be about, but as soon as that thought [that the subject would be the Holocaust] came into my head, it was like: Oh my God, this section sounds like a train… another section is very atmospheric [and] it sounds like people in hiding, like hiding beneath shadows and like flickers of light…." I asked Barak why the Holocaust? "I was always very interested in the subject," Barak said. Barak, who is Jewish, added that, although her own family arrived in the United States in the 1920s, escaping from persecution in Russia, none of her direct family were murdered in the Holocaust. Nonetheless, the subject has always captivated her. "Throughout my twenties and thirties," she told me, "I went to Auschwitz. I have been to Berlin... I went to Sachsenhausen. I went to Dachau when I went to Munich. I've been to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. I've been to Hungary. I always made it a point to [visit] museums and camps. I went to the [US] Holocaust Museum in DC very soon after it opened. It's just a subject that I've always been very interested in." So, how did this become a ballet? Barak explained: "Once I've taken everything I know, and I've learned and just surrounded myself [with] the stories... the sights, the feelings, the emotions. Then, [Richter's] music is such a guide… I knew what each movement represented in terms of what scene we're talking about. Then it was just a matter of exploring movement that expressed that time and place." Memoryhouse is compelling and innovative in its mix of traditional, modern, and abstract modes of dance as well as in its use of scrims and projections created by Sebastian Pescheira, and a flexible stage-set created with architect Hagy Belzberg (who is also the architect of Holocaust Museum LA). The projections are integral to Memoryhouse , at times looking like musical notes or Hebrew letters that fall and become rain-like slashes; and, at other times, morphing into birds that take flight; and significantly, at one moment of intensity, the rain of slashes convey the rain of ash in the sky from the incineration of the bodies of the murdered. Spoken word poetry is used in each of the ballet’s two acts – in the first act a poem is recited in Russian by the poet Marina Tsvetaeva herself (there is no translation just the voice, that to me conjured the life of Russian Jews during the Holocaust, at Stalingrad and during the famine siege of St. Petersburg). In the second act, John Cage speaks words in an affectless tone that, to me, spoke to the non-sensical zombie world of the Nazis' factories of death. The dancers stand at times behind the scrim, which can look like a hazy screen with rectangular cut outs. At moments, it creates distance from the audience – as if they are not just in a different time but on a different planet, be it in the ghetto, or on the trains, or in the camps. It's very arresting and conveys the various moods of alienation, aloneness, danger, and even adds a level of ominous foreboding. Although the ballet is abstract, the human mind is always striving to find meaning and impose a narrative. In the first half of the ballet as the scenes build, one after another, I imagined the families that existed before the war, their lives in the ghettos, their transport on the trains, and in the death camps themselves- it was an emotional experience. The dramatic first act break left the audience breathless. Memoryhouse signals a dazzling creative accomplishment for Barak, in what has already been an accomplished career. Barak is an LA native who attended Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences from seventh to 11th Grade, while training at Westside Ballet. At a young age, Barak's mother took her to the ballet and put her in ballet classes. Even then, Barak says, "I saw myself both as a dancer performing, and I also was constantly creating ballets in my head." Barak spent two years in the School of American Ballet, before being accepted in 1998 into New York City Ballet (NYCB), the house that Balanchine built. Mr. B. had passed away in 1983 but under the leadership of Peter Martins, the ballet masters were still Balanchine trained, and some of the Balanchine ballerinas such as Merrill Ashley were still working with the company. It was a "very high standard," Barak says of NYCB. "The athleticism and the artistry that was expected of you…. You had to dance fast, move fast, move with grace and precision… A lot was expected of us every day." Ats 18, Barak was part of part of the inaugural class of Peter Martin's choreography workshop. Martins was impressed and "had his eye on her for other choreographic opportunities." So, when the Choreographic Institute began in 2000, she was invited to do a new piece. In 2006, Barak joined Los Angeles Ballet as a dancer, and in 2013 she launched her own company, Barak Ballet. In 2022, she was appointed Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Ballet. Barak's deep understanding of being a dancer informs her role as Artistic Director. "For me as a director, it's important to stay true to who I am," Barak told me. "I like talent. My focus is to find dancers who, when they dance, it's full energy, full passion, full dedication… who bring that athleticism and artistry to the mix. Musicality is important to me [as is] a work ethic... It's fun to guide a dancer to their full potential." Memoryhouse features dancers from Barak Ballet and from Los Angeles Ballet. In some scenes the dancers are in flat shoes, in others in ballet slippers. The mix of movement-styles is Barak's choreographic signature along with a specific emphasis and how the dancers use their arms, at times raised and at times to signal how a duet or group will move as they push, pull, lead, and follow each other. Memoryhouse had specific details that conjured, for me, scenes from the works of Holocaust survivors Imre Kertesz and Primo Levi. In one movement, the dancers move in a group shoulder to shoulder, their heads rolling. This movement reminded me of Hungarian Nobel Prize winner Kertesz's autobiographical novel, Fateless , in which a 14-year-old boy in Auschwitz describes the way the Nazis weaponized boredom, making the inmates stand for countless hours in roll calls, their heads nodding as they tried to stay awake. In a similar fashion, there were several scenes where the dancers were wearing neutral garments made me think of the ruthless depersonalization Levi described in "The Grey Zone" of The Drowned and the Saved. The second act opens in a burst of color with dancers who could be meeting in a bar or cabaret. At first, I thought this might be a pre-war flashback, or a vignette of life lived under false papers. The scenes that follow are different moments of resistance, survival, loss and death. The second act does not land as powerfully as the first and ends abruptly. Maybe that is intentional – perhaps Barak is making us feel the violence of the lives that were interrupted or maybe Barak is expressing the truth that although the War ended, for many the effects of the Holocaust didn’t. Memoryhouse is an emotional, visual, and movement-led journey, an experience that I hope will be performed and seen by many for years to come. Memoryhouse is significant not only because of its subject matter but also because of what it represents in terms of Barak's vision for the Los Angeles Ballet. In my conversation with Barak, we discussed both how she hopes to make the Los Angeles Ballet stand out, and how to make Los Angeles as much a home for dance as it has been for film, TV, and more recently the visual arts. At the base level, Dance in Los Angeles needs to foster a better infrastructure for dancers and companies to thrive. Greater financial and philanthropic support is certainly a top priority. This production of Memoryhouse was made possible by the support of The David and Janet Polak Foundation but more funders and sponsors are needed. On a more nuts and bolts level. The Los Angeles Ballet would benefit from having a permanent place of residency for the company’s performances, as well as a real home for ballet companies. Los Angeles has no real Disney Hall for dance, or dedicated dance performance space like The Joyce Theater in New York. Barak feels that to stand out, the Los Angeles Ballet will need to take risks and make bold choices regarding new work. It is a formula that over the last two decades has made the LA Phil the premier orchestra for new work, and that has drawn critics, artists, as well audience and supporters to Los Angeles. Barak has a vision for Los Angeles Ballet that will mix the new with the classic and that will focus on the dancers. However, without audience attendance and individual, corporate, and philanthropic support, Barak and all other dance companies in Los Angeles cannot succeed. All those who care about dance and want LA dance to thrive for the next generation, need to show up, however they can. The power and artistry of Barak’s Memoryhouse reminds us, as Balanchine said, "Dance is important and significant – yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure." READ ARTICLE AT SOURCE Home / News / New Item

In January and February of this year, Colleen Neary is traveling by invitation to Orlando, Florida to set George Balanchine’s Agon and stage his Serenade and Who Cares? for Orlando Ballet. Colleen Neary in Orlando January 31, 2007 Company News from the Staff at LAB In January and February of this year, Colleen Neary is traveling by invitation to Orlando, Florida to set George Balanchine’s Agon and stage his Serenade and Who Cares? for Orlando Ballet. Home / News / New Item