Chautauqua School of Dance students will show that they can do more than ballet at the season’s final Student Gala.
The performance at 2:30 p.m. Sunday in the Amphitheater will be a culmination of the students’ summer work.
Apprentice, Festival and Workshop II dancers will show their versatility, performing everything from a George Balanchine work to hip-hop.
When Sasha Janes couldn’t think of a title for his new ballet, he did what any stumped choreographer would do: He left it up to a bunch of 5-year-olds.
The North Carolina Dance Theatre associate artistic director put the naming of his new work into the tiny hands of a Children’s School class of 5-year-olds. As a father of three young children, Janes was excited to involve kids in his production.
“They have great imaginations,” he said.
The quirky, comedic ballet, danced to a jubilant score by Haydn, is part of NCDT’s performance with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Grant Cooper at 8:15 p.m. Saturday in the Amphitheater.
Click here for an interactive timeline of Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux’s 30-year dance through Chautauqua. Timeline by Rabab Al-Sharif.
Dancers in the Chautauqua School of Dance get the opportunity to take a leap in choreographers’ ballet slippers.
Apprentice and festival dancers are accustomed to dancing in others’ pieces, but the Choreographic Workshop gives the students an opportunity to create their own works.
Students interested in creating a piece for the workshop went through a selection process with dance faculty. The faculty chose 12 pieces to be shown at the free public 4 p.m. Choreographic Performance today in Carnahan-Jackson Dance Studio.
One came to George Balanchine a teenager and was transformed into a star of the New York City Ballet. The other came to Balanchine a star of the Paris Opera Ballet.
Both will forever work tirelessly to keep Balanchine’s legacy alive.
Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and Patricia McBride will tell Chautauquans about their lives with Balanchine — as they refer to the American ballet master with respect and admiration.
The Chautauqua Dance Circle will host the lecture from the two Balanchine dancers at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Christ.
Marc Parnell and Kylee Witchey-Clements cross the finish line as the first female and male finishers, respectively, in the run portion of the annual Old First Night Run/Walk/Swim Saturday. All names and times are courtesy of the Chautauqua Sports Club. Photos by Adam Birkan.
At Wednesday’s weekly Trustees Porch Discussion on the Hultquist Center porch, the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, director of the Department of Religion, spoke with Chautauquans about “Chautauqua as an Interfaith Community.”
When Campbell arrived at Chautauqua about 12 years ago, the Institution had just begun to “put its toe in the water” of becoming an Abrahamic community, with outreach to the Jewish community.
That was not difficult, she said, because there were already many Jews living on the grounds.
“I think one of the great traits of Chautauqua as an interfaith community is that we are a lived-in community, not just a dinner party that people have to introduce each other to people of other faiths,” she said. “People live here and live together. I think it’s a much deeper and profound way in which to begin an interfaith knowledge of one another.”
With origins in the small town of Camden, Maine, the global innovation network PopTech could be considered a distant cousin of Chautauqua Institution, said Andrew Zolli, the organization’s executive director and curator.
“We bring the world’s creative community to this small town in much the same way that Chautauqua brings some of the world’s best thinkers and leaders to its community,” he said.
Friday morning, Zolli will close Week Six’s lecture platform on “Digital Identity” at 10:45 a.m in the Amphitheater. His lecture will focus on the intersection between our digital selves and real world outcomes.
At 19, Jon Lehrer, founder of LehrerDance, took his first dance class on a dare.
After living in Queens his entire life, Lehrer decided to head upstate to attend the State University of New York at Buffalo, because it offered many programs, and he had no idea what he wanted to study.
During his freshman year, he started to date a dancer. She bet Lehrer he couldn’t get an A in a dance class.
“She finally said, ‘OK, if you think it’s so darn easy, why don’t you take a dance class,’” he said.
Lehrer will talk about his transition in a lecture, “From Athlete to Dancer: the Story of LehrerDance,” hosted by the Chautauqua Dance Circle at 3 p.m. today in Smith Wilkes Hall.
Generally, a night at the ballet obliges a certain air of poised sophistication, but North Carolina Dance Theatre in residence is throwing a shindig that calls for hand clappin’ and knee slappin’.
The company will perform Artistic Director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux’s 2003 bluegrass inspired ballet “Shindig” at the annual “Dance Innovations” program at 8:15 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater.
The raucous hoedown is complete with live accompaniment by Greasy Beans, an Asheville, N.C., based bluegrass string band.
The piece is always accompanied by live music, said NCDT Associate Artistic Director Sasha Janes, and it has become an essential element.
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