Ashley C. Wheater, Artistic Director of The Joffrey Ballet, announces the company’s 2012-2013 season, launching in the fall with a mixed repertory program featuring James Kudelka’s Pretty BALLET and Ji?í Kylián’s Forgotten Land, along with the return of Kurt Jooss’ anti-war masterpiece The Green Table, celebrating its 80th Anniversary, October 17 – 28, 2012. Following will be the 25th Anniversary production of Robert Joffrey’s beloved The Nutcracker, December 7 – 27, 2012. In the New Year, the Joffrey presents a winter mixed repertory program featuring a Chicago Premiere by Stanton Welch and the return of Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs and Jerome Robbins’ Interplay, February 13 – 24, 2013. The season is completed in the spring with the return of Lar Lubovitch’s acclaimed Othello, presented in honor of the choreographer’s 70th birthday, April 24 – May 5, 2013.
Continuing The Joffrey Ballet’s mission to provide the highest level of performance quality, the season will feature live orchestral accompaniment by the Chicago Sinfonietta conducted by Scott Speck, Music Director of The Joffrey Ballet. All performances will take place in the Joffrey’s home venue, the historic Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University, in downtown Chicago at 50 East Congress Parkway.
“Recently, the documentary film Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance was released across the United States,” noted Wheater. “Throughout its history, The Joffrey Ballet has celebrated the broad diversity of our art form, embracing the classical and modern, abstract and narrative, traditional and avant-garde. Underlying this eclecticism is a love of excellence, and, always, a deep regard for the human spirit. This exploration continues in 2012-2013, as we present a wide range of work, created new for the Company or drawn from the best of the past.”
The Joffrey’s 2012-2013 season launches with a fall mixed bill of work by three choreographers portraying and exploring their passionate beliefs through dance. James Kudelka’s Pretty BALLET returns to the stage after the Joffrey presented its World Premiere in 2010. Set in four movements to Bohuslav Martin?’s Symphony No. 2, Pretty BALLET creates a pastiche of different moods with small ensembles that continuously shift in organic but unexpected ways. Kudelka’s demanding phrase work and intricate spatial patterns explore the subject of ballet itself as a balance between romantic ideas and industrious principles. Also on the program will be Ji?í Kylián’s 1981 work Forgotten Land, not performed by the Joffrey since its Company Premiere in 1985. With music by Benjamin Britten (2013 will be the 100th anniversary of Britten’s birth), this dance was inspired by a painting of women on a beach by the Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch. With a motif of pulsing, circular movements reminiscent of the waves, the work invokes treasured memories of lost homelands, lost lovers and lost time. The fall program closes with German choreographer Kurt Jooss’ seminal anti-war ballet The Green Table. Originally choreographed in 1932, the Joffrey is proud to present this work in honor of its 80th Anniversary. The Joffrey Ballet was the first American company to dance The Green Table, a Company Premiere in 1967. Subtitled "A Dance of Death in Eight Scenes” and set to music by F.A. Cohen, The Green Table is a commentary on the futility of war and the horrors it causes. The fall program is presented October 17 – 28, 2012.
In 2012 The Joffrey Ballet celebrates the 25th Anniversary of Robert Joffrey’s The Nutcracker, Chicago’s most popular holiday tradition and America’s #1 Nutcracker. Originally created in 1987, each year The Nutcracker incorporates the full Joffrey company plus 118 young dancers from the greater Chicagoland area to tell the heart-warming story of Clara and her adventures with the Nutcracker Prince and other enchanted characters. Last year, Joffrey’s Nutcracker was recognized with the Goldstar National Nutcracker Award (affectionately nicknamed “The Nutty”) as the “Best Loved Nutcracker” in the United States. This year Robert Joffrey’s The Nutcracker is presented in an engagement of 21 performances, December 7 – 27, 2012, with additional Silver Anniversary celebration plans to be announced at a later time.
