The Jacobs Opera and Ballet Theater will present its Spring Ballet showcase beginning at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Musical Arts Center. There will be two additional shows at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
The Spring Ballet will feature three different ballets, including the world premiere of a new ballet by choreographer and IU professor of ballet Sasha Janes titled “ONE.” The other ballets on the program are influential 20th century ballet choreographer George Balanchine’s “Pas de Dix” and contemporary New York City-based ballet choreographer Jessica Lang’s “Her Door to the Sky.”
Throughout each performance, the dancers onstage will be accompanied by Jacobs School of Music’s Symphony Orchestra, conducted by professional orchestra conductor Judith Yan. The ballet is also double cast, featuring all 68 students enrolled in the ballet major program within Jacobs, but spread out so about a third of the students perform each show.
Sarah Wroth, chair of the Jacobs ballet department, said the Spring Ballet is a mixed repertory program, featuring both classical and contemporary ballet styles.
“...It means that we get the opportunity to push the dancers’ dancing style in several ways,” Wroth said. “We do that in this evening with three very different ballets that are great for the audience to enjoy.”
The first piece on the program, Balanchine’s “Pas de Dix,” originally premiered in 1955 and has a duration of about 20 minutes. The ballet features 10 solos, a duet with two women and a quartet with four men.
The music the Symphony Orchestra will play throughout “Pas de Dix” features excerpts from “Raymonda,” an Alexander Glazunov ballet score.
Maya Jackson, a senior studying ballet and business studies, will perform the principal role in “Pas de Dix” Saturday evening. This is her last ballet with Jacobs before she graduates.
“I feel like ‘Pas de Dix’ is very unique in the setup,” Jackson said. “It’s more classical of Balanchine’s work. It’s very nice because ‘Pas de Dix’ means ‘dance for 10,’ so there’s 10 couples on stage, and there’s movements where we all get to dance together.”
The program’s next piece is Lang’s “Her Door to the Sky,” which has a duration of about 21 minutes. The ballet piece originally premiered in 2016 at the Ted Shawn Theater at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts to honor the artwork of Georgia O’Keeffe, an American modernist painter.
The performance will feature 10 dancers dancing in contemporary ballet style, meant to evoke the same poetic feeling of O’Keeffe’s work. The Symphony Orchestra will play music composed by Benjamin Britten, a mid-century English composer.
Cordelia Leff, a junior studying ballet and accounting, will dance in “Her Door to the Sky” Friday and Saturday night. She is excited to showcase the work she has put in and watch the other cast perform it in the matinee. Leff did not know much about the piece before the semester began, but fell in love with the piece as she learned more about it.
“The music is wonderful. The sets are really cool because that’s a just a huge part of the ballet,” Leff said.
The third and final piece is Janes’ “ONE,” which will be premiering for the first time Friday night. Janes is a professor of music (ballet) at the Jacobs School of Music and has been working all semester long with students, faculty and designers to create the piece in Bloomington.
“ONE” has three movements that follow the music of American composer Michael Torke’s “Color Pieces,” which includes the movements “Green,” “Purple” and “Ecstatic Orange.” Lasting about 30 minutes, “One” has taken the music and applied graceful and expressive dance over it, Wroth said.
“It essentially follows a blue individual as they try and find their community,” Wroth said. “So, they intersect with the green group, and then they intersect with the purple group, and they intersect with the ecstatic orange group. And it’s all in this journey.”
Tickets for the Spring Ballet are available for varied prices and discounted to $12 for students.
