Ballet West is staying in the blockbuster groove for its upcoming 2024-2025 season. After a 60th anniversary edition that brought record attendance not only for the season but also for three major productions, Ballet West is poised to continue the momentum with four Utah premieres, the return of Cinderella, and the 80th anniversary of The Nutcracker.
The company passed the 80,000 milestone for attendance last season, propelled by a new record for Dracula and Swan Lake, which became the highest-grossing non-Nutcracker production in company history, along with the The Nutcracker’s highest gross revenue ever. The nation’s ninth largest ballet company — an impressive statistic given that the Salt Lake City metropolitan area is ranked 41st in population — is also on solid financial footing. The company enters the new season on the heels of four consecutive years with a balanced budget. Meanwhile, the company’s operating budget has grown by 33% over five years while the subscriber base has increased by 10% for a third consecutive year.
Photo: Beau Pearson.
The blockbuster label also applies to the music for this year’s productions, highlighted by the Ballet West orchestra, led by Jared Oaks. Among the composers featured this year are Górecki, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky.
Fitting for the Halloween season, the Utah premiere of Jekyll & Hyde (Oct. 25 – Nov. 2), choreographed by Val Caniparoli, is a psychological thriller for mature audiences, based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). In 2020, the work received its world premiere in Helsinki, with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. Kansas City Ballet gave a North American premiere last year. The score features music by Krzysztof Penderecki, Chopin, Henryk Górecki, Wojciech Kilar and Henryk Wieniawski. Caniparoli, who was inspired by the monsters of classic horror films from his boyhood days, said in a 2023 interview with KCUR-FM radio, “I think the biggest monsters in modern day are the ones you don’t expect … Look at the news: The ones that commit the most heinous crimes are those that you don’t expect. They don’t look like the monsters you see on film.”
Photo Credit: Beau Pearson.
Opening the following week is Pictures at an Exhibition (Nov. 8 – 16), a trio of ballets featuring George Balanchine’s Serenade and two Utah premieres: Alexei Ratmansky’s suite of dances to Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Tony-Award winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Vivaldi-inspired Within the Golden Hour. Balanchine’s Serenade, based on Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, premiered in 1935, the first dance work Balanchine set in the U.S. A landmark piece, Serenade has the order of the music’s final two movements reversed, so that the dance ends with the Elegy, instead of the light-hearted Russian dance. Premiered in 2014 by the New York City Ballet, Ratmansky’s Pictures is set for 10 dancers to the original piano score for the music and features projections of Wassily Kandinsky’s Color Study Squares with Concentric Circles. Ratmansky explained his creative process: “When I started to work on this music, there were stories and characters, preset,” he said in a video created by Wiener Staatsballett in 2021. “For example, the second musical number is the ‘gnome,’ which is a very angry little magical creature that does bad things. So casting a beautiful prima ballerina [in that role], there is an irony to it. But she has to find her ‘inner gnome,’ so to speak, and release this negative energy, or imagine this negative energy. That’s interesting to see, when the dancers are pushed out of their comfort zone.”
Premiered by the San Francisco Ballet in 2008. Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour features music by Vivaldi and Ezio Bosso. It is a natural companion to Pictures, as Wheeldon sets seven scenes like miniature paintings. In an earlier published interview with Cheryl Ossola, Wheeldon described several scenes: “There’s one part that sounds really Celtic; we call it the ‘Hebrides pas de deux’… It feels like two people in a big, barren, beautiful, poetic place, and they’re alone and there’s nothing around except for a little white cottage in the distance and a couple of moo-cows.” Regarding a waltz duet, Wheeldon said, “I think of a Fellini-esque scene with the couple dancing around the Trevi Fountain, and she’s in a purple polka-dot dress with heels and a big ’do’.”
Last year, Ballet West’s The Nutcracker (Dec. 6 – 28) brought more than 50,000 people to the audiences. This year is historically significant, as the production, created by Ballet West founder Willam Christensen, turns 80 — which was the nation’s first of this holiday classic. As noted in The Utah Review’s feature last year, commemorating the company’s 60th anniversary: For many in Salt Lake City, the greatest source of pride has been Mr. C’s efforts to make the first American version of The Nutcracker, which he transported from its San Francisco premiere in 1944 to the University of Utah in the 1950s and eventually to its permanent spot in the Ballet West repertoire. Ballet West will give Ogden audiences the first look of this year’s production during Thanksgiving weekend (Nov. 29 – 30). The company also has created a website documenting the history of the Ballet West production, which recently was designated as the first Utah Living Historic Landmark by the Utah Legislature.
Premiered in 1948, Sir Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella (Feb.7-16) leavens the classic fairy tale of romance and magic with comedy, set to the Prokofiev score, and it returns to Utah, featuring new sets and costumes from the London Royal Ballet.
The music of Stravinsky serves as the choreographic canvas for The Rite of Spring (April 4 – 12). Nicolo Fonte’s The Rite of Spring will be joined by Balanchine’s Apollo (1928) and the Utah premiere of Jiří Kylián’s Symphony of Psalms, featuring chorus and orchestra. Fonte set this particular production to coincide with the centennial of the original Rite of Spring. An interesting footnote: Adam Sklute, Ballet West artistic director, was involved during his time with the Joffrey Ballet, when in 1987 that company reconstructed the original choreography from photos and archival materials and toured it internationally including a performance at the same theater in Paris where the 1913 premiere led to a street riot. Premiered in 1978 by The Nederlands Dans Theater, Kylián’s work is inspired by Stravinsky’s Choral Symphony, based on three selections from the Psalms of David, which the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned in 1930 to mark its golden anniversary. In an earlier published interview, Kylián said, “My idea wasn’t religious, in the strict sense of the word, but rather my reading attempts to follow the musical structure, evocative of ritual, whose rhythms channel a flood of emotion and pathos.”
Balanchine’s Apollo also has historical significance for Ballet West and its legacy. As noted in the anniversary feature at The Utah Review, Mr. C (Christensen, as he was familiarly known) recalled when Balanchine was in the Metropolitan, they had dedicated the season to presenting works by Stravinsky. Lew, his brother, was chosen to be the first Apollo for the American premiere. “When the concert was over — Stravinsky was conducting–he got up on stage and thanked Lew for being Apollo,” he recalled. “Lew was near tears: to go from Brigham City to being thanked by the great Stravinsky for doing Apollo in the Met during the big Stravinsky season. That’s a long ways, and I’ve often thought when I had San Francisco — when I was there, that was the second highest position to the Met in America, in fact, sometimes we’d top them. I thought, ‘I don’t know how I got from Brigham City to the San Francisco Opera with Larry Steinberg, Bruno Walter, and all the guys I was working with, I couldn’t understand it. I don’t yet.’” It is important to note that Mr. C was 85 at the time, when he recollected this in a 1987 interview.
Photo Credit: Beau Pearson.
In addition to the main season, the popular Family Classics Series returns with Aladdin (March 28-29, including a Spanish-only narration evening performance), conceived and produced by Sklute and choreographed by Ballet West Principal Rehearsal Director Pamela Robinson-Harris with Peggy Dolkas. Performed by Ballet West II and members of the Frederick Quinney Lawson Ballet West Academy, this production is designed for families and children looking for an introduction to ballet with a shortened run-time and narration.
Photo Credit: Beau Pearson.
The main season and Family Classics Series productions will take place at the Capitol Theatre in downtown Salt Lake City. Ballet West also will debut Works from Within (May 14 – 17), a programing concept featuring an exclusive showcase of world premieres with Ballet West dancers as choreographers and performers. This production will take place at the Jeanné Wagner Theatre in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts.
For more information about the season, subscriptions and tickets for individual productions, see the Ballet West website.