USC Dance Company performs classic ballet Firebird during Fall Concert November 10-11
October 19, 2016
The USC Dance Company will perform the enchanting one-act ballet Firebird as they present their Fall Concert, November 10-11 at the Koger Center for the Arts.
Show time is 7:30pm nightly. Admission for the concert is $12 for students, $16 for University faculty/staff, military or seniors 60+, and $18 for the general public. Tickets can be purchased by phone at 803-777-5112 or online atwww.kogercenterforthearts.com.
USC Dance Artistic Director Susan Anderson has restaged the Firebird ballet after the iconic original choreography by Michel Fokine, who originally created the work in 1910 for the Ballet Russes. Set to a score commissioned specifically for the ballet by Igor Stravinsky (his first popular success), Firebird merges several Russian folk tales into a story about the mythical Firebird. When a prince gets lost in a mysterious forest, he discovers and tries to capture the magical creature, who acts as his protector when he finds himself threatened by the evil wizard Koschei and his unearthly minions.
“From the minute the music begins until the end of the ballet, you’re sitting on the edge of your seat,” says Anderson. “There’s just so much happening.”
This is the fourth time Professor Anderson has staged the ballet, which she says she’s had a “love affair” with throughout her career. “I’ve updated the choreography completely for this restaging,” she says. “I’ve held on to the style and texture of the original choreography, and have used some of the same movements, but most of it is my own. It’s been brought into the 21st Century.”
The original, Anderson says, was a key work in bringing ballet into the modern era. “When it was originally done by the Ballet Russes in Paris, it was a transitional time in the world of choreography,” she says. “Fokine was beginning to explore more modernistic, full-body movement and use of the floor. It was an experiment into contemporary movement, but still in that time where the tutu was still on stage.”
University ballet instructor Madeline Jazz Harvey says her original work, Komorebi, is a work that has been created in response to increasingly violent times. “The dancers engaged with members of the community who were personally affected by violence, who shared their stories of grief and survival.” The title of the piece, chosen by the dancers, is a Japanese term meaning “sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees.”
Harvey has set the work to Max Bruch’s cello-and-piano arrangement of Kol Nidrei, a prayer of atonement and forgiveness most often associated with the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. The music will be performed live for the performances.
“For the students, this process has been about discovering their unique artistic voices and understanding how to allow their own personal experiences to inform someone else’s choreography,” says Harvey. “We hope the audience will be equally inspired to weave their own stories into the piece.”
George Balanchine’s La Source, set to the 19th-century music of composer Léo Delibes, is a delightfully faithful homage to French classical ballet, described by The New York Times as “a pure-dance divertissement…[that is] sublime on its own terms.” The ballet is being staged by USC ballet instructor Stacey Calvert, a former soloist with The New York City Ballet.
For more information on the USC Dance Company Fall Concert or the dance program at the University of SC, contact Kevin Bush by phone at 803.777.9353 or via email at [email protected].
