Oregon Ballet Theatre unveils world première by Christopher Stowell

 

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Portland will be the hot spot for ballet this coming week, with Oregon Ballet Theatre reprising three much-loved works, and premiering a new work by former Artistic Director Christopher Stowell.

Three of the pieces were created on the dancers of OBT.  Stowell recently returned to choreograph his first new work on the company since leaving that post a year ago. Set to the music of controversial Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, A Second Front employs a cast of 14 dancers, with particularly lovely pas de deux for Haiyan Wu with Chauncey Parsons and Xuan Cheng with Brian Simcoe.

Stowell notes: “For me, underneath the pleasant, lighthearted rhythms of Shostakovich’s ballet suites there lies a powerful sense of irony, a glimpse into both the glorious heights of the Russian upper-class and the dark truth of a society in decay. This tension, this feeling of conflict and danger, is what attracted me to this music and is the starting point of this new work.” That dichotomy of opulence and danger also inspired the costuming and staging. Mark Zappone once again designed the costumes, as he so often has for the company.

 

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Also on tap in this intriguing mixed bill are James Kudelka’s Almost Mozart, chosen for the company’s most recent appearance at the Kennedy Center in the Ballet Across America festival last June, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Liturgy, a profound meditation set to the music of Arvo Pärt which OBT first performed in 2012.

Rounding out the program is Nicolo Fonte’s daring and visually striking Bolero. Former principal dancer Artur Sultanov returns to the stage to partner principal dancer Alison Roper in every performance of Bolero, originally created on the duo in 2008.
 

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For more insight into the recent work of this spunky company, click here for a review of OBT’s first program under new Artistic Director Kevin Irving.

 

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REVEAL opens Saturday, February 22nd, 2014 and runs for 5 performances before closing Saturday, March 1st. For complete show dates and times, visit www.obt.org

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