Pennsylvania Ballet to Present Company Premiere of N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz

Principal Dancer Riolama Lorenzo and former Company
Member Maximilien Baud in Peter Martins’ Barber Violin Concerto.
Photo: Alexander Iziliaev.

Pennsylvania Ballet presents the grand finale of the 2011-2012 Season, the Company premiere of Jerome Robbins’s N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz, with Peter Martins’s Barber Violin Concerto and the World Premiere of Matthew Neenan’s Beside them, they dwell, May 31-June 3, 2012 at the Merriam Theater. Fred Alger Management is the Presenting Sponsor.

“What better way to close our season than with a triple bill that showcases the Company’s diverse strengths,” Artistic Director Roy Kaiser says.

Feel the flavor of the city that never sleeps with Jerome Robbins’s N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz. Robbins’s “ballet in sneakers” celebrates the youth and vitality of the era in which it emerged: the distinctly cool 1950’s. N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz adopts the spirit of Robbins’s renowned musical, West Side Story, with Broadway-style theatricality saturating this series of dances to the music of Robert Prince.

Also on the bill, Peter Martins’s Barber Violin Concerto features two couples, bathed in white, performing a brilliant series of pas de deux. The piece embodies the lyrical movement of Samuel Barber’s inventive score that bridges from an opening adagio to its final scherzo, exploring the dichotomy between classical ballet and modern dance in three movements.

To complete the program, Choreographer in Residence Matthew Neenan mounts his much-anticipated World Premiere, Beside them, they dwell. Neenan’s 13^th commission for the Company, and first since 2009, is set to music by French composer Pierre Boulez, with costumes designed by Christine Darch.

Tickets to N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz are on sale now, with prices starting at $20. Tickets are available online at paballet.org, by phone at 215.893.1999, and in person at the Kimmel Center Box Office.

N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz performances at the Merriam Theater:

• Thursday, May 31 at 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, June 1 at 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, June 2 at 2 p.m.
• Saturday, June 2 at 8 p.m.
• Sunday, June 3 at 2 p.m.

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Steven Weisz

Founder & Editor at The Dance Journal

While not a dancer himself, Weisz’s love for the arts and dance started as a child growing up in New York City. With parents, who were strong supporters of the arts and part of a community with an incredible array of notable artists in music, dance, theater, and fine arts, Weisz’s access and affinity for the performing arts took root. Upon attending college in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-’70s, Weisz started performing as a puppeteer, magician, juggler, and fire eater as a means of supplementing his income. This soon grew into what became Rainbow Promotions Inc., one of the largest entertainment and special events producers in the region. It was here that he began to promote and book dance for major events throughout the city. Many of the dancers he worked within the early days of his company are now major choreographers in Philadelphia. At the same time, Weisz’s interest in computers and the early developments of what is now known as the Internet led him to also start another company, Delaware Valley On Line, which became one of the first regional ISPs. It was this combination of event production, internet development, and event marketing that led him to examine the use of the internet as a means to promote the arts. Dance continued to be a major interest for Weisz and in 2005 he founded PhiladelphiaDANCE.org as a major online resource to promote dance in the city. It was soon after that the Dance Journal was also founded as a way to provide an outlet for writing on a range of topics that encompass the ever-growing and emerging dance community in the region. Weisz continues to run both the non-profit PhiladelphiaDANCE and The Dance Journal on purely a voluntary basis with no income derived from any of his projects. He is also the Director of Graffito Works, an international platform for dancers and performing artists in Europe that creates site specific. More recently, Weisz has expanded his creative endeavors into the realm of photography through the establishment of ArtImagined.photo.

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