Dance Salad Festival
Houston International Dance Coalition’s Dance Salad Festival will be returning to Houston on April 1, 2 & 3, 2010.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 7:30pm
Wortham Center, Cullen Theater, 501 Texas Ave. Houston, Texas
**** Dance Salad Festival is kindly offering TFAA fans a 10% discount on all the tickets. Use promotional code: TFAA2010
Members of Ballet de Lorraine, Nancy, France, performing Les Petites Pieces de Berlin. Choreography by Dominique Bagouet. Photograph by Laurent Philippe
Now celebrating the 15th anniversary season in Houston and the 18th season since its inception in Brussels, Belgium, Dance Salad Festival promises another gathering of world-class performers. Famous in their own countries, the dance companies have won praise from critics and audiences wherever they have toured.
The much anticipated annual Dance Salad Festival returns the week of March 31st to April 3, 2010 beginning with the Choreographers’ Forum in the Brown Auditorium of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston with a reception following. This year, Ben Stevenson, former Artistic Director of the Houston Ballet and currently the Artistic Director of the Texas Ballet Theater (Fort Worth/Dallas), as well as the German choreographer Christian Spuck from Stuttgart Ballet will discuss their work. A beautiful Pas de Deux from Ben Stevenson's newly created choreography From the Corner will premiere in Houston on the opening night of the festival by dancers from the Texas Ballet Theater. Christian Spuck's excerpted version of Return of Ulysses will be presented in Dance Salad Festival by the Royal Ballet of Flanders, Antwerp, Belgium.
Three Evening Performances are scheduled on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 1, 2 and 3, 2010 at 7:30 PM in the Wortham Center’s Cullen Theater. Each curated performance presents a roster of outstanding dancers and choreography from around the world. Among those coming to Houston exclusively for Dance Salad Festival are The Royal Ballet of Flanders, Antwerp, Belgium; Norwegian National Ballet, Oslo, Norway; Ballet de Lorraine, France; Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genéve, Switzerland; Hungarian National Ballet, Hungary; Compañia Nacional de Danza, Mexico; Netherlands Dance Theater; English National Ballet, London; Gelabert Azzopardi Companya de Dansa, Barcelona, Spain; Texas Ballet Theater, Fort Forth, Texas; Jacoby & Pronk, New York/Amsterdam; Gauthier Dance, Stuttgart, Germany; Central Europe Dance Theatre, Budapest, Hungary; and others.
Dance Salad Festival will be the USA debut of one of the leading dance companies in Europe today, the Ballet de Lorraine – Centre Choréographique National (Nancy, France), with the US premiere of Dominique Bagouet’s Les Petites Pièces de Berlin (1988). The ballet will feature music by Gilles Grand and costumes by Dominique Fabregue and William Wilson, commissioned by Montpellier Dance Festival and recreated in 2008. Les Petites Pièces de Berlin is a wonderful choreographic fantasy inspired by Dominique Bagouet’s method of virtuoso composition, which involves the direct creative input of its initial performers, very innovative at the time. The comic and vibrant energy of the piece, set against a brilliantly creative backdrop, takes an audience on a delightful and exciting journey. Dominique Baqouet (1951-1992) studied classical ballet in Cannes at Rosella Hightower’s school and later worked with Maurice Béjart in Brussels. In 1980, he was invited to found the Centre Choréographique Regional de Montpellier and a year later took on the artistic direction of the first Montpellier Dance Festival. Bagouet was a prolific creator – almost 40 pieces in less than 15 years. His death in 1992 raised starkly the problem of preserving and passing on a choreographic legacy that was a landmark in contemporary dance.
Based in Nancy since 1978, in just a few years, Ballet de Lorraine has become one of France’s leading dance companies known for creating strictly contemporary works and giving on average of 70 performances a year. In March 2000, Didier Deschamps was named general manager of the company.
Throughout the week of the Festival there will also be master classes, from intermediate to advanced level, taught by Festival participants at diverse locations throughout the city.
For additional information and to buy tickets online please visit www.dancesalad.org
