Recognized as one of the great dance companies in the world, American Ballet Theatre (ABT) continues its tradition of featuring the most spectacular dancers in the world. Few ballet companies equal ABT for its combination of size, scope, and outreach. Rejoice in the fanfare of ABT dancers’ unusually broad knowledge of styles and athletic prowess that enable them to perform the company’s famously wide-ranging repertoire. You will be swept away by the precision, versatility, and grace that connect the dancers to the passionate parts they play.
Warning: Guns will be fired during the performance of The Green Table.
About the Company
When American Ballet Theatre was launched in the fall of 1939, the aim was to develop a repertoire maintaining the best ballets from the past and to aggressively pursue a vital and innovative future through the creation of new works by gifted young choreographers, wherever they might be found. Through the current artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, and under the previous direction of Lucia Chase, Oliver Smith, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Jane Hermann, the company more than fulfilled that aim. The repertoire, perhaps unmatched in the history of ballet, includes all of the great early full-length ballets and acclaimed contemporary masterpieces such as Airs, Push Comes to Shove and Duets. ABT has commissioned works by all of the great choreographic geniuses of the 20th century: George Balanchine, Antony Tudor, Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, and Twyla Tharp, among others. ABT annually tours the United States . Performing for more than 15 international tours to 42 countries, it is perhaps the most representative American ballet company and has been sponsored by the State Department of the United States on many of these engagements. The company has appeared in a total of 131 cities and has appeared in all 50 of the United States.
Performances at Northrop
1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1989, 1996, 2007
Critic's Comments
"Once in a not too frequent while, there comes along an evening that reminds you why you're in the theatre in the first place, and why dance is not a luxury or a frill but a necessity of life. Such an evening was American Ballet Theatre."
- The Washington Post
“One of the most beautiful sights in dance is American Ballet Theatre in full flight.”
- New York Post
“ABT performed "The Green Table" with a stirring intensity.”
- The Washington Post
Evening's Program
Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes
Choreography: Mark Morris
Staged by: Tina Fehlandt
Music: Virgil Thomson's "Etudes for Piano," performed live.
Costumes by Santo Loquasto
Lighting by Michael Chybowski
This is Mark Morris' valentine to classical ballet. With the echoes of the witty romantic piano etudes performed live, this inventive ballet is pure pleasure. Its playful, neoclassical base is overlaid with gentle witticisms about entrances and exits that have the quality of gathering strength as the piece progresses, surprising the audience with unexpected twists.
Sinatra Suite:
Choreography: Twyla Tharp Staged and Staged by Elaine Kudo
Music by: Songs sung by Frank Sinatra
Set and costumes by: Oscar de la Renta (Costumes)
Original Lighting by: Jennifer Tipton
Comprised of five of Frank Sinatra's lovely songs, this ballroom pas de deux exudes the slink and glamour of Sinatra's moody, bittersweet voice. It charts an affair of mutual seduction, through brutal confrontation, to reconciliation and abandonment.
Swan Lake Act II pas de deux:
Choreography after Lev Ivanov
Music by: Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
Behold the beauty of the White Swan pas de deux from Kevin McKenzie's Swan Lake.
Staged by Kevin McKenzie
Costumes by Zack Brown
Some hours later. By the Lake: Prince Siegfried enters a moonlit clearing in the forest and sees a magnificent swan in flight. He takes aim, but, to his astonishment, the bird transforms into a beautiful girl, and he withdraws into the trees to observe her. Unable to resist his curiousity, he steps out, only to startle and frighten her. He assures her he will do her no harm and asks her to explain the marvel he has just seen. Impressed by his gentleness, Odette unburdens the story of her plight. She tells him she is a Princess of high birth who fell under the spell of an evil sorcerer, and now her fate is to be a swan; only in the hours of darkness may she assume her human guise. She tells him she is condemned for eternity, and only if a virgin youth swears eternal fidelity to her and marries her can the spell be broken. But if he should forswear her, then she must remain a swan forever. Having fallen in love with Odette, Siegfried swears fidelity. It is in this act that Odette and Siegfried dance the most well-known pas de deux in all of ballet.
Swan Lake was revived, with staging by Kevin McKenzie and lighting by Thomas Skelton, on May 21, 1993 at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, danced by Susan Jaffe as Odette-Odile and Jeremy Collins as Prince Siegfried. The world premiere of this new production was given on March 24, 2000 at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., danced by Julie Kent (Odette-Odile) and Angel Corella (Prince Siegfried). The New York premiere of this production was given on May 19, 2000 at the Metropolitan Opera House, danced by Susan Jaffe (Odette-Odile) and Jose Manuel Carreno (Prince Siegfried).
The Green Table
A Dance of Death in Eight Scenes
Choreography: Kurt Jooss
Staged and Reconstructed by: Anna Markard
Music by: Frederick A. Cohen
Set and costumes by: Hein Heckroth (Costumes), Masks by Hermann Markard
Lighting by: Kevin Dreyer, after Jooss/Markard design
Music:
The Green Table, a truly eminent ballet of the 20th century that ranks among the most famous antiwar works in any art form. Created by German-born choreographer Kurt Jooss in 1932, it skewers the bureaucrats whose decisions send men off to die. Steeped in a Social Realist aesthetic, this ballet consists of vignettes of easily recognizable scenes of war, all led by the towering figure of Death, and sandwiched between stylized depictions of teams of bearded, fussy diplomats arguing across the eponymous table, before declaring war with a fusillade of pistol shots. Its subject is not only death -- though that figure dominates the work -- but the political power that brings it on and escapes its consequences.
Running Times:
| Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes: | 24 minutes |
| Intermission: | 20 minutes |
| Sintra Suite: | 14 minutes |
| Pause: | 3 minutes |
| Swan Lake Act II | 10 Minutes |
| Intermission: | 20 minutes |
| The Green Table: | 36 minutes |