Three ballets of mixed entertainment - romance, power and yes, a bit of swashbuckling.

Performance Dates
Friday, October 28 at 8:00 pm
Saturday, October 29 at 2:00 pm & 8:00 pm
Sunday, October 30 at 2:00 pm

Aarrrg! Pirates!

Music by Giuseppe Verdi
Choreography by Peter Anastos
Costumes by Megan Richardson
Lighting by Burke Brown recreated by John Torres

Working and composing throughout the winter of 1851-52 in Paris, the great Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi, was persuaded by friends to attend a performance of the enormously popular and exotic attraction, Les Ballets du Barbary. This North African pirate ballet troupe, hailing from Fez on the crime-infested Barbary Coast, was renowned for its lurid interpretations of classical ballets and sub-Saharan Sand Dances. Their appearances at the Theatre Mogador created a sensation in fashionable Paris and even caused the Empress Eugenie to adopt an eye-patch at The Éclair Ball.

Verdi was smitten by the performance of these marvelous dancers, their passionate intensity and imaginative tattoos. He offered to compose a ballet for them, to be inserted into the third act of his new opera, La Regina Trovatiara (The Queen Found Her Hat.)

Act III is set in Tripoli, dockside, and the pirate dancers are commanded to perform a ballet for the cruel Sheik, Saddam al-Djaloppy. The ballet concerns itself with a jailbreak, a sea voyage, the competition between two pirate gangs, mistaken identities and similar situations expected of every French ballet in good taste. There is, unfortunately, a happy ending.

In Act IV of the opera, following this ballet episode, the pirates are set free by the suddenly merciful Sheik and are sent forth to open coin-operated laundries throughout Eastern Europe.

Ballet Idaho is pleased and privileged to have discovered this long-lost Verdi masterpiece and restored it to its rightful place among the justly forgotten ballets of the mid-19th century.

-Peter Anastos

City Symphony

Music by Composer Philip Glass
Knee Play No. 5, Knee No. 1, Violin Concerto No. 1 (2nd Movement)
©1976, 1987 Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc. (Used by Permission)
Choreography by Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye
Costumes by Megan Richardson
Lighting by Burke Brown recreated by John Torres

In the 1920’s in both Europe and the United States, a small genre of films became known as City Symphony. They were attempting to capture the grandness, power and fast pace life of a city, while also expressing the poetry and uniqueness. These films were rough narratives comprised of non-staged city life events. One of the most famous examples, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927), represents the events of the city over the course of the day.

This concept was very influential in my decision for the music chosen from Philip Glass’ opera, Einstein on the Beach, based on Albert Einstein. The opera tells no story, but rather goes through a series of images and scenes showing the essence of this man.

-Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye

Clair de lune

Choreography by Peter Anastos
Music by Claude Debussy
Suite Bergamasque
Pianist Felix Eisenhauer
Costumes by Megan Richardson
Lighting by Burke Brown recreated by John Torres

Three couples explore the sinuous and undulating designs of Debussy’s solo piano music, performed live on-stage, in an Impressionist ballet that conjures up the mood of Monet’s Water Lilies.

Clair de lune was originally commissioned from me by Mikhail Baryshnikov for the American Ballet Theatre and featured the dancers Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones. It was premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Later I re-choreographed and re-fashioned the work as a triple pas de deux and it is this version we present at Ballet Idaho.

-Peter Anastos

Call for tickets at 208.426.1494 or visit www.idahotickets.com