New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht is back in town with Stars of American Ballet, a chamber-sized group of dancers that tours nationally and internationally during ballet companies’ off-seasons.

Presented by Performance Santa Fe on August 3 and 4 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, this summer’s Stars of American Ballet performances feature works choreographed by a few of the company’s dancers.

Creating work for the show are Ask La Cour, a former member of the Royal Danish Ballet and current member of the New York City Ballet; Danielle Diniz, a graduate of Cornell University who was part of the national tour of the show “Dirty Dancing;” and Denys Drozdyuk, a native of Ukraine who studied at the Juilliard School in New York and is a three-time World Ballroom Dance Champion. [Read More…]

The New York-based ensemble Pilobolus recreates the feeling of being outdoors in its 2017 work “Branches,” which is included in the dance company’s program presented by Aspen Santa Fe Ballet at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on July 24.

“The piece is a dialogue about and with nature,” explains Pilobolus’s co-artistic director Matt Kent, who choreographed the work with the company’s other co-artistic director, Renée Jaworski. “Renée and I took seven dancers out for a long hike in our area to feel the wind on their faces and do what really became a walking meditation. We wanted our dancers to experience the outdoors before the creation of movements that communicate the feeling of nature.”

“Branches” was commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2017 and premiered at the festival last summer. [Read More…]

Twenty-five year old Jacob Jonas has transformed himself from a teenage street performer to the founder and choreographer of his own dance company.

Jacob Jonas The Company, which performs at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on May 3, brings its unique style of movement fusing breakdancing, acrobatics, modern dance and contemporary ballet to the works “In a Room,” “One Pair Off” and “Obstacles,” which are on the program.

“What’s so great about my company is that I have artists with really different backgrounds,” says Jonas, who has sought out dancers with experience in parkour and acrobatics as well as ones who are conservatory-trained in ballet and modern dance. “I tell my stories using their experiences in dance.” [Read More…]