American Contemporary Ballet: Sapphires

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SAPPHIRES
Choreographer: Lincoln Jones
excerpts from LA SOURCE
Choreographer: George Balanchine

◆ American Contemporary Ballet

Closing out American Contemporary Ballet’s twelfth season is Sapphires, Artistic Director Lincoln Jones’ imagining of what Balanchine’s fourth act of Jewels would have been.

Fittingly, the composer for which Balanchine had considered using to represent the deep blue gemstone, Arnold Schoenberg, celebrates his 150th birthday this year, and Jones will pay homage to this intention by setting his piece to the composer’s Suite for String in G Major.

“The ballet was never really about jewels. Or it was, but the ‘jewels’ were really the dancers. It was an ingenious device using color to provide a three-act structure for what was always Balanchine’s true subject – the exaltation of feminine beauty.

While Sapphires’ subject is the same, it’s an opportunity to walk through a choreographic dreamworld and see what the dream loos like when it turns blue.”

– Lincoln Jones, Artistic Director of American Contemporary Ballet

Also on the program are excerpts from La Source, a rarely seen Balanchine ballet set to music by Léo Delibes.

Featured photo of Hannah Barr in Lincoln Jones’ Sapphires. Photo by Victor Demarchelier.