New York Theatre Ballet presents Tudor & Limón works

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From the company:

NEW YORK THEATRE BALLET PRESENTS TUDOR & LIMÓN WORKS FEB 8 & 9

Longtime NYC dance scene observer Mindy Aloff attends rehearsal of

Tudor's Lilac Garden with Sallie Wilson; notes that NYTB's current cast

is the strongest she has seen

New York, NY -- /Signatures 08: A Celebration of Legends & Visionaries will be presented on Friday & Saturday, February 8 & 9 @ 7:30 pm by New York Theatre Ballet in honor of choreographers Antony Tudor and José Limón. This year marks the 100-year anniversary of both men's births and New York Theatre Ballet is the only company in New York City to pay homage to the two legends with a program dedicated solely to their works. The performances, at Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street, features the staging of Tudor's Lilac Garden, Little Improvisations and Judgment of Paris by renowned interpreter Sallie Wilson, along with Limón's Mazurkas, staged by former principal Limon dancer and partner Sarah Stackhouse .

In a ruminative article - http://exploredance.com/article.htm?id=2093 - Mindy Aloff, a longtime observer of the New York dance scene, describes a rehearsal of Antony Tudor's Lilac Garden that Sallie Wilson conducted with New York Theatre Ballet earlier this month. Ms. Wilson, NYTB's coach and ballet mistress for the past 20 years and, before that, a heralded Tudor ballerina at American Ballet Theater, is presented as a meticulous stager and coach of Tudor's works. Ms Aloff also notes that NYTB's current Lilac Garden cast is the strongest she's seen with this company in her years of watching NYTB's Tudor productions.

At several points in the rehearsal, Ms Wilson is seen to go into considerable detail about the narrative implications of the movement. She leads the cast deeply into Tudor's various levels of metaphor and dramatic motivation. She is also uncompromising when it comes to the mastery of technical matters. She achieves this mastery in part by asking the dancers to repeat the choreography many times. Ms Aloff contends that Ms. Wilson's exacting version of Lilac Garden is ruthless on behalf of Tudor's ballet and is unparalleled in its richness of detail and intensity of feeling.

Mazurkas is staged by Sarah Stackhouse, who was a principal dancer and partner to Mr. Limón from 1958 to 1969. Twenty years later she returned to the Limón Dance Company and revived several of his works including Mazurkas -- a tribute to the heroic spirit of the Polish people -- which was choreographed in 1958 as a dramatic sequence of dances set to Chopin's music. Ms. Stackhouse has taught the Limón technique at the Juilliard School and the American Dance Festival and has set his work on companies throughout the world.

Tickets for Signatures 08: A Celebration of Legends & Visionaries are $20 and can be purchased at www.nytb.org <http://www.nytb.org/> or by calling Ticketmaster at 212-307-4100. Tickets can also be purchased at the Florence Gould Hall Box Office (212-355-6160) Tuesday through Friday from 12 noon to 7pm and on Saturday from 12 noon to 4pm.

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