Reisen, Gianna

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    Solange Enters New Territory: Ballet Composer

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    The multihyphenate pop star will compose her first ballet score for the Fall Fashion Gala at New York City Ballet in September.Solange, the pop star whose artistic tendrils have reached into the worlds of music, choreography, fashion, film, visual art and more, will soon add a new genre to her repertoire: ballet composer.New York City Ballet announced on Monday that Solange would write an original score for a work (as yet untitled) by Gianna Reisen that will premiere at the company’s annual Fall Fashion Gala, on Sept. 28. The score is composed for a chamber ensemble that will be made up of some of Solange’s musical collaborators and members of the City Ballet orchestra.This step into ballet is the latest in a series of adventurous turns by Solange, 36, who began her career young as a singer and dancer — including with her sister, Beyoncé, in Destiny’s Child. Solange’s work later blossomed into multihyphenate and more independent territory, with her music — starting with the 2012 album “True” and continuing with “A Seat at the Table” (2016) and “When I Get Home” (2019) — often doubling as a gathering place for genre-crossing, interdisciplinary artists. In her art and in the streets, she has also been an activist for Black Lives Matter and other causes.Solange has long had a theatrical edge that brought her into contact with Lincoln Center regulars and collaborators beyond the musical sphere. She has worked with the designer Carlos Soto, a regular partner of the auteurist director Robert Wilson, and organized programming — as well as brought her own performances — to spaces like the Guggenheim and Getty museums, as well as the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany.Her music for Reisen will be her debut in ballet, which was formative for her as a child in Houston. She saw Lauren Anderson, a pioneering Black principal dancer at Houston Ballet, and once told the writer Ayana Mathis, “My dream was to go to Juilliard.”The new dance is Reisen’s third for City Ballet, and will feature costumes by Alejandro Gómez Palomo of Palomo Spain. The Fall Fashion Gala, which pairs choreographers with designers, will also feature a premiere by Kyle Abraham, with costumes by Giles Deacon; and the first live performance of Justin Peck’s “Solo,” which premiered virtually in 2021 in a film directed by Sofia Coppola, and now features costume design by Raf Simons. Rounding out the gala evening is a George Balanchine masterpiece, “Symphony in C” from 1947. More

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      City Ballet Plans Ambitious Season to Help Dancers Get Back Up to Speed

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      The company will present a mix of new and old works, including a full-length premiere to Aaron Copland by Justin Peck.The pandemic has been disorienting for New York City Ballet, disrupting the careers of many rising stars and resulting in the loss of millions in ticket revenue.Next season, the company hopes to restore a sense of normalcy by presenting an ambitious mix of new and old works, it announced on Friday, including many ballets meant to help train a younger generation of dancers.“This is a vitamin shot of what we’ve been known for,” Wendy Whelan, City Ballet’s associate artistic director, who helped plan the new season, said in an interview.The 2022-23 season, which will feature 48 ballets from September through May, will include new works by the choreographers Christopher Wheeldon, Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Alysa Pires, among others. The fall fashion gala will feature premieres by the choreographers Kyle Abraham and Gianna Reisen, a recent graduate of the School of American Ballet.In January, the company will present a full-length exploration of the music of Aaron Copland, by Justin Peck, the resident choreographer and artistic adviser, featuring visual designs by the painter Jeffrey Gibson.A major focus will be on presenting large-scale, foundational classics — what Whelan called “very big and very team-oriented ballets” — as part of an effort to train City Ballet’s younger dancers after a series of high-profile retirements.The lineup includes George Balanchine’s “Vienna Waltzes” and “Raymonda Variations” in fall; Jerome Robbins’s “West Side Story Suite” and Peter Martins’s staging of “The Sleeping Beauty” in winter season.“We have a lot of young talent and a lot of flowers blooming,” Whelan said. “We’ve got a lot of people that we want to keep feeding at a high level.”The season will also include several works by the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, the former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet who is now an artist in residence at American Ballet Theater, including his “Concerto DSCH” and “Pictures at an Exhibition.”The pandemic forced the cancellation of City Ballet’s entire 2020-21 season. After returning to the stage in the fall, Whelan said that some dancers expressed an interest in getting more exposure to the rigorous training provided by classics.“Some of them were like: ‘We just want to do ballet. We haven’t done ballet for two years,” she said. “They said, ‘We want to get razor sharp and at this level.’ ”The coming season is “going to make everybody a better dancer,” she added.The coronavirus continues to loom over the performing arts. City Ballet estimates that it has lost $55 million in anticipated ticket sales since the start of the pandemic.While many cultural institutions have pushed forward with full seasons this year, the Omicron variant still poses a challenge. The surge in cases forced City Ballet to cancel 26 shows in December and January, including performances of “The Nutcracker,” typically its most lucrative show of the year.Audience behavior is also changing. At City Ballet, attendance is about 80 percent of prepandemic levels.The possibility of another outbreak is “always at the back of our minds,” Whelan said.Dancers have recently started wearing masks again in studios, she said, amid the uptick in cases in New York.“We’re doing everything we can to keep everybody safe,” she said. More