Johann Strauss II, also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger, the Son, Johann Baptist Strauss, son of Johann Strauss I, was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas and a ballet. In his lifetime, he was known as "The Waltz King", and was largely responsible for the popularity of the waltz in Vienna during the 19th century.
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E. T. A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King".
Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in Alabama, the cultural region of Appalachia typically refers only to the central and southern portions of the range, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, southwesterly to the Great Smoky Mountains. As of the 2010 United States Census, the region was home to approximately 25 million people.
New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company's first music director. City Ballet grew out of earlier troupes: the Producing Company of the School of American Ballet, 1934; the American Ballet, 1935, and Ballet Caravan, 1936, which merged into American Ballet Caravan, 1941; and directly from the Ballet Society, 1946.
Giselle is a romantic ballet in two acts. It was first performed by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris, France on 28 June 1841, with Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi as Giselle. The ballet was an unqualified triumph. Giselle became hugely popular and was staged at once across Europe, Russia, and the United States. The traditional choreography that has been passed down to the present day derives primarily from the revivals staged by Marius Petipa during the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg.
Les Sylphides is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc. Its original choreography was by Michel Fokine, with music by Frédéric Chopin orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov had already set some of the music in 1892 as a purely orchestral suite, under the title Chopiniana, Op. 46. In that form, it was introduced to the public in December 1893, conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
A hoedown is a type of American folk dance or square dance in duple meter, and also the musical form associated with it.
La valse, poème chorégraphique pour orchestre, is a work written by Maurice Ravel between February 1919 and 1920; it was first performed on 12 December 1920 in Paris. It was conceived as a ballet but is now more often heard as a concert work. The work has been described as a tribute to the waltz, and the composer George Benjamin, in his analysis of La valse, summarized the ethos of the work:
Whether or not it was intended as a metaphor for the predicament of European civilization in the aftermath of the Great War, its one-movement design plots the birth, decay and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz.
Western Symphony is a ballet made by New York City Ballet co-founder and founding choreographer George Balanchine to American folk tunes arranged by Hershy Kay. The premiere, Tuesday, September 7, 1954, at City Center of Music and Drama, New York, was conducted by Leon Barzin and presented in practice clothes without scenery. Scenery by John Boyd and costumes by Karinska were added in 1955. Lighting was originally by Jean Rosenthal and subsequently Mark Stanley. Set in the Western United States, the ballet features cowboys and dance hall girls.
Carousel is a ballet made by New York City Ballet resident choreographer Christopher Wheeldon to the music of "Carousel Waltz" and "If I Loved You" (1945) by Richard Rodgers, arranged and orchestrated by William David Brohn. The music used in the ballet is from Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic musical Carousel. The premiere took place Tuesday, 26 November 2002, at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center.
Patricia McBride is a ballerina who spent nearly 30 years dancing with the New York City Ballet. McBride joined the New York City Ballet in 1959. She became a principal in 1961, becoming the company’s youngest principal. She danced with the company for 30 years, including roles created for her by choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.
Maria Kowroski is a principal ballerina at the New York City Ballet.
Fancy Free is a ballet by Jerome Robbins, subsequently ballet master of New York City Ballet, made on Ballet Theatre, predecessor of American Ballet Theatre, to a score by Leonard Bernstein, with scenery by Oliver Smith, costumes by Kermit Love and lighting by Ronald Bates. The premiere took place on Tuesday, 18 April 1944 at the old Metropolitan Opera House, New York. The NYCB premiere took place Thursday, 31 January 1980. Fancy Free was the inspiration for a successful musical, On the Town, and a portion of the score was also used in the opening scenes of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.
Vienna Waltzes is a ballet made by New York City Ballet co-founder and founding choreographer George Balanchine to music by Johann Strauss, Jr., Franz Lehár, and Richard Strauss:
Liebeslieder Walzer is a ballet by New York City Ballet co-founder and ballet master George Balanchine, based on the Brahms' Liebeslieder Walzer, Op. 52, and their sequel Neue Liebeslieder, Op. 65.
Sasha Alexandra Waltz is a German choreographer, dancer, leader of the dance company Sasha Waltz and Guests, and Artistic director designate of the Berlin State Ballet, alongside Johannes Ohman, effective 2019.
The Berlin State Ballet is the principal ballet company in the German capital of Berlin. It was created in 2004 through a merger of the separate ballet companies of the city's three opera houses at a time when the city was going through a financial crisis. It is one of the largest ballet companies in Western Europe with approximately 90 dancers.
Voices of Spring is a short pas de deux ballet by Sir Frederick Ashton, set to the music of the Frühlingsstimmen waltz by Johann Strauss II. It was originally written to be included as a divertissement in a 1977–78 production of Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus by the Royal Opera, alongside an adaptation of the Explosions-Polka, and first performed as an independent piece by the Royal Ballet in late 1978.
Dance Panels is a ballet composed by Aaron Copland in 1959 for a planned collaboration with choreographer Jerome Robbins. After Copland had written the score, Robbins reneged on his commitment and the performance did not take place. Three years later, Copland revised the score for a ballet by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Germany, where it premiered on 3 December 1963. The ballet was performed by the New York City Ballet in 1965 and the concert version received its first performance at the Ojai Music Festival the following year. According to Copland biographer Howard Pollack, Dance Panels has proven from a musical standpoint one of the composer's more accessible late scores. While some of its more dissonant moments sound similar to Copland's 12-tone compositions, other parts recall his earlier stage and screen music. It is also the only one of Copland's six ballets not written to a specific program.
