Kay Mazzo
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Kay Mazzo
Kay Mazzo (born January 17, 1946) is an American former ballet dancer and educator. In 1961, she joined Jerome Robbins' company, Ballets USA. The following year, she joined the New York City Ballet, and was promoted to principal dancer in 1969. She created roles for George Balanchine and Robbins, before retiring from performing in 1981. She then joined the permanent faculty of the School of American Ballet in 1983, named co-chairman of faculty in 1997 and chair of faculty in 2018. She stepped down from the position in June 2022, but continues to teach. Early life Mazzo was born on January 17, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois. She started taking dance lessons at age six, and entered the School of American Ballet in New York in 1959, when she was thirteen. Mazzo graduated from the Rhodes Preparatory School. Career She joined Jerome Robbins' touring company, Ballets USA, in 1961. She was a New York City Ballet apprentice at the time, but after learning that George Balanchine decided not t ...
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Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayor–council , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , area_tot ...
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Agon (ballet)
''Agon'' is a 22-minute ballet for twelve dancers with music by Igor Stravinsky. It was choreographed by George Balanchine. Stravinsky began composition in December 1953 but was interrupted the next year; he resumed work in 1956 and concluded on April 27, 1957. The music was premiered in Los Angeles at UCLA's Royce Hall on June 17, 1957, conducted by Robert Craft. Stravinsky himself conducted the sessions for the work's first recording the following day on June 18, 1957. ''Agon'' was first performed on stage by the New York City Ballet at the City Center of Music and Drama on December 1, 1957. The composition's long gestation period covers an interesting juncture in Stravinsky's composing career, in which he moved from a diatonic musical idiom to one based on twelve-tone technique; the music of the ballet thus demonstrates a unique symbiosis of musical idioms. The ballet has no story, but consists of a series of dance movements in which various groups of dancers interact in pairs ...
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Vienna Waltzes
''Vienna Waltzes'' is a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine to music by Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár and Richard Strauss, made as a tribute to Austria. It premiered on June 23, 1977 at the New York State Theater, performed by the New York City Ballet, and was an immediate success among the public. Background and production Balanchine had been exposed to Viennese dancing since his youth, and had used the time signature, which is commonly used in waltz, in some of his works, including ''Les Valses de Beethoven'' (1933), ''The Bat'' (1936), ''Waltz Academy'' (1944), ''La Valse'' (1951), ''Valse Fantaisie'' (1953), '' Liebeslieder Walzer'' (1960) and ''Trois Valses Romantiques'' (1967). Balanchine conceived the idea of ''Vienna Waltzes'', a large-scale homage to Austria, over a year before he started working on it, having previously made ''Union Jack'', a tribute to Great Britain. Before he started working on the ballet, he spoke with members of the New York City Ballet ab ...
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Union Jack (ballet)
''Union Jack'' is a ballet made by New York City Ballet co-founder and founding choreographer George Balanchine to traditional British tunes, hornpipe melodies and music-hall songs, ca. 1890–1914, adapted by Hershy Kay. The premiere took place on 13 May 1976, at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, to honor British heritage in the United States its bicentennial with costumes by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, original lighting by Ronald Bates and current lighting by Mark Stanley. At the finale the ensemble spells out "God Save the Queen" in semaphore code and the Union Jack unfurls. Principal dancer Jock Soto included an excerpt from ''Union Jack'' in his farewell performance in June 2005. Music The music includes Scottish military tattoos and folk-dance forms; a music-hall pas de deux for the costermonger Pearly King and Queen; hornpipes, sea songs, work chants and jigs. selections *"Keel Row" *" Caledonian Hunt's Delight" *" Regimental Drum Variations" *"Amazing Gra ...
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Scherzo à La Russe (ballet)
''Scherzo à la Russe'' is a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine to Stravinsky's music of the same name. The ballet was created for New York City Ballet's Stravinsky Festival, a tribute to the composer after his death, and premiered on June 21, 1972, at the New York State Theater, with the two lead roles originated by Karin von Aroldingen and Kay Mazzo. Production Stravinsky and Balanchine collaborated for many years until the former's death in 1971. The latter then decided to have the New York City Ballet hold the week-long Stravinsky Festival to honor the composer. There were at least 20 premieres, seven of which were choreographed by Balanchine. One of the ballets made for the festival is set to '' Scherzo à la Russe'', which Stravinsky wrote in 1925, for a film project that was abandoned. The four-minute long ballet is performed by an all-female cast, with two principal dancers and a corps de ballet of sixteen. Karin von Aroldingen and Kay Mazzo originated the two lea ...
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Duo Concertant (ballet)
''Duo Concertant'' is a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine to Stravinsky's score of the same name. The ballet was created for New York City Ballet's Stravinsky Festival, a tribute to the composer a year after his death, and premiered on June 22, 1972, at the New York State Theater, danced by Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins. Choreography ''Duo Concertant'' is danced by a man and a woman, alongside a pianist and a violinist, both onstage. Kay Mazzo, an original cast member of ''Duo Concertant'', said, "In ''Duo Concertant'' Peter Martins and I just did the same thing over and over. Balanchine said that's what the music does." In the first of five movements, Cantilena, the dancers simply stand and listen to the music. According to Mazzo, Balanchine told her, "Now we're going to have them listen." In the next movement, the first Eclogue, the two dancers, as ''New York Times'' critic Anna Kisselgoff described, "start dancing as if the music impels them to do so." Commenting on thi ...
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Stravinsky Violin Concerto (ballet)
''Stravinsky Violin Concerto'', originally titled ''Violin Concerto'', is a neoclassical ballet choreographed by George Balanchine to Stravinsky's Violin Concerto. Balanchine had previously choreographed another ballet to the concerto in 1941 for the Original Ballet Russe, titled ''Balustrade'', though it was not revived following a few performances. He then reused the concerto for New York City Ballet's Stravinsky Festival in 1972, a tribute to the composer following his death. The ballet premiered on June 18, 1972, at the New York State Theater. Background and production Balanchine first choreographed a work to Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in 1941 for the Wassily de Basil's company Original Ballet Russe, titled ''Balustrade'', with costumes and sets designed by Pavel Tchelitchew. In his previous Stravinsky ballets, Balanchine usually followed a plot. However, ''Balustrade'' is completely plotless, and was Balanchine's response to the Violin Concerto. The ballet premiered on Janu ...
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In The Night (ballet)
''In the Night'' is a ballet choreographed by Jerome Robbins to four nocturnes by Frédéric Chopin. It premiered on January 29, 1970 at the New York State Theater, performed by the New York City Ballet. Structure ''In the Night'' features three couples, depicted at different phases of their relationships. The first duet, set to Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op. 27, No. 1, shows a pair of young lovers. On the choreography of this section, Deborah Jowitt, the author of Robbins' biography, wrote, "Over and over he lifts her or twines her through delicate balances; they separate only to rush together." The second, to Nocturnes in F minor and E flat major, Op. 55, Nos. 1 and 2. Violette Verdy, who created the female role, interpreted the duet as a happy marriage with some drama to prevent it from "coagulating." Jowitt commented that this duet is "more settled... with a hint of a folk-dance step, she always confident that he will be there to support her." The '' pas de deux'' ...
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Tschaikovsky Suite No
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets ''Swan Lake'' and ''The Nutcracker'', the ''1812 Overture'', his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the ''Romeo and Juliet'' Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera ''Eugene Onegin''. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865. The formal Western-oriented teaching that he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationa ...
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La Sonnambula
''La sonnambula'' (''The Sleepwalker'') is an opera semiseria in two acts, with music in the '' bel canto'' tradition by Vincenzo Bellini set to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, based on a scenario for a ''ballet-pantomime'' written by Eugène Scribe and choreographed by Jean-Pierre Aumer called ''La somnambule, ou L'arrivée d'un nouveau seigneur''. The ballet had premiered in Paris in September 1827 at the height of a fashion for stage works incorporating somnambulism. The role of Amina was originally written for the soprano sfogato Giuditta Pasta and the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, but during Bellini's lifetime another soprano sfogato, Maria Malibran, was a notable exponent of the role. The first performance took place at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 6 March 1831. The majority of twentieth-century recordings have been made with a soprano cast as Amina, usually with added top-notes and other changes according to tradition, although it was released in soprano sfogat ...
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Square Dance (ballet)
''Square Dance'' is a ballet made by New York City Ballet co-founder and balletmaster George Balanchine to Antonio Vivaldi's '' Concerto Grosso in B minor'' and the first movement of his '' Concerto Grosso in E major'', Op. 3, nos. 10 and 12, respectively; in 1976 he added Arcangelo Corelli's '' Sarabanda, Badinerie e Giga'', second and third movements. The premiere took place on November 21, 1957, at City Center of Music and Drama, New York, with lighting by Mark Stanley. The original version placed the musicians on stage with a square dance caller calling the steps; from its 1976 revival the caller was eliminated, the orchestra placed in the pit, and a solo added for the ''premier danseur'' to the Corelli ''Sarabanda''. The Pacific Northwest Ballet restored the caller for one performance at the 2007 Vail International Dance Festival. Original cast * Patricia Wilde *Nicholas Magallanes References *''Playbill'', New York City Ballet, Friday, June 27, 2008 *Dance review: OBT does ...
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Serenade (ballet)
''Serenade'' is a ballet by George Balanchine to Tchaikovsky's 1880 '' Serenade for Strings in C'', Op. 48. Serenade is credited as being George Balanchine's first full-length ballet in America. Using the students of his newly formed School of American Ballet, Balanchine choreographed this ballet for an American audience that had not been widely exposed to ballet before.Bird, "Principles of Choreography as Exemplified in the Works of George Balanchine" (1980). Master's Theses. 1851 Students of the School of American Ballet gave the first performance on Sunday, 10 June 1934 on the Felix M. Warburg estate in White Plains, N.Y., where '' Mozartiana'' had been danced the previous day. It was then presented by the Producing Company of the School of American Ballet on 6 December at the Avery Memorial Theatre of the Wadsworth Atheneum with sets by the painter William Littlefield. Balanchine presented the ballet as his response to the generous sponsorships he received during his immig ...
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