 Fugate/Bahiri
Ballet NY specializes in adventure. For its Joyce Theater season,
July 5–9, the seven-year-old troupe, founded and directed
by Judith Fugate and Medhi Bahiri, will present a program of world
premieres by Davis Robertson, Alan Hineline, Helen Heineman and
Jodie Gates. In addition to the promise of spectacular dancing,
original scores will be performed live for two of the ballets.
Set to commissioned music by David
Homan, Davis Robertson’s “Romeo and Juliet in Mantua”
combines ballet with contemporary movement. Robertson’s version
of the Shakespearean tragedy for the company’s thirteen dancers
simultaneously condenses and expands on the classic tale, with a
new twist to the story’s end. The music will be played live
by Pauline Kim and members of the Mendelssohn Quartet and Flux String
Quartet.
The musicians will also play live
in Alan Hineline’s “Quartet 2,” a sextet, which
is performed to a commissioned score by Jerome Begin. A plotless
ballet, the dance is characterized by energetic, sensual movement.
Jodie Gates, a principal with William
Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt, challenges the company’s
performers in a different way in her “now and again.”
Brimming with off-balance, extreme movement, the choreography also
demands improvisational responses from the dancers as they move
through Bach and an original soundscape created by Frankfurt composer
Dietrich Krueger.
“Hook-Up” by Helen Heineman
explores the coming together and separations between a man and a
woman. Heineman, a former soloist with Nederlands Dans Theater and
the National Ballet of Washington, set her work to music by Arnold
Dreyblatt.
Comprised of leading dancers from
major American ballet companies, Ballet NY includes six former members
of Dance Theater of Harlem: Allyson Ashley, Duncan Cooper, Melissa
Morrissey, Kip Sturm, Donald Williams and Stacie Williams. Company
members also include Anitra N. Nurnberger, who has performed with
Pennsylvania Ballet, Ohio Ballet and American Repertory Ballet;
Dorothy Overbey, a former member of the Colorado Ballet, Aspen Santa
Fe Ballet and California Ballet; John-Mark Owen, who danced with
the Ohio Ballet and American Repertory Ballet; and Lindsay Purrington,
a founding member of Robert Weiss’s Carolina Ballet with whom
she danced until last year. The roster of dancers also includes
Bonnie Pickard, who performed with Pennsylvania Ballet, North Carolina
Dance Theater, Indianapolis Ballet Theater and as a guest artist
with companies such as the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. And, lastly,
there is Riley Watts, a graduate of the Walnut Hill School for the
Arts, and presently a student at the Juilliard School.
Founded in 1997, Fugate/Bahiri Ballet
NY (formerly Dance Galaxy), was first seen in New York City at The
Joyce Theater in 1999 and then again in 2001. It also performed
at Symphony Space and Marymount Manhattan Theatre. In its young
life, it has already made tours of North America, including performances
at Montreal’s prestigious Festival des Arts de St.-Sauveur.
Upon entering the School of American
Ballet at age eight, Judith Fugate was selected by George Balanchine
to play Marie in the New York City Ballet production of “The
Nutcracker,” eventually becoming the first Marie to go on
to play the coveted role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the NYCB production.
During her career at City Ballet, where she danced as a principal
for 10 years, Fugate performed major roles in almost every ballet
in the repertory. She left NYCB in 1997 to work as a guest artist
with other companies and to co-create Fugate/Bahiri Ballet NY with
her husband, Medhi Bahiri.
Born in Marseilles, Medhi Bahiri began
his professional dance studies at Rosella Hightower’s legendary
ballet school Centre de Danse in Cannes. He was a member of Maurice
Béjart’s Twentieth Century Ballet, and was a principal
dancer with Ballet West and Boston Ballet, in addition to serving
as principal guest artist with Ballet National de Mexico, Ballet
de Santiago, Universal Ballet of Korea, Ballet du Louvre, Tulsa
Ballet and Ballet Philippines, among others. As a young performer,
he was awarded the First Prize in the Prix de Lausanne dance competition
and recognized for artistic achievement at the International Ballet
Competition in Varna, in addition to other honors.
Following its Joyce Theater season,
the company will make a major tour of the United States in 2006
that includes performances in Sarasota, FL (January 25–29);
Sanibel, FL (February 10–11); Oxford, OH (February 13–15);
Lewisburg, PA at Bucknell University (February 16–18); Albany,
NY (February 23–24); Kahalui, Kamuela and Pearl City, HI (March
31–April 9); Santa Cruz, CA (April 10–12); Cerritos,
CA (April 14); Omaha, NE (May 20); and Nashville, TN (TBD). The
company will return to The Joyce Theater, June 26–July 2,
2006.
The opening night curtain for Fugate/Bahiri
Ballet NY’s Joyce Theater season on Tuesday is at 7:30pm.
Wednesday through Friday, performances are at 8pm. On Saturday,
there is a 2pm matinee and an evening show at 7pm. Tickets are $34.
All tickets are available at The Joyce Theater box office, by calling
JoyceCharge at 212-242-0800 or online at www.joyce.org. The Joyce
Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street.
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“now and again” was made possible by the Doris Duke
Fund for Dance of the National Dance Project, a program administered
by the New England Foundation for the Arts with funding from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
and the Ford Foundation.
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