Choreographers and composers come together for invigorating new works
New has always been the normal for NOW Premieres, an entire evening dedicated each Festival to presenting never-before-seen work. Commissioned musical compositions accompany a host of new dances, ranging in genre from neo-classical and contemporary ballet, to tap, modern, and jookin. This year promises an invigorating celebration of creative collaboration to close the Festival on August 9.
In response to the many hardships of 2020, festival regular and Grammy-award winning violinist Johnny Gandelsman commissioned a project to highlight the rich cultural tapestry of America’s United States. “This Is America” features twenty-two new works for solo violin produced by twelve presenters throughout the country, including the Vail Dance Festival. Gandelsman interprets intimate reflections on the state of our country by composers from across the nation. He will perform three of these works to accompany premieres by Michelle Dorrance, Jamar Roberts, and a collaboration by Lil Buck and Lauren Lovette.
Building on musical partnerships established during past Festivals, Justin Peck and Tiler Peck (who are not related) will each create new dances to music by Pulitzer-winning Composer-in-Residence Caroline Shaw. Cleo Parker Robinson and James Whiteside will also present world premieres.
Tap dancer extraordinaire Michelle Dorrance will choreograph to music by Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy-award winning co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Both MacArthur “genius” grant recipients work in performance mediums that are uniquely American in their complex histories. Tap dance and Americana music have long represented a legacy of resiliency and transformation.
Both artists work to amplify forgotten voices and to honor those who paved the way before them. Giddens describes her art as a means to “excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present.” Dorrance, whose “crux of inspiration is music,” affirms tap as a “powerful vehicle for social and political change.” The new work will feature dancers of various genres, confirming the artists’ commitment to creating space for unexpected harmonies.
Fellow MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, Tyshawn Sorey, will compose music for Jamar Roberts, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s first resident choreographer. The rapidly rising dance maker will create work on contemporary ballet company BalletX with Artist-in-Residence Calvin Royal III as guest. His latest work, “Cooped,” commissioned by Guggenheim Works and Process, was praised as “one of the most powerful artistic responses yet to the Covid-19 crises” (New York Times).
Roberts describes his relationship to music as essential to his creative process. After “feeling the score on a deep level,” he continues by “looking at the world in which we live, and then looking at how we as a society are getting along in it.” It is fitting that his premiere will be joined by Sorey, whose new searching meditations on society are hailed as his “most expressive and powerful music yet” (New York Times Magazine).
Cristina Courtin’s “This Is America” composition will accompany a collaboration between Lil Buck and Lauren Lovette. Both dancers are known for their virtuosity and emotional depth on stage. As choreographers, they each attend to the power of dance to uplift, question, and potentially transform our experience of the world. Courtin, a Juilliard trained singer-songwriter and violinist, describes guiding her listeners through a landscape of emotions, from “somber plains and heartbreak” to feelings of “warmth, joy, and hope.”
Lovette demonstrates an “urgency” in her “desire to turn ballet inside out,” (New York Times). The versatile ballerina recently announced her resignation as principal dancer from the New York City Ballet in order to further pursue her choreographic career. Lil Buck’s creative career has also expanded as co-founder of Movement Art Is. The non-profit uses dance to address issues of social injustice and was recently featured on the Netflix series Moves. “When someone is speaking to your spirit through dance, that sticks,” he says, “it’s knowing that it’s not just for entertainment, but that dance can really be used as a tool to help bring change about the world.”
Dance as a mechanism to change society has driven Denver-based choreographer Cleo Parker Robinson for 51 years. The highly lauded Colorado cultural figure will create a new work around the theme of unity and renewal in the face of a year of isolation and polarization. Parker Robinson’s illustrious career spans from collaborating with poet Dr. Maya Angelou to receiving the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.
“Let the world dance,” Parker Robinson says after recalling the similarities of today’s struggles to the days growing up under segregation as the daughter of a white woman and a black man. Rooted in dance honoring the African Diaspora, she describes the function of dance “to celebrate and to renew, to stop any regression,” and asserts that the “joy of life is really discovering the harmony together.”
Committed to collective discovery, Tony-award winning choreographer Justin Peck makes work that creates space for processing contemporary life. Peck has choreographed over 40 works, including most recently for Steven Spielberg’s new film adaptation of West Side Story. As resident choreographer of New York City Ballet, Peck refers closely to his roots in classicism while pushing ballet forward to better represent the 21st century.
The choreographer returns to Vail to create a new work on New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck and American Ballet Theatre principal Herman Cornejo to music by Caroline Shaw. His architectural creations seem to physically synthesize Shaw’s arcing musical compositions, who was herself a student of architecture. Striving to reflect current times and propose new possibilities, Peck’s premiere reimagines the concept of the traditional pas de deux.
Tiler Peck joins the evening not only as dancer, but also as choreographer. The ever curious collaborator builds on top of a remarkably prolific year despite theater closures. “I couldn’t miss anything again!” asserts Peck of the layoff. She had just returned from a potentially career-ending neck injury. Instead, the ballerina taught Instagram classes to thousands of students across the world, produced online performances, worked with renowned choreographers William Forsyth and Alonzo King, choreographed, and even made dance reels with actress Jennifer Garner.
Peck used music by Caroline Shaw for her last work in Vail after being introduced by Artistic Director Damian Woetzel. She also credits Woetzel, along with Balanchine ballerina Heather Watts, for encouraging her to take her first choreographic leap. Peck’s famously nuanced dancing is reflected in her intuitively musical choreography, drawing her again to Shaw’s music. “It’s like a puzzle… like moving music,” she says, “It’s music that needs to be danced to.”
American Ballet Theatre principal James Whiteside is another dancer who refused to slow down during the pandemic. Known for his technical prowess as much as his drama and humor, the dancer, choreographer, singer, and drag queen constantly pursues new ways of expressing himself. By the end of 2020, he recorded an album and wrote a book in addition to extensively training his body for the rigorous demands of ballet.
Whiteside, who is part of the Festival’s Empowering Boys in Dance project, is vocal in supporting young people embrace who they are and the passions they love. Dance Magazine described him as having “redefined the modern male principal by simply being himself.” His dances are at once athletic and tender, and often question assumptions around gender and relationships. This summer’s new work will be a dance for three men.
Despite a year of saturated hospitals, social and economic disparities, and darkened theaters, the artists of the Vail Dance Festival persist in creating work to reflect on the world in which we live. NOW Premieres on August 9 is an opportunity to hear these varied voices from across the United States. It is a chance to join together in celebration of creativity with hope for the future.