Brooklyn Ballet is absolutely ecstatic to be performing with the fabulousGil Morgenstern again this year. A superb violinist and director of Reflections Series International, Gil has collaborated with Lynn Parkerson on all our season performances in the Actors Fund Arts Center. Lynn and Gil believe live music truly invigorates dance in performance, and our audiences have wholeheartedly agreed.

The musician extraordinaire took a few moments to answer some of our questions about his musical choices for this season’s new mixed movement work-in-progress, Quilt. And we stealthily filmed some of last week’s rehearsal to give you a peek and a listen at how the dance is shaping up.

Join us this week for the opening of our 2013 season!

Q: When were you first introduced to dance? And to Brooklyn Ballet?
A: I guess I was first introduced to dance in a "formal" way when I was a student at Juilliard, and I had a few friends in the New York City Ballet. I was privileged to attend quite a few performances and even snuck backstage sometimes, although thankfully, Mr. B never found out. Over the years my interest in dance grew to the point where I formed a small experimental company with the wonderful Paul Taylor dancer Mary Cochran.

I met Lynn about 10 or 12 years ago when she contacted me at the suggestion of a mutual friend at the 92nd Street Y. Lynn invited me to perform a work of hers with her company and we've been friends and collaborators ever since.

Q: What captured your attention about the art form? 
A: Well I suppose most people are fascinated about art forms they know they could just never do themselves...

Q: The music for Quilt includes works by composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Vytautas Barkauskas. Lynn says the Bach & Barkauskas selections are fascinatingly similar. Can you tell us more about Bach's influence on the contemporary composer?
A: Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas are really the gold standard of solo instrumental writing; no composer since can write for solo violin without looking over his or her shoulder back to Bach. The Barkauskas work is a clear homage to Bach: the work is titled Partita and the movements all have Baroque names. Additionally, as in Bach's Partitas, Barkauskas incorporates contemporary dance forms into his music.

Q: What do you hope to illuminate by placing these pieces of music side-by-side?
A: Although all these pieces are written with different musical vocabularies, I think they fit in perfectly with Lynn's vision for Brooklyn Ballet, including the reinterpretation of traditions in a contemporary setting and the combination of seemingly unrelated works.

Q: Brooklyn Ballet's audiences love the inclusion of live music in our performances. Why do you think live music changes the way people view choreography? 
A: I believe the audience begins to better understand the relationship between music and dance. In a way, it focuses their attention on the music through live performance; something recorded music obviously cannot achieve.

Opening night is this THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28! Purchase tickets for our two week performance season here.

Brooklyn Ballet welcomed several new company members this year. It's been a blast learning about them in rehearsal--who they are, how they move, why they dance and more. We thought our readers would like a chance to get to know them, too.

Name: Duane Gosa
Age: 27
Neighborhood: Bushwick/Bed Stuy

Q: Where did you start your dance training?
A: I started dance at a performing arts program that was offered to upperclassmen at my high school in Ohio. After graduating, I continued to study ballet more intensely at the University of Akron.

Q: How did you learn about Brooklyn Ballet? And what attracted you to audition for the company?
A: I first heard of BB through a fellow dancer in the company. We had partnered together for a contemporary Nutcracker and she encouraged me to audition for a project that was happening last fall. I was mostly attracted to the blend of classical technique with more contemporary styles of moving. Recently, I've worked more with contemporary movement so I appreciate and am excited for the chance to fiercely reinvestigate ballet technique on my body.

Q: What do you find most challenging about rehearsals so far?
A: To be honest, it's wearing ballet slippers for so long. While I understand that I am not nearly as distressed regarding footwear in comparison to the women on pointe, I haven't worn ballet shoes this much since my school days. It's great! I am happy for the challenge, and I can feel my feet getting much stronger.

Duane partnering Gabriela in rehearsal for BB's "Tracing Back"

Q: Which of the dances for this season's performances are you most excited about?
A: I'm most excited about Tracing Back. I think the production of this piece will be particularly interesting. There will be an added component that uses live video of the choreography and reconfigures the moving image into a digital illustration that will be projected during the piece. This added dimension is a cool and exciting way to look at the idea of technology-enhanced performance.

Q: Why is ballet/dance important to you?
A: Because it feels great! I have been physically active my whole life. I was an athlete and a musician while growing up so when I discovered dance it seemed to fit perfectly on my body. It's the closest way I can get to actually becoming the music.

Q: What is your favorite activity outside of dance?
A: Music has always been a major interest of mine. I've studied music for many years, so listening to music is my favorite pastime. I love finding new music, especially old music that's new to me. 

Right now I'm listening to a lot of classic R&B/Soul music and Indie Electronic. The artists I play most on repeat are the band Them, Sam Cooke, Electric Guest and Azealia Banks.

Q: Where's your favorite place to hang out in Brooklyn?
A: It really depends on the time of year. Currently, my favorite place to be is warm in my home, but when the weather is fair DUMBO is a very beautiful place to hang out. The Brooklyn Bridge Park is definitely my spot in summer.

We're back in the studio!

Dancers are rehearsing five times a week for our upcoming season, and we couldn't be more excited about our shows next month. So thrilled, we want to share our process with you this year - continue to tune into our blog for tidbits from rehearsal, interviews with our dancers and collaborators, video, photos & more.

The curtain goes up on Brooklyn Ballet's 2013 season, In 4D, on February 28. The Company will perform three exciting works, two of which are new additions to our repertory. This year's concert includes a cutting edge collaboration with NYC Resistors - hackers, digital artists, and yes, balletomanes, based in Brooklyn. Artistic Director Lynn Parkerson is working with the Resistors on Tracing Back, a dance enhanced by the digital collection and display of spatial patterns in the work.

"Tracing Back reveals an aspect of choreography an audience does not usually see: the floor pathways of the dancers as they travel in real time," Lynn says. "I've been thinking about this idea for years and when I recently stumbled upon a world of techno/digital artists who are passionate about creating something new with ballet, it just fit."

Also new to our loyal audiences will be work-in-progress, Quilt, a new ballet/street dance mash-up created by Lynn and London-based choreographer Julia K. Gleich. The duet pairs the sinuously sweet Kerry Shea with our master of smooth, J-Floats. Based on Julia's mathmatically-inclined experiments with dancers at The Laban Institute (more on that later!), we're discovering new ways of initiating movement in ballet, pop-and-lock and more. It's sure to be a surprising and fresh way to create new connections in both of these distinct dance worlds.

You may remember our Stravinsky work-in-progress Spiders, Cooks and Mood Swings from last season... Well, it's back, and this time polished as a world premiere. This mixed movement mash-up connects 19th and 21st century aesthetics, updating the story-ballet village antics of classical ballet with a crew of contemporary characters.

"Spiders, Cooks and Moodswings" performed in 2012

Music lovers will be excited to hear that violinist Gil Morgenstern and pianist Julius Abrahams will return for our February-March dance performances. Gil will even join us on stage for Quilt, so you can look forward to watching him make magic with Bach and Barkauskas. Costume designers YMX by Yellowman and Patricia Forelle are back to make us look fabulous. And Mike "Supreme" Fields has his hand in helping shape the street dance portions of our mixed movement works.

We're just thrilled to be back in creation mode. And we hope you'll join us for more sneak peeks into the making of our 2013 performance season at The Actors Fund Arts Center. We love our Downtown Brooklyn space, and we're excited to open our doors to you!

Tickets are on sale now. Check out our calendar!

The participating students were Penelope Birnbaum, Bhajhan Williams, Zoreika Ollivierre, Chantel St. Fleur, Olivia Riess, and Rachel Tranter. The classes, which were held from 9:30am to 3:30pm Monday through Friday, focused on “building a solid foundation in ballet technique and educating younger dancers about related topics in the world of dance.” On August 10th at ABT Studios in Manhattan, parents watched the students in a final show which included a ballet technique class, boys variation and choreography. 

Brooklyn Ballet recently held auditions for our 10th Anniversary Season performances. We were looking for both male and female dancers with a range of technical ability - dancers who would feel comfortable not only in classic ballet roles but in collaborations with hip hop artists and movement in the Isadora Duncan style.

The 10th Anniversary Season will include a study of Isadora Duncan's influence on the structure and content of ballet, and Brooklyn Ballet is searching for the dancer who can embody Isadora Duncan's flowing style as well as turn heads while en pointe.

Thanks to all of the dancers who auditioned. We couldn't have asked for a more talented group of technicians and performers, and we can't wait to introduce you to this year's newest company members!

Check out more photos from auditions on our Facebook page.

Ballet’s fate has recently become an issue of popular debate thanks to Jennifer Homans’ Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet (November 2010). The author’s bold assertion that ballet is dying is a call to arms for choreographers like Lynn Parkerson, who has been ready and willing to answer for years. In line with this current preoccupation with ballet history and Homans' dire diagnosis, Lynn offered a curatorial nod to ballet’s past conditions and current vivacity in March.

From Baroque to Hip Hop: Brooklyn Ballet 2011 Season from Lynn Parkerson on Vimeo.

Brooklyn Ballet celebrated its first home season, From Baroque to Hip Hop, with a timeline of dances ranging from 1700 to today, commemorating ballet’s roots and defining moments as well as showcasing possible modes of progression. (Homans was the guest of honor at the opening gala performance, signing books and conversing with audience members.)

Roslyn Sulcas of The New York Times applauded Lynn's programming, drawing attention to its "notable reconstruction of 18th-century and 19th-century dances." A performance of Lynn and Thomas Baird’s “La Folia,” which sets Baroque style dance by Raoul Feuillet beside contemporary ballet by Lynn, highlighted the roots of balletic language and playfully demonstrated the stark differences between today’s movement and its ancestral derivation.

Collaborating artists and dance scholars, Claudia Jeschke and Robert Atwood presented “The Justamant Suite,” three short but intricate works choreographed by Henri Justamant, a French ballet master heretofore unknown among historians, whose work was uncovered at the Theatersammlung in Cologne, the Bibliothèque Opera de Paris and the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library. Before Brooklyn Ballet’s performance last month, these works had not been presented in 150 years.

Thanks to the George Balanchine Trust, Brooklyn Ballet was also able to include Balanchine’s "The Four Temperaments (Themes I-III)" in the season's concerts. This seminal 1946 work encouraged audiences to note the significant role Balanchine played in shaping contemporary performance.

Last, and most current, Lynn presented the world premiere of "Close to You," which was shown as a work-in-progress at last spring’s First Look series at The Schermerhorn. The intertwining of street dance and ballet contemporizes the genre and validates its position in the present landscape of contemporary art, with its penchant for defying classification by entertaining diverse influences.

Kerry Shea was sitting in a deli during Brooklyn Ballet’s auditions. A friend who was auditioning gave her a call and told her to hurry down to the borough to tryout for the Company – “You’d love it!” the friend declared.

And love it she does. Grateful she ditched her sandwich and booked it to Brooklyn, Kerry doesn’t think she’d have the opportunity to do the kind of dancing she experiences with Lynn in any other company.

Lynn’s latest duet features Kerry and pop and lock artist Mike Fields. It’s a challenging but exhilarating blend of ballet and street dance – and excavation of connections between the two distinct genres of movement.

Kerry comes from a strict technical background so it’s no wonder she’s enthusiastic about the freedom she finds in rehearsals with Lynn. She grew up in Rochester, NY, studying with the Rochester City Ballet while in high school. Upon graduation, she attended the University of Utah on scholarship and developed a professional relationship with the director of Aspen/Santa Fe Ballet. After spending some time dancing in Aspen after college, Kerry relocated to work with the Sacramento Ballet, and finally, journeyed to New York City to find more to add to her already impressive resume.

She never imagined she’d be improvising and working alongside pop and lock artists. This current project has provided more chances for choice and inventiveness than previous works in her personal repertory.

“A lot of times in ballet, everything is very exact,” Kerry says. “The counts have to be right on and the arms and positions have to be just so. You have to train your body and mind to work like that. It’s really fun to explore what can happen when things aren’t exact. It gives me so much more freedom. I’m really enjoying the process because of that.”

But with freedom comes responsibility –

“For me, at first, this was kind of scary,” she says. “I would think: ‘Is this dumb? What am I doing?’ and I was self-conscious. Then I realized that even accidents can turn into something usable. There’s nothing that is wrong. Lynn has a general idea but within that who knows what will occur with the arms, the musicality, etc.”

Despite her initial timidity in the rehearsal studio, Kerry has demonstrated ample courage performing the work-in-progress in a variety of stages of completion at several public events. Kerry and Mike performed for a small group of performers and improvisers at a Mixed Movement at The Schermerhorn and for a multitude of community leaders, including Mayor Bloomberg, at the Brooklyn State of the Borough address at Park Slope Armory.

“What’s cool about this piece is that it appeals to so many different audiences,” she says. “It doesn’t belong in just one spot.”