WHAT

MDT begins the new year with an evening of repertory featuring the regional premiere of master choreographer, Jirí Kyliáns, La Cathedrale Engloutie the restaging of founder, visionary Loyce Houltons Ancient Air and the reprise of Lise Houltons Point of Departure.

WHERE

The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts - the Goodale Theater

528 Hennepin Avenue

Minneapolis, MN 55403

612-465-0230

www.thecowlescenter.org

WHEN

Friday, March 23, 2012 @ 8PM

Saturday, March 24, 2012 @ 8PM

Sunday, March 25, 2012 @ 2PM

COST

Adult: $26/$32 (plus $4 handling fee)

Student: $20 (plus $4 handling fee)

TICKETS

www.thecowlescenter.org

612-206-3600 (Monday Friday 12PM to 5PM)

Minneapolis, MN As part of its 50th Anniversary Season, Minnesota Dance Theatre (MDT) continues its illustrious artistic legacy with three adventurous works for Twin Cities audiences: La Cathédrale Engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral), Ancient Air and Point of Departure. The concert will be performed at the new flagship for dance The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts.

REGIONAL PREMIERE

La Cathédrale Engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) is a quartet for two men and two women that is a showcase for the dancers flexibility, concentration and strength. With fragments of the music by French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) for solo piano throughout, the piece is also set to sounds of waves breaking violently on the seashore.

Although Debussys music is based on an ancient Breton myth in which a cathedral, submerged underwater off the coast of the Island of Ys, rises up from the sea on clear mornings when the water is transparent with sounds of priests chanting, bells chiming, and the organ playing, from across the sea, Kylians piece is not a retelling of the story. Instead, it evokes the tension between law and free will.

Dancers pulled one another across the floor, whirled one another about and, without apparent transition, soared from the floor into the air, only to plummet downward again . . . Moments when dancers tried to dominate their partners alternated with attempts at breaking loose, thereby making the ballet a study of the tensions between freedom and constraint that can develop in human relationships. The New York Times

Debussy's music is usually classified as a musical counterpart to the artistic movement known as impressionism, although he was often at odds with those who used the term to describe his music. He conveys a feeling of vagueness rather than sharply defined articulation, similar to painters of his time like the Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro.

Choreographer Jirí Kylián is a celebrated Czech choreographer responsible for creating 100 works, three-quarters for the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT). He originally studied in Prague and, at the age of 20, won a scholarship at the Royal Ballet School in London. He joined the Stuttgart Ballet in 1968 and worked under John Cranko, where he began to choreograph. Kylián became Artistic Director of Nederlands Dans Theatre in 1976. His style is very energetic and contemporary and his best known works include Symphony of Psalms (1978). In 1992, he started his own chamber company for dancers over 40. In 1993 and 1999, he was awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse as choreographer, one of the two only to receive it twice.

RESTAGING

The production also includes the restaging of founder, visionary Loyce Houltons Ancient Air set to Ancient Voices of Children by renowned composer George Crumb. This musical work is a cycle of songs based on texts by Federico Garcia Lorca.

This ritual dance addresses birth, love aggression, death and rebirth with dancers hanging from ropes and swinging on trapezes. (The company originally learned these circus techniques from Dudley Riggs himself.) Written up in Dance Magazine soon after the pieces creation in 1977, the magazine writes, The choreography is demanding, yet never (except in the deliberately aggressive scenes) brutal.

I have lost myself in the sea many times

With my ear full of freshly cut flowers,

With my tongue full of love and agony.

I have lost myself in the sea many times

as I lose myself in the heart of certain children.

--Federico Garcia Lorca

Choreographer Loyce Houlton, one of the first American women to gain international recognition as a choreographer, teacher and producer, founded Minnesota Dance Theatre in 1962. With more than 90 original ballets to her credit, she brought significant national attention to the artistic richness of the state. As a teacher, she developed an original training technique, the Houlton Contemporary Technique, a symbiosis of the formal classical ballet and more modern styles of dance. A tiny and perpetually restless woman, Mrs. Houlton liked to say to students: "Explode! Be voracious in space." Bruce Marks, Artistic Director for Boston Ballet, stated at the time of her death in 1995: "She belongs to that group of tenacious American women artists that includes Martha Graham and [Agnes] DeMille."

REPRISE

The third repertory piece is the popular and playful Point of Departure choreographed by Lise Houlton set to Franz Joseph Haydns Symphony No. 45. This demanding piece is a showcase for MDTs talented company. After a frenetic opening movement, Houlton catches her breath and rolls out an acrobatic duet and a series of playful solos that flow like water . . . StarTribune

Choreographer Lise Houlton

Lise Houlton became Artistic Director of Minnesota Dance Theatre in 1995, succeeding her mother Loyce Houlton, who founded the company in 1962. A native of Minneapolis, best known for her effortless, fluid style and dramatic sensibility, she began her dance career with MDT, then moved at the age of 19 to the renowned Stuttgart Ballet under the leadership of Glen Tetley. After two years in Germany, she joined American Ballet Theatre where she danced principal roles for many of the great choreographers of the last half century, among them Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Glen Tetley, Antony Tudor, Paul Taylor and Jerome Robbins. She has choreographed several works for the MDT repertory including Sidetracks, House on Fire, Bred in the Bone, Alchemical Wedding, A Piece A Chord, Rumblings, The Enchantment: Twelve Dancing Princesses, and Point of Departure.

ABOUT MINNESOTA DANCE THEATRE & THE DANCE INSTITUTE

Minnesota Dance Theatre is a non-profit professional dance company and school that brings together classical ballet and contemporary techniques in an all-encompassing dance aesthetic. Founder Loyce Houlton, one of the first American women to gain national and international recognition as a choreographer, teacher and producer, founded the company in 1962.

MDT celebrates a deep and personal connection to its past, it is presently flourishing with renewed creativity and energy springing from Lise Houltons artistic leadership. Under her direction, the company and school aspire to maintain the highest international artistic standards, and attract audiences, dancers, choreographers and students from all cultural and economic backgrounds to the art of dance. MDT is one of Minnesotas cultural treasures. The 2011-12 performance season runs September 2011 through April 2012.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Petrushka with the Minnesota Orchestra March 28-31, April 14, 2012 at Orchestra Hall

La Cathedrale Engloutie & Ancient Air March 23-25, 2012 at The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts

MDT 50th Anniversary Celebration Gala April 28, 2012 at The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts

Carmina Burana April 26-29, 2012 at The Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts

Contact: Marsha Walker

Phone: 612-338-0627 ext 4

marsha.walker@mndance.org

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