Alison Cook Beatty Dance Presents an Evening of Respighi

Alison Cook Beatty Dance will perform a WORLD PREMIERE (Untitled) and MURMURATION featuring the music of Ottorino Respighi in an hour-long program. The performance will include one intermission following a discussion with the Artistic Director and several of the dancers about the creative process. Charlotte Benjamin, a talented guitarist will be featured throughout the evening.

Artistic Director, Alison Cook-Beatty is thrilled to be presenting both WORLD PREMIERE (Untitled) and MURMURATION on this special evening at City Center Studios. Ottorino Respighi is one of the many composers Ms. Cook-Beatty finds inspiring, and finds his compositions lighter and whimsical than most. Ms. Cook Beatty "sees" imagery very clearly through Mr. Respighi's music. She commented, "In MURMURATION I heard the character of the nightingale singing to awaken the other birds at dawn and thought this would be a wonderful theme for this dance. "In WORLD PRIEMIERE (Untitled), a lyrical musical passage would remind me of Cupid searching for love and I built the dance around this inspiring theme." Alison looks forward to sharing some of the research on the compositional scores, the inspiration that came out of that, and the development on the works in the discussion of the creative process with the dancers following the performance.

WORLD PRIEMIERE (Untitled), features nine dancers costumed by designer Christine Darch. Set to the music of Ancient Airs and Dances and is composed by Ottorino Respighi. This WORLD PRIEMIERE (Untitled) is inspired by Sandro Botticelli's paintings, La Primavera and The Birth of Venus. Greek gods and goddesses, such as Venus, Zephyros, Chloris, Mercury, Flora, The Three Graces, and Cupid are brought to life from these two works of art.

MURMURATION features eight dancers costumed by designer Christine Darch. Set to the music of Gli uccelli (The Birds) composed by Ottorino Respighi, the dance features a dove, a hen, a nightingale, and a cuckoo. This piece is heavily inspired by the aerial ballet of the starlings, when gathered together in what is called a MURMURATION. They are a dazzling cloud, swirling, pulsating, enlarging, and coming together.

About Alison Cook Beatty Dance:

Alison Cook Beatty Dance, founded in 2012, is a classically based modern dance

company exploring the universal human condition through expansive and emotionally driven movement grounded in American modern dance. The healing and transformational power of the arts inspires the company to work with diverse groups within the community, in addition to collaborative efforts with other artists. Under the artistic direction of Alison Cook-Beatty, her choreography has been commissioned by professional companies and universities such as Ballet Next for its Joyce Theater season, Columbia Ballet Collaborative, and The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. The company has toured throughout the United States. Locally, the company has performed at New York Live Arts, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Salvatore Capezio Theater at Peridance, the 92nd Street Y, The Martha Graham Studio Theater, The Theater at The 14th Street Y, Battery Dance Festival, and Gibney Dance POP Performance Series, and other performance venues.

Tickets can be purchased: www.alisoncookbeattydance.org, by calling 1-800- 838-3006 or at this link: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2905316

Photo credit Russell Haydn