Pontus Lidberg to Present Excerpts of New York City Ballet Piece at Guggenheim's Works & Process

On Sunday and Monday, January 8 and 9, 2017 at 7:30pm, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presents a discussion with acclaimed Swedish choreographer and filmmaker Pontus Lidberg and excerpts of his first-ever work for New York City Ballet.

The ballet features a newly commissioned score by Pulitzer Prize winner and Grammy award-winning American composer David Lang, with costumes designed by longtime Lidberg collaborator Rachel Quarmby-Spadaccini. Moderated by former NYCB principal dancer Wendy Whelan, a panel discussion with Lidberg will share insights into his creative process during the development of this new work.

Lidberg's ballet will have its world premiere with New York City Ballet at the David H. Koch Theater in New York on January 26, 2017.

Tickets are $40, $35 Guggenheim members and Friends of Works & Process. $10 Student Rush tickets are available one hour prior to each performance if space allows (for students under 25 with valid ID). Priority ticket access and preferred seat selection is now available for Friends of Works & Process or Guggenheim Members Associate level and above. The Box Office can be reached at (212) 423-3575, (M-F, 1-5pm) or online at worksandprocess.org. Performances take place at the Peter B. Lewis Theater, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

In just a few short years Swedish choreographer, filmmaker and dancer, Pontus Lidberg firmly established himself as a creative and visionary artist bringing dance and film together. He is recognized for his dance film The Rain, for which he received numerous awards. The New York Times wrote that The Rain, "illustrates what filmed dance can say that staged dance cannot." As a choreographer for the stage, Lidberg has created more than 40 works for dance companies such as Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, SemperOper Ballett Dresden, Martha Graham Dance Company, Le Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, The Royal Swedish Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, Beijing Dance Theatre, Balletboyz, Morphoses, as well as for his own concert group, Pontus Lidberg Dance. He was nominated for a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) in Outstanding Visual Design, for his dance and film evening WITHIN (Labyrinth Within) - created during his 2012 tenure as Resident Artistic Director of Morphoses. The New York Times applauded the premiere of this contemporary story ballet, "told without mime and driven by emotional and psychological textures... [Lidberg] sublimates the academic language of ballet, dissolving it into knotty partnering that manages, by and large, to avoid the churning clichés of much contemporary movement in the form. It is refreshing to see a ballet embracing the virtues of restraint." His film, Labyrinth Within won Best Picture at Lincoln Center's Dance on Camera Festival in 2012. Raised in Stockholm, Sweden, Lidberg trained at the Royal Swedish Ballet School. He holds an MFA in Contemporary Performing Arts from the University of Gothenburg, Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts.

David Lang is one of the most highly-esteemed and performed American composers writing today. His work has been performed around the world in most of the great concert halls. "With his winning of the Pulitzer Prize for the little match girl passion (one of the most original and moving scores of recent years), Lang, once a postminimalist enfant terrible, has solidified his standing as an American master." - The New Yorker. Lang's simple song #3, written as part of his score for Paolo Sorrentino's acclaimed film Youth, received many awards nominations in 2016, including the Academy Award and Golden Globe. His the little match girl passion won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in music. Based on a fable by Hans Christian Andersen and Lang's own rewriting of the libretto to Bach's St. Matthew's Passion, the recording of the piece was awarded a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Lang has also been the recipient of the Rome Prize, Le Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and Musical America's 2013 Composer of the Year. Lang's music is used regularly for ballet and modern dance around the world by such choreographers as Twyla Tharp, Susan Marshall, Edouard Lock, and Benjamin Millepied, who choreographed a new piece by Lang for the LA Dance Project at BAM in 2014. Lang's film work includes the score for JoNathan Parker's (Untitled), the music for the award-winning documentary The Woodmans, and the string arrangements for Requiem for a Dream, performed by the Kronos Quartet. His music is also on the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentino's Oscar-winning La Grande Bellezza and the director's upcoming film, Youth. In addition to his work as a composer, Lang is Professor of Composition at the Yale School of Music and co-founder and co-artistic director of New York's legendary music collective Bang on a Can. His music is published by Red Poppy Music (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.

British-born Rachel Quarmby-Spadaccini lives in France, where she works as a costume designer in dance and film. Her work can be seen in the feature film Eden Log (2007), directed by Frank Vestiel, starring Clovis Cornillac. Quarmby-Spadaccini has designed costumes for a large number of contemporary dance productions. She has collaborated with, among others, Ballet National de Lorraine, Anu Sistonen, Pontus Lidberg, Joelle Bouvier Company and Carolyn Carlson - for whom she designed the costumes for Man in a Room (2000). With Tero Saarinen Company Quarmby-Spadaccini has collaborated since 1999, creating the costumes for five of Tero Saarinen's works. www.quarmby-spadaccini.com

Wendy Whelan, widely considered one of the world's leading dancers, spent 30 years at New York City Ballet, dancing virtually all the major Balanchine roles, and working closely with Jerome Robbins on many of his ballets and originating roles in ballets by such notable choreographers as William Forsythe, Twyla Tharp, Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, Jorma Elo, Shen Wei, and Wayne MacGregor. She was promoted to soloist in 1989 and to principal dancer in 1991. Her most notable choreographic collaboration at NYCB was with Christopher Wheeldon, who created roles for Wendy in 13 of his ballets, including Polyphonia, Liturgy, and After the Rain. At his own company, Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company, Chris again chose Wendy for several new works, and in 2007, she was nominated in London for both an Olivier Award and a Critics Circle Award for her performances.

Wendy has been a guest artist with The Royal Ballet and the Kirov Ballet and has performed all over the U.S., South America, Europe, and Asia. She received the Dance Magazine Award in 2007, and in 2009 was given a Doctorate of Arts, honoris causa, from Bellarmine University. In 2011, she received both The Jerome Robbins Award and a Bessie Award for her Sustained Achievement in Performance. "She's the best. There's a complexity, a sense of internal life, a woman on stage. You're always trying to decode this person when she moves." -Mikhail Baryshnikov

For over 31 years and in over 400 productions, New Yorkers have been able to see, hear, and meet the most acclaimed artists in the world, in an intimate setting unlike any other. Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, has championed new works and offered audiences unprecedented access to generations of leading creators and performers. Each performance takes place in the Guggenheim's intimate Frank Lloyd Wright-designed 285-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater. Described bythe New York Times as "an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process," Works & Process is produced by founder Mary Sharp Cronson. Visit worksandprocess.org.