Works & Process Presents The Washington Ballet: Julie Kent and Gemma Bond

Works & Process, the performing arts series at the Guggenheim, presents The Washington Ballet: Julie Kent and Gemma Bond on Sunday and Monday, February 25 and 26, 2018 at 7:30pm.

New York Times dance critic Marina Harss moderates a discussion withWashington Ballet artistic director Julie Kent and choreographer andAmerican Ballet Theatre corps de ballet member Gemma Bond, discussing Bond's newest work, set to music by Henry Purcell, for the The Washington Ballet. Company dancers including Sona Kharatian, Corey Landolt, Brittany Stone, and Venus Villa perform highlights from the new commission prior to the March 14 premiere in Washington, D.C.

Leadership support for this Works & Process program provided by Monica Voldstad, with additional support from Judith M. Hoffman and Howard Paley.

TICKETS & VENUE

$45, $40 Guggenheim Members and Friends of Works & Process

Box Office (212) 423-3575 or worksandprocess.org

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Rotunda

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The Washington Ballet (TWB) was originally founded as The Washington School of Ballet in 1944 by legendary ballet pioneer Mary Day and incorporated as a professional company in 1976. The Washington Ballet is one of the pre-eminent ballet organizations in the United States. TWB built an international reputation presenting bold works by choreographers from around the world, including Choo San Goh, Christopher Wheeldon, Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp, Hans van Manen and Ji?í Kylián, as well as neoclassical masterworks and fresh staging of 19th century classics. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Julie Kent, TWB continues to serve its three-part mission: ensuring excellence in its professional performance company; growing the next generation of dancers through its Washington School of Ballet; and serving the community in which it resides through robust community engagement programs.

Julie Kent, Artistic Director of TWB since July 2016, was the longest serving ballerina in American Ballet Theatre's 77 year history. She began her dance training with Hortensia Fonseca at the Academy of the Maryland Youth Ballet in Bethesda, MD and attended summer sessions at American Ballet Theatre II and the School of American Ballet before joining American Ballet Theatre as an apprentice in 1985. In that same year, Kent won first place in the regional finals of the National Society of Arts and Letters at the Kennedy Center. In 1986, she was the only American to win a medal at the Prix de Lausanne International Ballet Competition, and she became a member of ABT's corps de ballet.

Kent starred in the Herbert Ross film "Dancers" in 1987 opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov. She was appointed a Soloist with ABT in 1990 and a Principal Dancer in 1993, the year in which she won the Erik Bruhn Prize in Toronto and was named one of People Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People". In April 2000, Kent won the "Prix Benois de la Danse" and is the only American woman ever to have won this prize. Later that year, Kent starred in the motion picture "Center Stage" directed by Nicholas Hytner. In 2012, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Performing Arts from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts as well as a "Lifetime Achievement Award" from Dance Magazine. Since 2014, she has been the Brand Ambassador for HANIA by Anya Cole, a line of hand-knit cashmere in NYC.

During Miss Kent's long performing career, she acquired a vast repertoire dancing over 100 ballets, including all of the major classical, dramatic and neo-classical roles in works by Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, John Cranko, Antony Tudor, Michel Fokine, Agnes De Mille, Merce Cunningham, José Limón, Ji?í Kylián, Ronald Hynd, Ben Stevenson and Christopher Wheeldon. As well, she has had roles created on her by John Neumeier, Lar Lubovitch, Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp, Alexei Ratmansky, Nacho Duato, Stanton Welch, James Kudelka, Jorma Elo, David Parsons, Jessica Lang and Natalie Weir. Her appearances as a guest include invitations from the Mariinsky Theatre, Teatro alla Scala, New York City Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Berlin Staatsballett, Australian Ballet, Bayerisches Staatsballett, Teatro Colon, Ballet de Santiago, and others.

In August of 2015, after a 30 year performing career, Kent spent one year as Artistic Director of ABT's Summer Intensive, a comprehensive summer dance program for 1,400 students, before taking the artistic helm of The Washington Ballet in 2016. Miss Kent married TWB Associate Artistic Director Victor Barbee in 1996. Through her celebrated performing career, and as an artistic director and the mother of 2 children, she has helped redefine the image of an American Ballerina.

Gemma Bond got her first taste of choreography at 13 when she competed in the Royal Ballet's Sir Kenneth MacMillan Choreographic Competition. From 2010 to the present, she has created three new ballets for ABT's Choreographic Institute as well as works for Atlanta Ballet, New York Theater Ballet, Intermezzo Ballet Company, the Hartt School and Ballet Sun Valley. Her choreography has been performed at the prestigious Erik Bruhn Competition, the Youth America Grand Prix Gala, the 92nd Street Y, The Joyce, Jacob's Pillow, and she has worked on commercial projects with 1stAveMachine.

In 2014 she was awarded the fellowship grant from the New York Choreographic Institute (an affiliate of New York City Ballet) and she has also received grants from the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Her upcoming projects include a spring 2018 world premiere commission from The Washington Ballet. Ms. Bond is a 2017-2018 New York City Center Choreography Fellow the recipient of a 2017 Princess Grace Foundation -USAChoreography Fellowship, and the 2018 winner of the Clive Barnes Foundation Award for dance.

Sona Kharatian of Yerevan, Armenia, danced with Orlando Ballet, the Trey McIntyre Project and Copenhagen International Ballet under direction of Alexander Kolpin, and was a guest artist with ARKA Ballet under the direction of Roudolf Kharatian. She began her ballet training at the Choreographic Institute in Yerevan, and later studied at the Kirov Academy of Ballet and The Washington School of Ballet. Kharatian has performed works by George Balanchine, Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Choo San Goh, Antony Tudor, Septime Webre, Nacho Duato, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Christopher Wheeldon, Trey McIntyre, Nicolo Fonte, Alexei Ratmansky, Roudolf Kharatian, William Forsythe, Ji?í Kylián, Hans van Manen, Edwaard Liang and Alejandro Cerrudo, among others. Featured roles include Juliet in Romeo + Juliet, Myrtha in Giselle, Myrtle in The Great Gatsby, Carmen in Carmen, the Red Queen in ALICE (in wonderland) and Lady Brett Ashley inHemingway: The Sun Also Rises, among others. Kharatian is a two-time recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award.

Corey Landolt of New Jersey is in his ninth season with The Washington Ballet Company after dancing for three seasons with TWB's Studio Company. He began classical ballet training at the Academy of Ballet in Berlin, New Jersey under David Gallagher. During his training, he performed with Ballet New Jersey in Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and a full-length production of La Bayadère. Landolt later attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts to study under Warren Conover, Melissa Hayden and Kee Juan Han. In 2004, he was selected for the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company Associate Program (now the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at ABT) where he danced in Jessica Lang's world premiere at ABT's Studio Company 10th Anniversary Gala. Notable roles with The Washington Ballet include Sanguinic in Balanchine's The Four Temperaments; lead in Balanchine's Theme and Variations; Birbanto in Le Corsaire; Benvolio in Romeo + Juliet and several premieres by Septime Webre, Edwaard Liang and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.

Brittany Stone from East Hartford Connecticut began studying ballet at American Ballet Theatre's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School under the direction of Franco DeVita and Raymond Lukens, and privately with Fabrice Herrault. She spent her last year of high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts under the artistic direction of Ethan Stiefel. Stone joined Boston Ballet II in 2010 and was promoted to corps de ballet in 2012, remaining with the company until 2016. Stone's featured Boston Ballet repertoire includes Arabian in Mikko Nissinen's The Nutcracker; Concerto girls in Balanchine'sEpisodes; the Songbird Fairy in Marius Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty; Balanchine's Theme and Variations; Circus Clowns in John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet; Autumn in Neumeier's Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler; Olga's friends in John Cranko's Onegin and the "Eternal Spring" pas de deux in Nijinsky's Rodin. Brittany has been featured in Pointe Magazine's "In the Wings" article as well as on the cover of Pointe Magazine's June/July, 2013 issue as a top 10 favorite "Stars of the Corps." Stone was Boston Ballet's 2012 Princess Grace Foundation - USA Award nominee.

Venus Villa of Cuba is in her third season with The Washington Ballet. She began her training at the prestigious Cuban National Ballet and later attended the La Scala Ballet School where she performed Swanilda in Coppélia. At the age of seventeen, she won the Grand Prix at the Vignale Ballet Competition. Villa has performed with the corps de ballet at the Royal Ballet in London and the Vienna Staatsoper Ballet where she performed many soloist roles in ballets including Coppélia, Alice in Wonderland, The Nutcracker, The Snow Queen, Sinfonietta Giocosa, Don Quixote Pas de Deux, Diana and Acteon, Romeo and Juliet, Etude and Le Corsaire Pas de Deux. Villa was selected by the artistic director of English National Ballet as the "emerging dancer" of the company and was nominated by the English Press as "Young Spotlight of The Year" for the role of Alice in Alice in Wonderland. In 2014 she performed Luigi Martelletta's Carmen, touring in Italy and also the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Cincinnati Ballet's The Nutcracker.

Marina Harss is a writer, journalist, and critic based in New York City, writing on all aspects of dance, and occasionallyon opera. Her features, profiles, think pieces, and interviews have appeared in: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Ballet Review, Playbill, BAMBill, Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, and Dancetabs.com. She is also the dance critic for WNYC. She is currently at work on a book about the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, to be published by Farrar Straus and Giroux.

Works & Process at the Guggenheim
Described by The New York Times as "an exceptional opportunity to understand something of the creative process," for over 33 years and in over 500 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. Most performances take place in the Guggenheim's intimate Frank Lloyd Wright-designed 285-seat Peter B. Lewis Theater. In 2017, Works & Process established a new residency and commissioning program, inviting artists to create new works, made in and for the iconic Guggenheim rotunda. worksandprocess.org.

Photo: Gemma Bond - Photo by Jade Young