Dances Patrelle Presents the 2012 Gala Benefit, 11/11

Dances Patrelle presents its 2012 Gala Benefit on Sunday, November 11, 2012 from 5-8pm at the House of the Redeemer, 7 E. 95th Street, NYC. Tickets are $150 ($40 for children). To purchase tickets visit http://www.dancespatrelle.org/events/.

The evening is sponsored and catered by David Burke Restaurant Group. The evening will be an elegant affair reminiscent of New York in 1895, and includes a silent auction, wine tasting, and games for the children. An assortment of highly entertaining activities just for kids will be provided by Artists Babysitting!

Dances Patrelle (DP), now it its 24th year, is a dynamic professional ballet company that keeps the tradition of dramatic ballet alive and offers opportunities for young dancers to learn from and perform alongside top dance professionals. DP presents two annual performance seasons in New York: its holiday tradition, The Yorkville Nutcracker, now going into its seventeenth year at the Daniel Kaye Theater, and a spring season of original works created by DP's founder and director, Francis Patrelle. Mr. Patrelle has set over 50 ballets on the company, including works to the American songbook (Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Noel Coward, Jerry Lee Lewis, among others), and works to commissioned scores from contemporary composers (including Patrick Soluri and Rod Hausen).

Francis Patrelle is the founder and director of Dances Patrelle and is a master teacher at Ballet Academy East. Heralded by Lynn Garafola in Dance Magazine as a choreographer with "a personal vision...classical because it is rooted in metaphor and symbolic language [and] populist because of its legibility and broad cultural resonance," Francis is honored to have created work for ballet legends Marcelo Gomes, Maria Riccetto, Donald Williams, Lourdes Lopez, Jock Soto, Merrill Ashley and prima ballerina Cynthia Gregory, among others.