Juilliard Dances Repertory 2016 to Feature Works by Paul Taylor, Jerome Robbins & Jiri Kylian

Juilliard Dances Repertory 2016 presents masterworks by acclaimed choreographers Ji?í Kylián, Jerome Robbins, and Juilliard alumnus Paul Taylor fromMarch 23-26, 2016. Juilliard dancers will perform Paul Taylor's Roses; Jerome Robbins's Moves; and Ji?í Kylián's Symphony of Psalms. The Juilliard Orchestra will perform the live music for Roses, and Venture(NY) and the Juilliard Orchestra will perform Symphony of Psalms.

Juilliard Dances Repertory performances take place on Wednesday, March 23 at 7:30pm; Thursday, March 24 at 7:30pm; Friday, March 25 at 7:30pm; and Saturday, March 26 at 2pm and 7:30pm in Juilliard's Peter Jay Sharp Theater.

Tickets for $30 are available at events.juilliard.edu. Tickets for Juilliard students are free; non-Juilliard students may purchase tickets for $15, only at the Juilliard Box Office. For further information, call (212) 769-7406.

About the Program

Paul Taylor's Roses, set to music by Richard Wagner (Siegfried Idyll) and Heinrich Baermann (Adagio for Clarinet and Strings), had its premiere on April 10, 1985 in NYC with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Roses is a paean to love and relationships in various stages. Some couples' duets illustrate youthful ardor and love's first blush. A central duet suggests a more mature relationship characterized by support, security, and the anticipation of one's needs. Whether these are all distinct relationships or different stages of the same one is for the viewer to decide. The stager for Roses will be Juilliard faculty member Linda Kent.

Jerome Robbins's Moves was created for Robbins's Ballets: U.S.A. and had its world premiere at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy in 1959. The work is performed in silence and features 12 dancers: six women and six men. The stager will be Kathleen Tracey with assistance from Juilliard faculty member Jeff Edwards. The Jerome Robbins Trust provided a note about the work: "Whether a ballet tells a story or concerns itself with pure dance, its form is determined by the web of music on which it is composed according to the interpretations of the choreographer. The score conditions, supports, predicts, and establishes the dynamics, tempos, and mood not only for the dance, but for the audience. The music acts as a base for the spectators' responses to the happenings on stage and creates a pervasive atmosphere for reaction. Moves severs that guidance and permits the audience to respond solely to the action of the dance, to become aware of the potential to gesture and to respond directly to the curiosity of movement, and to be released from the associations evoked by scenery, costumes, and music."

Ji?í Kylián's Symphony of Psalms was choreographed for Nederlands Dance Theater (N.D.T.) and was premiered on November 24, 1978 at Circustheater, The Hague, Netherlands. Longtime N.D.T. company member Patrick Delcroix will stage the work with assistance from Juilliard faculty member Francisco Martinez. Set to Stravinsky's choral masterpiece, the live music will be performed by Venture(NY) (Kent Tritle, Chorus Director) and the Juilliard Orchestra, conducted by George Manahan.

About the Choreographers for Juilliard Dances Repertory

Ji?í Kylián began his career at the School of the National Ballet in Prague at age 9. After studying at London's Royal Ballet School he joined the Stuttgart Ballet. He was artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theater (N.D.T.) from 1975 until 1999 (creating nearly 100 ballets for the N.D.T.) when he became the house choreographer, a position he held until 2009. In the last 10 years, Mr. Kylián has directed three dance films, Car-Men (2006), Between Entrance & Exit(2013,) and Schwarzfahrer (2014). In the course of his career he has received numerous awards including the Netherlands's Officer of the Orange Order, an honorary doctorate from Juilliard (1997), three Nijinsky Awards, the Benoit de la Dance in Moscow and Berlin, the Honorary Medal of the President of the Czech Republic, Commander of the Légion d'honneur in France, and the 2008 Medal of the Order of the House of Orange given to him by the Netherlands's Queen Beatrix. In 2011, Mr. Kylián received the Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of dance and theater from the Czech Ministry of Culture.

Jerome Robbins is world-renowned for his work as a choreographer of ballets, as well as his work as a director and choreographer in theater, movies, and television. His Broadway shows include On the Town, Billion Dollar Baby, High Button Shoes, West Side Story, The King and I,Gypsy, Miss Liberty, Call Me Madam, and Fiddler on the Roof. His last Broadway production in 1989, Jerome Robbins = Broadway, won six Tony Awards, including the best musical and best director. Among the more than 60 ballets he created are Fancy Free, Afternoon of a Faun, The Concert, Dances at a Gathering, In the Night, In G Major, Other Dances, Glass Pieces, andIves, Songs, which are in the repertories of New York City Ballet and other major dance companies throughout the world. His last ballets include A Suite of Dances created for Mikhail Baryshnikov (1994), 2 & 3 Part Inventions (1994), West Side Story Suite (1995), andBrandenburg (1996). In addition to two Academy Awards for the film West Side Story, Mr. Robbins has received four Tony Awards, five Donaldson Awards, an Emmy Award, the Screen Directors' Guild Award, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Mr. Robbins was a 1981 Kennedy Center Honors recipient and was awarded the French Chevalier dans l'Ordre national de Légion d'honneur. Mr. Robbins died in 1998.

Choreographer Paul Taylor, an alumnus of Juilliard, is the greatest living pioneer of American modern dance, with 142 dances made since 1964 when he established the Paul Taylor Dance Company. He continues to offer cogent observations on life's complexities and society's thorniest issues through his works. A virtuoso dancer for 20 years, Mr. Taylor turned exclusively to choreography in 1974; the dance that followed, Esplanade, was hailed an instant classic. His works are performed by PTDC, Taylor 2, and companies the world over. In 2015, he established a new initiative, Paul Taylor's American Modern Dance, to present great dances of the past and present by other modern choreographers, and commission the next generation of dance makers to create works on his company. A Kennedy Center honoree, he is the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary, Dancemaker, and author of the acclaimed autobiography, Private Domain. Juilliard awarded Mr. Taylor an honorary degree in 1988.

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