BroadStage to Present the World Premiere of Los Angeles Ballet's MEMORYHOUSE

BroadStage will present the world premiere of Los Angeles Ballet's Memoryhouse, the first full-length ballet by Melissa Barak as Los Angeles Ballet's new Artistic Director. The ballet will run June 15-17, 2023 at 7:30pm at the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage.
 
Memoryhouse is an abstract work composed of vignettes commemorating World War II and in particular, the Holocaust. Set to Max Richter's powerful album of the same name, Memoryhouse will reflect on both the somber as well as more heroic moments that illuminate this period in human history.

“Dance is tricky in a sense,” said Barak. “The story of the Holocaust has such a darkness and a weight to it, the last thing you would want is for dance to take something of that nature too literally. For me, it was all about keeping it symbolic, removing the personal emotion as performers and to approach it as a ballet that focuses on symbolism and poetry.”

The ballet is choreographed to Max Richter's album in its entirety and in the order it was meant to be listened to. The ballet has 18 movements which totals the number of tracks on the album.  Some movements connect with others while some live on their own. No alterations have been made to the score. All electronic voices, sounds, and touches are part of the original recording.

Barak partnered with Hagy Belzberg, Founding Partner of BA Collective and the architect of The Holocaust Museum for set design, and Sebastian Peschiera of Narduli Studio for production and projection design.

Memoryhouse was originally planned to premiere in 2020, the 75th anniversary year of the end of the Holocaust. Melissa had returned from her trip to Germany and Poland and was well into the creative process when production was sidelined by the COVID pandemic.

A documentary film, The Creation of Memoryhouse produced by MikkoMia Productions will debut this summer.

Memoryhouse is made possible by the generous support of the The David and Janet Polak Foundation.
 
Tickets starting at $50 are available at https://broadstage.org/ or by calling 310.434.3200.
 

About Los Angeles Ballet

 
Los Angeles Ballet is known for its superb stagings of the Balanchine repertory, stylistically meticulous classical ballets, dramatic contemporary works and innovative new choreography. LAB has become recognized as a world-class ballet company and tours throughout LA County, regularly appearing at multiple venues. Since its inception in 2006, LAB's Power of Performance (POP!) arts education program has provided thousands of free tickets to underserved communities throughout Los Angeles County. LAB's A Chance to Dance outreach program was launched in October 2012. Melissa Barak, LAB's new Artistic Director, joins Executive Director Brandon Lussier, who has been with LAB since 2019. The company was founded in 2004 and led until recently by Artistic Directors Thordal Christensen and Colleen Neary, who were responsible for programming the Wheeldon and Val Caniparoli performances.                
 

About Melissa Barak
 

Melissa Barak is a choreographer and former professional dancer with New York City Ballet (NYCB) and Los Angeles Ballet. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Barak began her ballet training at the age of eight at Westside School of Ballet in Santa Monica, California under the direction of Yvonne Mounsey and Rosemary Valaire. Her training continued in New York City at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of NYCB. In 1998, Barak was invited to join NYCB where she performed in numerous works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins as well as originating roles in new ballets by Christopher Wheeldon, Elliot Feld, and Robert Garland among others.
 
Barak began exploring her choreographic talents throughout her time at SAB and NYCB. At the age of 21, she premiered her work Telemann Overture Suite in E Minor at the SAB June Workshop performance that quickly followed up with encore performances on NYCB the following season. Later that year another choreographic commission was offered by NYCB for their prestigious Diamond Project making her, at the time, the youngest choreographer to create an original work on the company.
 
She has created new works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Richmond Ballet, Dayton Ballet, American Repertory Ballet, Sacramento Ballet, Los Angeles Ballet, and Barak Ballet, a Los Angeles based contemporary ballet company she founded in 2013. She has had the honor of choreographing on dance luminaries including Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Justin Peck, Benjamin Millepied, and Robert Fairchild.
 
In 2009 and 2010, she was invited to return to the New York City Ballet where she created two more works, A Simple Symphony and Call Me Ben respectively. Her film and commercial credits include original choreography for Mattel's feature film Barbie in the Pink Shoes, Xayron in Hungary, Illusions in China, and a Samsung commercial working alongside director Mark Romanek. Melissa has been awarded the Mae L. Wein and Choo San Goh awards for Outstanding Choreography and has been named a Dance Magazine “Top 25 to Watch”. She was also the inaugural recipient of the Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Choreographers through Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU.
 
Barak had placed her focus on building Barak Ballet over the past 10 years. As she assumes the role of Artistic Director, she looks forward to building on that vision to an exciting future for Los Angeles Ballet.
 
BroadStage gathers artists, thinkers, and audiences to celebrate our shared humanity and expand the role the arts play in the vitality of our diverse community. BroadStage is an industry-leading performing arts producer and presenter located on the Los Angeles' Westside, providing a platform for the world's most compelling artists working the theatre, dance and music, and multidisciplinary artforms. Building upon its first decade, the organization is rising to meet a rapidly evolving set of needs for artists, audiences, community and campus, with the aim to advance its role as an invaluable cultural resource and artistic ambassador for greater Los Angeles. 
 
A beacon of Santa Monica College (SMC) – one of the country's most progressive, diverse and accessible educational institutions – BroadStage harnesses the transformative power of the performing arts as essential to well-being and society. Established in partnership with SMC in 2008, both organizations are aligned on core values of creativity, learning, and belonging. With the leadership of Artistic and Executive Director Rob Bailis, BroadStage is strengthening its impact through a new artistic vision, an expanded venue footprint, and enhanced community activation. These activities invite a deeper relationship to the artists on our stage and to the work they passionately share. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artist and BroadStage

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