Boston Ballet Ii To Perform At Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center!

Boston Ballet II (BBII) will perform at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe, Vermont on Saturday, November 2 at 7:00 pm. The program will feature three works by Boston Ballet-based choreographers, a 19th century work by Arthur Saint-Leon, composer Amilcare Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours, a romantic duet by Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, and excerpts from Mikko Nissinen's The Nutcracker.

"I am thrilled to bring the talent of Boston Ballet II to Spruce Peak Resort," said Associate Director of BBII Peter Stark. "This program features world renowned choreographers being presented for the first time by Boston Ballet II in Vermont and will close with a suite of dances from Mikko Nissinen's The Nutcracker."

The program at Spruce Peak will open with the Ocean and Pearls pas de trois from the ballet Little Humpbacked Horse. The ballet, originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Leon, premiered in 1864 and was revised by Marius Petipa in 1895 at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. The pas de trois features the King of the Ocean (Poseidon) with two pearls.

The next three works are rooted in Boston Ballet. First, a new work by Company dancer My'kal Stromile, a Juilliard graduate who studied both dance and choreography. At Juilliard, he received Choreographic Honors three years in a row and was awarded the school's Hector Zaraspe Prize in Choreography in 2018. Stromile joined BBII in 2018 and was promoted to artist of the Company in 2019. He choreographed his first piece for the Company in 2018 as part of the BBll@home program. The next work is a solo from Slice to Sharp by Boston Ballet Resident Choreographer Jorma Elo. The full ballet was created for New York City Ballet in 2006. It is a high-energy work for eight dancers, set to music by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber and Antonio Vivaldi. And third, Boston Ballet School faculty member and choreographer Igor Burlak's Fiddle Faddle, which is set to music by Leroy Anderson. This work recently premiered with music performed by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra on Boston's Hatch Shell.

The second half of the program opens with Richard Cook's Dance of the Hours. Amilcare Ponchielli is the composer of Dance of the Hours, which "is one of the most cited, and satirized, classical [music] works in pop culture." (Andrew J. Sammut, Boston Classical Review). This will be followed by This Bitter Earth, a duet of longing and love created by Tony Award-winning choreographer and director, Christopher Wheeldon, to music by Dinah Washington and Max Richter. The program closes with a suite of Act II dances from Mikko Nissinen's The Nutcracker set to Tchaikovsky's iconic score.

Led by Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen and Associate Director of BBII Peter Stark, Boston Ballet II (BBII), the Second Company of Boston Ballet, is a two-year program featuring young, classically-trained dancers on the cusp of their professional careers. They perform extensively with the main Company at the Citizens Bank Opera House, in addition to their own touring engagements. BBII alumni make up more than a third of the current Boston Ballet roster, and others have gone on to professional careers in numerous American and international companies, including The Royal Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Houston Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, and The National Ballet of Canada.

For tickets and more information, please visit sprucepeakarts.org or call (802)760-4634.

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