Featuring the Choreography of Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Jessica Lang, and Alexei Ratmansky

Program Two brings together three works — two of them Company premieres — that explore imagination and characterization. Solitaire by Sir Kenneth MacMillan unfolds as “a kind of game for one,” following a solitary figure who drifts between observer and participant in a series of elegant, interconnected sections. Beneath the elegance is a sense of longing, as the central character seems to never quite belong with the ensemble.

In Lyric Pieces, Jessica Lang creates a sequence of poetic scenes that feel both playful and refined but are enhanced by an ever-changing set that seems to breathe and transform alongside the dancers.

Rounding out the program is Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Bursting with color and energy, the work is inspired by Mussorgsky’s famed piano score and the vivid watercolor imagery of Wassily Kandinsky. As New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay observed, the ballet reveals its dancers “vividly, individually, intimately.”

Repertoire will include:

Solitaire (Company Premiere) | Choreography by Sir Kenneth MacMillan | Music by Malcolm Arnold

Lyric Pieces | Choreography by Jessica Lang | Music by Edvard Grieg

Pictures at an Exhibition (Company Premiere) | Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky | Music by Modest Mussorgsky

Featuring Live Music by the Sarasota Orchestra

In his 1874 work "Pictures at an Exhibition", Modest Mussorgsky, the most radical representative of the group known as "The Five", expressed an overflowing fullness of life and visionary sound images. 

Writing in The New York Times after the ballet’s premiere, critic Alastair Macaulay stated, “‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is surely the most casually diverse work Mr. Ratmansky has created, but it gathers unstoppable momentum. The 10 dancers—five women, five men—started out in informal home-theater mood, almost as if they were playing charades. Some dances, including the first solo (by Sara Mearns), had a wild, improvisatory, part-stumbling, part-inspired quality. (The tailor-made nature of the ballet’s solos reflects one of Mr. Ratmansky’s greatest gifts: Dancers are vividly, individually, intimately revealed.) In certain numbers the dancers—here on all fours, there gesturing—seemed to enact or refer to private stories. Other sections shifted toward a classicism of long lines and academic steps. Some ensembles were largely about camaraderie; others about geometry, harmony, meter.”