Repertory Concert
March 23-25, 2012 @ The Cowles Center

MDT continues its 50th Anniversary Season with an evening of repertory featuring the regional premiere of master choreographe, Jirí Kylián’s wild La Cathedrale Engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) with music by Claude Debussy.

“Dancers pulled one another across the floor, whirled one another about and, without apparent transition, soared from the floor into the air, only to plummet downward again" - The New York Times.

The evening also includes the restaging of founder, visionary Loyce Houlton’s Ancient Air with music by George Crumb (including a cycle of songs on texts by Garcia Lorca), and the reprise of Lise Houlton’s playful Point of Departure set to music by Franz Joseph Haydn.

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La Cathédrale Engloutie - Regional Premier!

La Cathédrale Engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) is a quartet for two men and two women that is a showcase for the dancers’ flexibility, concentration and strength. With fragments of the music by French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) for solo piano throughout, the piece is also set to sounds of waves breaking violently on the seashore.

Although Debussy’s music is based on an ancient Breton myth in which a cathedral, submerged underwater off the coast of the Island of Ys, rises up from the sea on clear mornings when the water is transparent with sounds of priests chanting, bells chiming, and the organ playing, from across the sea, Kylian’s piece is not a retelling of the story. Instead, it evokes the tension between law and free will.

“Dancers pulled one another across the floor, whirled one another about and, without apparent transition, soared from the floor into the air, only to plummet downward again ... Moments when dancers tried to dominate their partners alternated with attempts at breaking loose, thereby making the ballet a study of the tensions between freedom and constraint that can develop in human relationships." - The New York Times.

Choreographer Jirí Kylián is a celebrated Czech choreographer responsible for creating 100 works, three-quarters for the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT). He originally studied in Prague and, at the age of 20, won a scholarship at the Royal Ballet School in London. He joined the Stuttgart Ballet in 1968 and worked under John Cranko, where he began to choreograph. Kylián became Artistic Director of Nederlands Dans Theatre in 1976. His style is very energetic and contemporary and his best known works include Symphony of Psalms (1978). In 1992, he started his own chamber company for dancers over 40. In 1993 and 1999, he was awarded the Prix Benois de la Danse as choreographer, one of the two only to receive it twice.

Ancient Air

The Spring production also includes the restaging of founder, visionary Loyce Houlton’s Ancient Air set to “Ancient Voices of Children” by renowned composer George Crumb. This musical work is a cycle of songs based on texts by Federico Garcia Lorca. This ritual dance addresses birth, love aggression, death and rebirth – with dancers hanging from ropes and swinging on trapezes. (The company originally learned these circus techniques from Dudley Riggs himself.) Written up in Dance Magazine soon after the piece’s creation in 1977, the magazine writes, “The choreography is demanding, yet never (except in the deliberately aggressive scenes) brutal.” I have lost myself in the sea many times, With my ear full of freshly cut flowers, With my tongue full of love and agony. I have lost myself in the sea many times as I lose myself in the heart of certain children." - Federico Garcia Lorca

Choreographer Loyce Houlton, one of the first American women to gain international recognition as a choreographer, teacher and producer, founded Minnesota Dance Theatre in 1962. With more than 90 original ballets to her credit, she brought significant national attention to the artistic richness of the state. As a teacher, she developed an original training technique, the Houlton Contemporary Technique, a symbiosis of the formal classical ballet and more “modern” styles of dance. A tiny and perpetually restless woman, Mrs. Houlton liked to say to students: "Explode! Be voracious in space." Bruce Marks, Artistic Director for Boston Ballet, stated at the time of her death in 1995: "She belongs to that group of tenacious American women artists that includes Martha Graham and [Agnes] DeMille."

Point of Departure

The third repertory piece is the popular and playful Point of Departure choreographed by Lise Houlton set to Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 45. This demanding piece is a showcase for MDT’s talented company. “After a frenetic opening movement, Houlton catches her breath and rolls out an acrobatic duet and a series of playful solos that flow like water ...” -StarTribune.

Choreographer Lise Houlton became Artistic Director of Minnesota Dance Theatre in 1995, succeeding her mother Loyce Houlton, who founded the company in 1962. A native of Minneapolis, best known for her effortless, fluid style and dramatic sensibility, she began her dance career with MDT, then moved at the age of 19 to the renowned Stuttgart Ballet under the leadership of Glen Tetley. After two years in Germany, she joined American Ballet Theatre where she danced principal roles for many of the great choreographers of the last half century, among them Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Glen Tetley, Antony Tudor, Paul Taylor and Jerome Robbins.