Media Release

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For immediate release
July 11, 2006

Banff Centre’s Festival Dance features premiere of Simone Orlando’s Winter Journey

Festival Dance – Annette av Paul, director
July 20, 21, 22 · 7:30 p.m. – July 23 · 2 p.m. Eric Harvie Theatre
$20 adult · $15 student / senior · $10 child
Tickets and information: 762.6301 or 800.413.8368

Presented as part of the 2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival

Next week, The Banff Centre premieres Vancouver-based choreographer Simone Orlando’s new work Winter Journey on the Eric Harvie stage, sharing it with the work of legendary Canadian choreographer Brian Macdonald, and a classic by George Balanchine. Winner of the 2006 Clifford E. Lee Award for choreography, Orlando has been at The Banff Centre for more than a month to create the new work, and will present it with this summer’s company of Canada’s finest young ballet dancers as part of the Centre’s Festival Dance.

The four performances of Festival Dance will feature classical and modern ballet, beginning with Balanchine’s exquisite Serenade, created in 1934 for the first students of the School of American Ballet. It was the first work the master created after emigrating to the United States, and is set to the music of Tchaikovsky.

The Festival Dance company will also remount two seminal works by Brian Macdonald, artistic advisor for the Centre’s summer dance programs. His classic Time Out of Mind was groundbreaking when it was created for the Joffrey Ballet in 1962 — an abstract, dynamic, and central work to the music of composer Paul Creston.

Audiences will also see the balcony pas de deux from Macdonald’s Romeo and Juliette created in 1973. This Festival production is a tribute to the late Canadian composer Harry Freedman, who collaborated with Macdonald on several ballets including this one, which features a haunting score of Freedman’s and the otherworldly voice of soprano Mary Morrison to a lute accompaniment.

Orlando’s new work takes its initial inspiration from the score, a selection from the 1827 song cycle Die Winterreise by Franz Schubert. The stark and brooding cycle was Schubert’s final masterpiece, and baritone Michael Meraw and pianist Janusz Rothbard will interpret it live for the dancers and the audience. Winter Journey threads back and forth in time, between now and Schubert’s Vienna, and follows the wanderings of a despondent artist in love with an unreachable woman. Haunted by the figure of Winter, the artist is enticed with glimpses of the real world, outside the isolation of his artistic life.

“This piece isn’t necessarily about the physical landscape of winter,” says Orlando, who has collaborated with abstract painter Charles Forsberg on a series of oversized canvases that will dominate the set. “This is about the emotional state of a person in the winter of their life.”

With more than 15 years as a professional dancer and currently with Ballet B.C., choreographer Orlando has created new works for Ballet Kelowna, the Ballet B.C. Mentor Program, and the dance film Chimère. As a next step forward in her choreographic career, Winter Journey displays a maturity and complexity that combines classical movement with fresh and modern athleticism.

Led by artistic director Annette av Paul, the professional dance program at The Banff Centre brings young professional ballet dancers from across Canada and abroad to Banff for an annual intensive six-week training session, culminating in the series of popular public performances known as Festival Dance. The program also offers an opportunity for a Canadian choreographer, emerging or established, to come to the Centre to create a new work for a full dance company as part of the Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award. Past winners have included Crystal Pite, Christopher House, Wen Wei Wang, D.A. Hoskins, Sabrina Matthews, and Peter Quanz.

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More information on the 2006 Banff Summer Arts Festival.