GLEICH DANCES CONTEMPORARY BALLET
theLEGER BALLET
(World Premiere, Aug 16, 2007, Civic Center, Rouses Point, NY)
Choreography by Julia Gleich with dancers
Original score by Paul Siskind
additional music by William Pfaff, Lola Perrin,
George Antheil, Richard Grayson, and Henry Cowell
Set design by Jason Andrew, assisted by Dick Baker
Costumes by Jackie Sabourin and Eleanor Robinson
with Susan Donohue, Livia Sabourin and Sarah Sabourin
Synopsis: Three youths are playing in the town of Rouses Point after a day at church and venture into the old train station. It is empty and interesting and they watch a woman picking up trash. They imagine a journey they might take in which their luggage is as light as their hearts. The woman returns and scolds the youths for playing near the dangerous train tracks. But she is preoccupied by something she is seeking. As the boys distract her in their play, Lyric, their sister, hiding nearby, discovers a hat, suitcase and coat. She wonders whom they belong to. Lyric picks up the old suitcase. The case, now heavy, now light, seems to have a magical energy that transforms the station and reveals to Lyric a special world. A painting of geometric forms and hard lines and color appears and Lyric and her brothers are transported to this world. Unusual figures emerge inside the old station that is filled with images of its past, the paintings of Fernand Léger: from mechanized figures to trees in ladders, strange cyclists and tangled divers. Lyric visits the fanciful painting worlds when finally, the station ignites with Léger’s parade! It is La Grande Parade! As the parade departs we discover that a Léger character is dropping shapes that the strange woman has been picking up. Lyric still clutching the suitcase… finally opens it to discover something she and her brother think the strange woman was seeking!
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