For hundreds of years, ballet has mesmerized audiences with its exacting and graceful nature. The first World Ballet Festival aims to further awe audiences — including during a stop this weekend in Spokane — by showcasing an array of renowned pieces that encapsulate ballet's beauty.
"The goal of this project and the mission of the World Ballet Company, which is the largest touring ballet company in the United States, is to make ballet more accessible; to take it from this exclusive niche to a star of the mainstream art form accessible to all," says Gulya Hartwick, a producer of the festival.
World Ballet Company is based in Los Angeles and performs in cities with less access to ballet, both to introduce the art to those watching it for the first time and to build a community of ballet lovers across the country.
The festival is only stopping in Minneapolis, Spokane, Detroit and San Diego for its first run. Along the way, the company is partnering with dancers from renowned companies like New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Los Angeles Ballet and more.
When the festival stops at the First Interstate Center for the Arts, local dancers from Company Ballet School and Ballet Arts Academy will also grace the stage.
"One of our missions in doing this is bolstering an audience in these cities for dance and bringing awareness to the local companies which are there on the ground every day creating great art," says Adrian Blake Mitchell, the festival's programming director. "We're not just kind of coming in for a day and dancing — we're kind of building roots in the community and connecting and providing great opportunities for local dance students and future professional dancers."
The World Ballet Festival primarily features movements from famous story ballets such as Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet, but also some more contemporary pieces to showcase ballet's many styles.
"There's definitely an emphasis on the story ballets," Mitchell says. "I think that story ballets are an incredible way of being introduced to dance because everyone can get behind a good story, right?"
There will be a few excerpts from both Cinderella and Swan Lake, such as the latter's "The Dying Swan," performed by Andrea Lassakova of World Ballet Company, and "Dance of the Little Swans."
"This program, we call it 'Ballet Blockbuster' because it's the blockbusters of ballet history," Mitchell says. "That of course starts with the famous story ballets like Cinderella, like Swan Lake, but then it also extends to the new classics and some work by the most famous choreographers that really could be next in line to be considered classics."
There are a few pieces Mitchell is particularly excited for audiences to see, such as "Light Rain," a contemporary pas de deux choreographed by Gerald Arpino in the 1980s, and the "Diamonds" pas de deux from revered choreographer George Balanchine's Jewels.
The 2.5-hour program concludes with a grand finale featuring all of the festival's dancers.
"The finale is going to be great," Mitchell says. "I think we're going to be getting kicked out of the theater because of how exciting it is — the audience is just going to go crazy."
Between organizing the program and coordinating with dancers' busy schedules, Mitchell says there's been a lot at play while preparing for the festival.
"I think people sometimes underestimate how many people go into putting ballets on stage, between technical staff, lighting, costumes, the choreography — there's a lot of different moving parts," he says.
One of Hartwick's and Mitchell's main hopes for the festival is to foster appreciation for the intense dedication and rigorous physical effortthat goes into ballet.
"The amount of training it requires to become a professional dancer, the amount of dedication and obsession it takes to do it, it's a pursuit of excellence of the highest degree," Mitchell says. "It's an incredibly touching art form, and there's such a sensitivity and emotion that goes into dancing."
"It's like an innate part of us — we hear music and we want to dance," he continues. "To see these people who have dedicated their lives to that and perfected it, one could say it's such a magical combination of those two things."
Although this is the first iteration of the World Ballet Festival, Mitchell and Hartwick say it won't be the last. And in coming years, the World Ballet Company plans to expand the festival's reach by touring in even more cities to further foster admiration for ballet.
"It's impossible to not fall in love with ballet if you haven't already after seeing what we're about to show you," Hartwick says. ♦
World Ballet Festival • Fri, June 15 at 7 pm • $37-$87 • First Interstate Center for the Arts • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • firstinterstatecenter.org
