#new england ballet theatre ct

[lovelyballetandmore]

Ken Shiozawa | New England Ballet Theatre CT

[havekiddoswilltravel]

It's here! Tomorrow is The Nutcracker. Get your tickets. #RepresentationMatters Posted @withregram • @evjenacademy The Nutcracker is just ONE day away! We are so excited to have special guest, Brian Syms Jr. dancing the role of Cavalier! See his biography below: Brian Syms Jr. is a dance artist based in the Hartford area. He's trained at the Artist Collective and Greater Hartford Academy of Performing Arts- as well as many other local professional and recreational training programs. Most recently Brian has danced professionally with the New England Ballet Theatre, a new small scale company in the greater Hartford area. He also runs his own Virtua ballet company and teaches at a number of studios across the CT area. Brian has previously danced the role of Nutcracker, and Snow King. He is very excited to tackle his first year as the Cavalier with Evjen Academy! #evjennutcracker #nutcracker #ctdancers #localct (at Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts) https://www.instagram.com/p/CWeNdwHvO68/?utm_medium=tumblr

[fundforteachers]

To learn or not to learn? There is no question

Gretchen Philbrick (Norwich Free Academy - Norwich, CT) is following The Bard across Europe on her Fund for Teachers fellowship -- experiencing The Globe Theatre and Stratford-Upon-Avon in England; attending the Gdansk Shakespeare Festival and European Shakespeare Research Association convention in Poland, and exploring Romeo and Juliet's Verona in Italy -- to expand creative and performative approaches to Shakespeare that explore, curate and connect students with content.

Shakespeare lessons “test my mettle” as a teacher. For my students, who confront numerous challenges, Shakespeare makes them face their biggest fears: they struggle to understand the text, make it their own, and share it with an audience of peers.

Why do I believe Shakespeare is worth the struggle? Because reading Shakespeare in the classroom does so much more for my students than just increasing content knowledge. The embodiment of the text and the performances give students a chance to work on skills that extend beyond curriculum. They surprise themselves and inspire me each year. Shy students face their public speaking fears. Quiet students discover their voice. Outgoing and extroverted students enjoy the pride and revelry of being in their element. In their interpretations, students showcase their love of their culture, pop culture, youth culture, and gamer culture. We laugh. We celebrate. We agonize over the tragic events in the text. I always view our Shakespeare unit of study as a blank slate, as odd as that may sound. It is a place for students to project so much of themselves and their vision.

I designed my Fund for Teachers grant to pursue a path for invigorating, nurturing and strengthening how I teach Shakespeare. My pilgrimage addresses three areas:

Shakespeare’s Home Beginning in London, I attended a live theatrical performance at Sam Wannamaker’s reconstructed Globe Theatre. While I know that this portion of the grant is somewhat predictable, I think it is important to remember that many of us have never been to these landmarks. It would be a major oversight to miss these stops. I then traveled by train to Stratford-upon-Avon to tour Shakespeare’s home and visit the Church of the Holy Trinity to view Shakespeare’s baptismal and burial place. While there, I took an afternoon tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “The Other Place” which provides access to production spaces where “a play makes its way from page to stage.” I am looking for a way to use the scant resources I have to maximize the classroom stagings and I walked away with new ideas regarding costuming and props.

Shakespeare’s Inspiration In Verona, I spent several days exploring both the imagined, and real landscapes, depicted in Romeo and Juliet and took in as much of Italian culture as possible. Italy was a great draw for Shakespeare and I previously wondered why Shakespeare was so fascinated with Italian culture. I think it is important to share this idea of "borrowing" as it relates to Shakespeare with my students. Shakespeare felt free crossing cultural divides and appropriating and "borrowing" from others. I think often "purists" forget that many of Shakespeare's plays were published as quartos and were drastically different from what we read today. In preparation for my fellowship, I attended the Folger Shakespeare First Folio exhibit and felt validation as I learned that adaptation was always meant to be part of the legacy of Shakespeare. I think this is something to share with students who feel Shakespeare is "stuffy" or staid.

Shakespeare’s Legacy My 18-day European tour is now culminating in 2017 European Shakespeare Research Association convention and Gdansk Shakespeare Festival in Poland. During the convention, I am attending two panels. The first is “Shakespeare and Dramaturgical Strategies in Contemporary European Performances.” This panel focuses on the unique and novel staging and appropriation of Shakespeare’s plays. From everyday, found objects (think ketchup bottles, sponges, etc.) arranged on a table top to radical “mash-ups” of Shakespeare’s war scenes broadcast as contemporary news footage, this panel discusses the new, innovative, and experimental approaches to staging Shakespeare’s work. The second panel is “Now Let Us Anatomize Shakespeare: Shakespeare-Inspired Ballets in European Ballet Companies.” This panel explores dance and music as points of entree for Shakespeare's work. I use music as a way to bridge complex literary concepts and complicated texts. I look forward to being able to explore dance as another medium for interpreting the work with my students.

Enjoy photographs from Gretchen’s fellowship here.

The bottom line is this: I ask my students to persevere and pursue challenges in the classroom every day. I ask them to put themselves in situations that make them feel uncomfortable in an effort to seek personal and academic growth. This fellowship required facing a similarly daunting task and confronting my own anxieties in the name of development. I am terrified of flying and have not traveled since my twenties. I am afraid, like a student facing Shakespeare for the first time or performing a scene in front of classmates, of not being able to master my anxiety and my fear in pursuit of something important to me professionally and personally. However, to not go, to not learn, to not model growth, was not a question.

Gretchen has been happily teaching ninth grade English at Norwich Free Academy for the last four years. She came to her own education and her teaching career later in life and this non-traditional path gave her a sincere appreciation of education's ability to shape, enrich and change lives.

[todayclassical]

May 18 in Music History

1616 Birth of German composer and organist Johann Jakob Froberger in Stuttgart.

1733 Death of German composer Georg Böhm in Luneburg.

1737 FP of Handel's opera Berenice at Covent Garden in London.

1759 Birth of composer Charles Duquesnoy.

1779 FP of Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride in Paris.

1783 Death of Italian soprano Lucrezia Agujari.

1798 FP of Bruni's "La Rencontre en voyage" Paris.

1812 FP of Rossini's "Demetrio e Polibio" Opera seria.

1818 Death of Italian composer and violinist Maddalena Lombardi.

1819 Birth of composer Julius Hopp.

1830 Birth of Hungarian composer Karl Goldmark.

1836 Birth of composer Isidor Vorobchievici.

1840 FP of Auber's "Zanetta, ou Jouer avec le feu" Paris.

1845 Birth of Austrian conductor Wilhelm #Gerike 

1849 FP of Adam's "Le Toréador" Paris.

1854 Birth of Dutch composer Bernard Zweers in Amsterdam.

1863 Birth of Russian tenor Anton Sekar-Rozhansky.

1866 Birth of German tenor Otto Briesemeister in Arnswalde.

1874 Birth of Italian tenor Antonio Fassino in Plobesi Torinese.

1875 Birth of Italian pianist Guido Alberto Fano in Padua.

1879 FP of Dominiceti's "Il lago delle fate" Milan.

1883 Birth of Uruguayan composer Eduardo Fabini.

1883 Birth of composer Luigi Perrachio.

1886 Birth of composer Ole Windgstad.

1887 FP of Chabrier's Le Roi malgre lui at Opera Comique in Paris.

1896 Death of German bass Gustav Siehr.

1897 FP of Paul Dukas' tone-poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice with the composer conducting in Paris.

1899 Birth of German soprano Margaretha Abler in Wiesbaden.

1901 Birth of French composer Henri Sauguet in Bordeaux.

1901 Birth of American composer Harry Robert Wilson.

1905 Birth of Austrian composer Erich Zeisl in Vienna.

1907 Birth of English pianist Clifford Curzon in London.

1909 Death of Spanish composer and pianist Isaac Albeniz.

1910 Death of French composer and opera singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia.

1911 Death of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler in Vienna.

1912 Birth of composer Richard Brooks.

1912 FP of Albert Roussel's orchestral triptych Evocations in Paris.

1914 Birth of Bulgarian bass Boris Christoff in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

1917 FP of Eric Satie's Parade. Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe in Paris.

1919 Death of Italian tenor Giuseppe Oxilia in Milan

1921 FP of D'Albert's "Scirocco" Dramstadt.

1922 FP of Igor Stravinsky's opera Renard, Ernest Anseremet conducting at the Paris Opéra.

1924 Birth of German-born French pianist Samson Francois.

1925 FP of Leos Janacek's opera The Sly Little Fox in Prague.

1929 Birth of Canadian composer Roger Matton in Grandby, Quebec.

1932 Birth of Australian composer David Sydney Morgan in Surrey, England.

1939 FP of Douglas Moore's opera The Devil and Daniel Webster, NYC.

1940 FP of Luigi Dallapiccola's opera Volo di Notte in Florence.

1941 Death of soprano Milka Ternina.

1948 Birth of Finnish composer Mikko Heino.

1949 Birth of British composer Rick Wakerman.

1949 FP of Darius Milhaud's Sabbath Morning Service. Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco. He conducted.

1950 FP of Rogers' "The Veil" Bloomington, IN.

1950 FP of Lukas Foss's opera The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County text by Mark Twain, in Bloomington, Indiana.

1952 FP of Gotovac's "Mila Gojsalica" music drama, Zagreb.

1959 Birth of Dutch composer Norbert Wissing in Amsterdam.

1962 FP of Cikker's "Vzkrisenie" Praha.

1975 Death of American composer Leroy Anderson in Woodbury CT at age 66.

1978 FP of Henry Cowell's Quartet Romantic for 2 flutes, violin and viola. Paul Dunkel and Susan Palma, flutes; Ralph Schulte, violin; John Graham, viola. 

1980 FP of Einem's "Jesu Hochzeit". 

1981 FP of Joan Tower's Sequoia. American Composers Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, in NYC.

1985 Death of Swedish composer Hilding Rosenberg in Stockholm. 

1988 FP of Philip Glass' opera The Fall of the House of Usher based on Poe at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA.

1990 FP of John Harbison's Viola Concerto, soloist Jaime Laredo and the New Jersey Symphony, Hugh Wolff conducting in Bridgewater, NJ.

1993 Death of soprano Maria Gentile.

1996 FP of Philip Glass' opera Les Enfants Terrible. Karen Kamensek conducting Philip Glass Ensemble at the Theatre Casino in Zug, Switzerland.

2001 FP of Kaija Saariaho's Song for Betty (For music patron, Betty Freeman). Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting.

2002 Death of Argentinian composer Jorge Oscar Pickenhayn in San Carlos, Uraguay.

2002 Death of Austrian violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan in Vienna.

2012 Death of German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

[lovelyballetandmore]

Wyatt Weeces | New England Ballet Theatre CT | Photo by Noel Valero