New Indy ballet co. names names

June 26, 2009
Back to TopCommentsE-mailPrint
The city’s latest aspiring ballet company, Indianapolis City Ballet, is making good on its promise to bring international stars to town for a gala event at the Murat Theatre, Sept. 12. IBJ's Kathleen McLaughlin takes over the blog today for this report.


The just-announced lineup for the Indianapolis City Ballet's September gala includes principal and award-winning dancers from Stuttgart, New York and St. Petersburg. (Check out the lineup below.)

In case you haven’t been following the story, local arts patrons Jane Fortune and Robert Hesse are trying to put together a company to replace the defunct Ballet Internationale. Whether they actually proceed will depend much on how much money they raise through the event.

As we reported back in April, Indianapolis City Ballet hired John Meehan, most recently artistic director at the Hong Kong Ballet, to recruit dancers for the big night. (Just to be clear, the dancers are guest artists, performing for a one-time event.)

What do you think? Are you impressed with the roster? Will you turn out for the performance?

Guest artists for “Evening with the Stars”*:

Alicia Amatraian – principal dancer of the Stuttgart Ballet. According to a City Ballet press release, Amatraian is now considered one of “the most exciting and important dancers in Europe.”

Joaquin De Luz – principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. De Luz, a Spaniard, won the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse in Moscow in early June.

David Hallberg – principal dancer, American Ballet Theatre. Again according to the press release, Hallberg is “considered to be one of the biggest new American stars in ballet.”

Julie Kent – principal dancer. Kent was one of last of the ballerinas chosen by Mikhail Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theatre and an international star for many years. She has appeared in two films, “Dancers,” and “Center Stage.”

Sarah Lane – a soloist with American Ballet Theatre.

Anastasia Matvienko – principal dancer with the Mikhailovsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Denis Matvienko – Anastasia’s husband, also a principal dancer with the Mikhailovsky Ballet.

Tiler Peck – soloist with New York City Ballet.

Miguel Quinones – performing with the Parsons Dance Company since 2005. Known for “amazing” leaps.

Jason Reilly – principal dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet. Canadian, Reilly will begin dancing with the National Ballet of Canada in the fall.

Gennadi Saveliev – soloist with American Ballet Theatre, previously danced with the Bolshoi Ballet and is the recipient of a silver medal from the New York International Ballet Competition.

*Descriptions are provided by Indianapolis City Ballet.

Meehan says the one-time event will emphasize neo-classical and contemporary ballet. Tickets are going for $65, $45, and $25.

For photos and bios of the dancers, click here.

Your thoughts?

ADVERTISEMENT
  • Until a professional ballet company works with local ballet schools and local dancers, it will fail to develop a significant local audience. What is needed is someone like George Verdak, who encouraged local dancers and helped them move forward. Otherwise, the new Indy Ballet's funds could be better spent on transportation to New York so that their core contributors can see a ballet performance.

    For several years, I have helped provide financial support for talented local urban youngsters so that they could obtain ballet training.
  • This is an allstar line-up. Supporting them helps support Indy Arts.

    - TANNER

Post a comment to this blog

COMMENTS POLICY
We reserve the right to remove any post that we feel is obscene, profane, vulgar, racist, sexually explicit, abusive, or hateful.
 
You are legally responsible for what you post and your anonymity is not guaranteed.
 
Posts that insult, defame, threaten, harass or abuse other readers or people mentioned in IBJ editorial content are also subject to removal. Please respect the privacy of individuals and refrain from posting personal information.
 
No solicitations, spamming or advertisements are allowed. Readers may post links to other informational websites that are relevant to the topic at hand, but please do not link to objectionable material.
 
We may remove messages that are unrelated to the topic, encourage illegal activity, use all capital letters or are unreadable.
 

Messages that are flagged by readers as objectionable will be reviewed and may or may not be removed. Please do not flag a post simply because you disagree with it.

Sponsored by
ADVERTISEMENT
  1. In my opinion the estridge companies are crooks. They filed bankruptcy on their 'track housing' side of the business two weeks before they closed on one of my clients' homes. When my client first interviewed Estridge as a builder 6 months before, they specifically ASKED about the solvency of their business, knowing that some builders were struggling. Estridge truly misrepresented their financial situation at that time. I suppose I am more unhappy with the whole system than I am with the builder because what the heck==you can file bankruptcy on 'track homes' but still keep building and make money off of 'custom built' homes??? How ridiculous! They are all homes. How can a company be allowed to bilk thousands of dollars from their subcontractors but still be allowed to build houses?? they should have been made to pay back all their unpaid contractors before being allowed to profit from building any more houses! This alone makes them and the system crooks in my eyes. I would never build an estridge home and I would not recommend for my clients either. If they were truly 'bankrupt' how could they afford to keep building homes anyway??? The whole system needs fixed.

  2. I live a couple blocks east of the Angie's campus and my house is assessed for ~$160,000. If I could get that amount, let alone $384,000 (a 140% bonus), I'd sell in a minute. Either Angie's stockholders just got fleeced, or Angie's is getting about a 58% discount on their property taxes, if these properties are actually worth what they paid Mr. Oesterle for them. Which do you think is the case?

  3. Perhaps the IMA board is really to blame! They agreed to hire Charles. They can't seemingly find donors among themselves, or bring in new blood that will support the museums operating budget with an expanded museum and money to provide curators with something to do (ie buy art). The headlines of disarray at the museum and mass firings are hurting the reputation of the museum for some time to come. If people on the board had misgivings, perhaps they shpuld have more forcefully opposed efforts that they have seemingly been unable to fund, like expansion and the costs it has created!

  4. See, I told u Indyman and Dipsicle....this 8 days is overkill. It's barely worth a weekend....great job Tony George! Your dream has been fulfilled....he fans want the I r l back. Thats how good it was.....and that sucked.

  5. I have been in training for a short time now but right off I can see that safety and quality are the number one issues, my experience as of late has been a positive one, the employees along with Jeff the plant manager and the operation supervisor as well as the engineers are a highly motivated group of people, what an asset for the area to have and for company's in need of a quality metal products.

ADVERTISEMENT