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San Francisco Ballet
-- Mark Morris
View the Spark episode on SF Ballet in 3 parts. Original air date: April 2008.
Chapter 1 (Running Time 8:46)
Chapter 2 (Running Time 9:28)
Chapter 3 (Running Time 7:39)
View Spark Web extra on the pas de deux that Christopher Wheeldon created for SF Ballet's Sarah van Patten and Pierre-Francois Vilanoba. (Running Time: 1:05)
In celebration of its 75th anniversary, San Francisco Ballet is mounting an ambitious festival of new works by ten renowned choreographers. The ballet's artistic director Helgi Tomasson often refers to the company as a laboratory for new ballets and conceived the New Works Festival as opportunity to look forward to the future of this centuries old art form. Spark follows the creation of three distinctively different dances by Mark Morris, Margaret Jenkins and Christopher Wheeldon.
Known for his musicality and irreverence, Morris enlists Isaac Mizrahi to design the costumes and John Adams to compose the music. Bay Area choreographer Jenkins pushes the company's dancers into unknown territory by asking them to collaborate on the making of the dance. And heralded as the next Balanchine, Wheeldon wants to bring ballet to a new generation by infusing classical dance with contemporary elements.
