Apr 19, 2022
In Part 2 of this week’s Hear the Dance conversation between host Silas Farley and Helgi Tomasson, the two discuss Tomasson’s career following his entrance into the Company as a Principal Dancer in 1970. As he shares, originating a role in 1971 in Jerome Robbins’ The Goldberg Variations marked a turning point in Tomasson's life; the following year, the original Stravinsky Festival led to two more seminal roles created on the dancer: Balanchine’s Symphony in Three and Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée. Tomassion describes how his years dancing with NYCB informed both his work as a choreographer and his tenure as the Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet, on the eve of his retirement from that position. (38:16)
Written by Silas Farley
Edited by Emilie Silvestri
MUSIC:
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major (1931) by Igor
Stravinsky
Symphony in Three Movements (1945) by Igor Stravinsky
Le Baiser de la Fée (1928) by Igor Stravinsky
Aria with Variations in G, BWV 988 (1742), "The Goldberg
Variations" by Johann Sebastian Bach
Symphony No. 1 in C major (1855) by Georges Bizet
All music performed by the New York City Ballet Orchestra
READING LIST:
The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an An American
Dance Company by Sasha Anawalt
The Stravinsky Festival of The New York City Ballet Written and
Edited by Nancy Goldner Thirty Years: Lincoln Kirstein’s The New
York City Ballet by Lincoln Kirstein
Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins by Amanda Vaill
San Francisco Ballet at Seventy-Five by Janice Ross; Preface by
Brigitte LeFévre; Foreword by Allan Ulrich
How Helgi Tomasson Reshaped S.F. Ballet to World-Class Renown by
Rachel Howard