April 22, 2003 -

OTTAWA -- The renowned Miami City Ballet (MCB) comes to the National Arts Centre's Southam Hall for three performances on May 9 and 10 at 20:00, and on May 10 at 14:30. Under the guiding vision of Artistic Director Edward Villella, the renowned New York City Ballet star, MCB is quickly becoming one of the world's leading ballet companies, with incredibly talented dancers versed in a style based on techniques established by legendary Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine. This must-see Balanchine Celebration includes The Four Temperaments, with music by Hindemith, which is fiercely athletic as well as subtle, sensitive, and magical; Rubies, in which dancers adorned in dazzling bejewelled costumes perform speedy, energetic choreography to the angular, jazz-tinged music of Igor Stravinsky; and the Broadway-inspired Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. This heady Broadway ballet, originally created for On Your Toes in 1936 and set to buoyant music by Richard Rodgers, features gangsters, comic cops, strippers, hoofers, outstanding dancing, and a lurid blood-red nightclub. All performances feature the National Arts Centre Orchestra.

Miami City Ballet is part of the National Arts Centre's Canril Corporation Ballet Series, which is generously sponsored by Canril Corporation.

MCB Founding Artistic Director Edward Villella was the first American-born male star of the New York City Ballet (1957-1975); his career established the male's role in classical dance in the U.S. Mr. Villella's vision and style for the company is based on the techniques established by choreographer George Balanchine. In 1997, Mr. Villella received the highest and most prestigious cultural honor that can be bestowed upon an artist by the United States, the National Medal of Arts. Also in 1997, he was named a Kennedy Center Honoree and was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. George Balanchine was classically trained in Russia before he emigrated to America -- and between those two worlds, he created a new one. One of the great masters of the art, his ballets are honed with classical perfection, but fueled with the speed and energy of a new era. Perhaps no other choreographer has so influenced ballet or provided so many now-classic works... works that have now become beloved staples in the repertoires of companies across the world.

"Its 46 dancers have so thoroughly assimilated the neoclassical style of George Balanchine that it is frequently hailed as the finest living repository of the master choreographer's legacy... the Miami troupe has been noted for its verve...its sex appeal ... and its fealty to Balanchine."

The Washington Post, June 2001

"Rubies, the jazzy, 'American' jewel is loose, fast, and witty, and the cast dances it beautifully -- taking chances and looking as though they love every minute of it."

Alexandra Tomalonis, BalletAlert.com, June 2001

"Miami City Ballet danced brilliantly ... and this is what we have come to expect from Edward Villella's enormously talented company. The Broadway-inspired Slaughter on Tenth Avenue could be considered a crowd-pleaser, but it is not a vacuous one. The company takes to Balanchine like a bird to the air, handling the musicality, acceleration and uncompromised clarity with admirable skill."

Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post Online, May 2001

Miami City Ballet (MCB) is among the largest ballet companies in the United States, with an international complement of 45 dancers and a repertoire of 90 ballets, including many of the masterworks of legendary choreographer George Balanchine. The company has four home counties in South Florida and has toured throughout the U.S., Europe, the UK, South America, Central America, and Israel. Artistic Director Edward Villella's vision is based on Balanchine techniques, although MCB also performs works by Frederick Ashton, Marius Petipa, August Bournonville, Mr. Villella, and Paul Taylor. Miami City Ballet was one of only six companies chosen to participate in the Kennedy Center's International Ballet Project in Washington, D.C. In March 2003, the greatest dancers from the world's greatest companies (American Ballet Theatre, Royal Danish Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Ballet, The Kirov Ballet, and Miami City Ballet) joined together for two dazzling weeks of classical ballet; Miami City Ballet performed George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments.

Miami City Ballet performs in Southam Hall of the National Arts Centre on Friday May 9 at 20:00, and on Saturday May 10 at 14:30 and 20:00. Tickets are $64, $61, $52, and $36 for adults, and $32.75, $31.25, $26.75, and $18.75 for students (upon presentation of a valid student ID card). Tickets are available at the NAC Box Office (in person) and through Ticketmaster (with surcharges) at (613) 755-1111; Ticketmaster may also be accessed through the NAC's web-site at www.nac-cna.ca. Last-minute tickets (subject to availability) for full-time students are $9.50 at the Live Rush Centre in the NAC Foyer after 18:00 on the day of performance only, upon presentation of a valid 'Live Rush' card.

Photos for all dance events can be viewed and downloaded at: www.nac-cna.ca/media/

Information:
Gerald Morris
Marketing and Media Relations,
NAC Dance Department
(613) 947-7000, ext. 249
gmorris@nac-cna.ca

George Balanchine
Choreographer

He was known with affectionate reverence as "Mr. B," and that imperious initial may as well have stood for "ballet" itself. Without George Balanchine, there would be no American ballet, only ballet in America. The self-proclaimed artistic descendent of the great Russian choreographer Marius Petipa, Balanchine came to an America that was almost wholly ignorant of his beloved art form. From the moment he arrived in 1932, he steadily built both a signature American style and a venerable dance institution.

His gifts as a supreme classicist announced themselves early in his seminal work Apollo, created for Diaghilev's renowned Ballet Russes in 1928. By the time he teamed up with impresario Lincoln Kirstein to found America's first ballet school and company in 1934 (later to be known as the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet, respectively), Balanchine was prepared to create works that would both train a new audience's sensitivities and carry classicism into the twentieth century.

The solemn romanticism of Serenade, the campy patriotism of Stars and Stripes, the fierce athleticism of his Agon and The Four Temperaments: all are founded on a penetrating, logical progression grounded in the music itself. As he described Agon: "It is a machine. But a machine that thinks."

Another famous remark, "Ballet is woman," reflected his aesthetic as well as erotic inclinations. Aside from training a legion of great American ballerinas that included Maria Tallchief, Suzanne Farrell, and Gelsey Kirkland, Balanchine married four of his disciples and enjoyed liaisons with untold others. Supported by a love of pure form, Balanchine believed that the vital force of his works were his women, always aloof, coolly confident, and unknowably complex -- much like the choreographer himself.

Edward Villella
Founding Artistic Director/Chief Executive Officer, Miami City Ballet

Edward Villella -- certainly America's most celebrated male dancer -- did much to popularize the role of the male in dance through the supreme artistry and virility he exhibited during his performance career. Offstage he has been as influential, accepting the role of Founding Artistic Director of Miami City Ballet in 1986 and achieving worldwide acclaim for the Company in a mere decade of dance. In recognition of his achievements, President Clinton presented to Mr. Villella the 1997 National Medal of Arts. Mr. Villella was named a 1997 Kennedy Center Honoree, and was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame.

Mr. Villella is recognized nationally and internationally for his contributions to the field of classical dance and arts in education. Recently named the Dorothy F. Schmidt Artist-in-Residence at Florida Atlantic University, he was also Heritage Chairman, Arts and Cultural Criticism, at George Mason University in Virginia, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the School of American Ballet. He has served as chairman of New York City's Commission for Cultural Affairs, and has been a member of the National Endowment for the Arts' Dance Advisory Panel and the National Council on the Arts. He served for six years on the Board of Trustees of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. In 1981, he served as Ida Beam Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa and, from 1981-82, was Visiting Artist at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In 1985 he was Regents Lecturer at the Irvine campus of the University of California. From 1984 through 1986, Mr. Villella served as Artistic Director of Ballet Oklahoma and was the Artistic Director of the Madison Festival of the Lakes.

Among the distinguished honors awarded to him are the 38th annual Capezio Dance Award; the Frances Holleman Breathitt Award for Excellence, for his outstanding contribution to the arts and to the education of young people; the National Society of Arts & Letters Award for Lifetime Achievement (becoming only the fourth dance personality to receive the Gold Medal); the Dance Magazine Award (1964); the Cultural Service Award from the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts (1998), and the George C. Abbott Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, presented by the South Florida Critics Association (1997). He has been awarded honorary degrees by the State University of New York, University of South Carolina, St. Thomas University, Siena College, Fordham University, Skidmore College, Nazareth College, Florida Atlantic University where he actually serves as Artist in Residence and Union College, which established the Edward Villella Fellowship in 1991, with the first Fellowship awarded in May, 1996.

Mr. Villella was a 1999-2000 Harvard Visiting Artist. He was also recently selected one of "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures" by The Dance Heritage Coalition. This year he will receive the Kiphuth Fellowship Award from Yale University.

Mr. Villella was born in Bayside, New York in 1936. He entered the School of American Ballet at age ten but interrupted his dance training to complete academic studies. A graduate of the New York Maritime Academy, he obtained a B.S. in marine transportation, lettered in baseball, and was a championship boxer. He returned to SAB following graduation in 1955, and in 1957 was invited to join the New York City Ballet, where he was quickly promoted to Soloist (1958), and then to Principal Dancer (1960). Mr. Villella originated many roles in the New York City Ballet repertoire, among them Tarantella, the "Rubies" section of Jewels, and the role of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Perhaps his most famous role was in the 1960 revival of Balanchine's 1929 masterpiece, Prodigal Son. Mr. Villella was the first American male dancer to perform with the Royal Danish Ballet, and the only American ever to be asked to dance an encore at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. He danced for President Kennedy's inaugural and for Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford. He was producer/director for the PBS series Dance in America for one and a half years, and in 1975 won an Emmy Award for his CBS television production of Harlequinade.

Mr. Villella has a son and two daughters. He and his wife, Linda, a former Olympic figure skater, reside in Miami Beach. The University of Pittsburgh Press reissued Edward Villella's 1992 autobiography, Prodigal Son: Dancing for Balanchine in a World of Pain and Magic, written with Larry Kaplan, in March 1998.