Ballet Austin Performs World Premiere Of Love’s Gentle Spring This Weekend

The Details:

What: Ballet Austin: Love’s Gentle Spring w/ Austin Symphony Orchestra.

When and Where: March 28 (7:30), March 29 (7:30), March 30 (3:00)

Tickets:  [Buy them here–ranging from $20 to $100+]

This weekend is a great time to find out why The Washington Post described Ballet Austin as “one of the nation’s best kept ballet secrets” as the company performs Love’s Gentle Spring, a two-part world premiere choreographed by Artistic Director Stephen Mills.

“Love’s Gentle Spring is a new work,” says Stephen Mills. “The title comes from a Shakespeare poem. I had been in a place wanting to just explore happiness and joy — that is where this dance comes from.”

The program spans centuries, pairing a 19th-century score by Antonín Dvořák with a 21st-century composition by the guitarist for The National (and Taylor Swift collaborator) Bryce Dessner—two distinct musical worlds brought together on a single stage.

ACT I: DVOŘÁK

The music that opens the evening comes from Antonín Dvořák, composed during a summer stay in the Czech immigrant town of Spillville, Iowa. “Dvořák was enticed to come to New York City in 1892 to head up a new conservatory of music,” says Peter Bay, Music Director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. “By this point, Dvořák was a very, very famous composer.”

“I think when people hear this music, they’ll feel Dvořák’s joy of being in Iowa, enjoying that Czech community that was there in Spillville,” Bay continues. “Joy, melancholy, a very clear dance mood — which makes it perfect for choreography.”

Mills describes this section of the ballet as emotionally light. “I hope that people will leave the theater feeling rejuvenated — for the spring that is to come. Because in Austin, spring is just coming. And that they really enjoyed the evening.”

ACT II: DESSNER

“I’m always on a journey to start in one place and move to another place,” Mills says about the shift of musical styles and eras as ACT Two transforms the ballet from “the romanticism of Dvořák” to the “sharp, contemporary energy of Bryce Dessner.”

As Peter Bay, the ASO’s conductor, explains: “Bryce Dessner — he’s primarily known as a guitarist for the group The National. But he’s also branched out into writing classical music, and it’s his classical side that we’re going to hear in this concerto.” Indeed, Katia Labeque, who the New York Times describes as one half of “the best piano duo performing in front of audiences today” said of Dessner: “I’d never met anyone like him, because he can articulate his music in both the classical and rock worlds with the same facility, the same passion.”

Bay recruited the duo Quattro Mani to perform Dessner’s concerto this weekend. As Giorgio Koukl wrote in EarRelevant, this duo—pianists Steven Beck and Susan Grace—displays an “incredible array of capacities strong enough to place them precisely on the top of the piano duos of today.” And, when performing compositions “difficult beyond any imagination for the pianists,” the “superbly played” music of Quattro Mani “literally shines” exhibiting “breathtaking velocity and finesse.”

One more thing: Watch the cinematic trailer for Love’s Gentle Spring:

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