Paul Taylor Dance Company At The Alberta Ballet

Alberta Ballet offering special promotion to Veterans – free tickets to Paul Taylor Dance Company

Calgary & Edmonton, AB – Alberta Ballet is proud to offer 100 free tickets in both Calgary and Edmonton for Veterans to attend the New York based Paul Taylor Dance Company. This is an initiative to celebrate our Veterans, as one of the pieces being performed is Company B, set in the era of WWII. The tickets are available on a first come first served basis for the matinee performance in Calgary Oct. 31 and the evening performance in Edmonton Nov. 6.

Company B

Just as America began to emerge from the Depression at the dawn of the 1940s, the country was drawn into the Second World War. In a seminal piece of Americana, Paul Taylor recalls that turbulent era through the hit songs of the Andrews Sisters. Although the songs depict a nation surging with high spirits, millions of men were bidding farewell to wives or girlfriends and many would never return from battle. The dance focuses on such poignant dualities. Young lover lindy, jitterbug and polka in a near manic grasp for happiness while in the background shadowy figures – soldiers – fall dead. Among the sections of the dance, the one choreographed to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of company B) is carefree until the moment the bugler is shot: the one set to “I Can Dream, Can`t I? tells of a young lady’s affections for a soldier an ocean away who, for his part, reaches out to a comrade in arms. The dance ends just as it began, with “Bei Mir Bist du Schon” – but the world has clearly changed.

About Paul Taylor

The world-renowned Paul Taylor Dance Company has been pioneering and presenting masterful modern works for sixty years. Taylor has been called “the greatest choreographer alive” by the New York Times and “the reigning master of modern dance” by Time Magazine. The company’s powerful performance will showcase key selections from Taylor’s repertoire, including Piazzolla Caldera, a fiery dance about the culture of tango, Company B, a swinging piece incorporating the exuberance and the hardship of the 1940s and set to the music of the Andrews Sisters, and Taylor’s signature piece Esplanade, set to Bach violin concertos.

CHOREOGRAPHY: Paul Taylor

MUSIC: Astor Piazzolla and Jerzy Peterburshsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, The Andrews Sisters