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LBMF Opening Night: Music Meets Dance
Friday, February 8, 2019 8:00PM
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Laguna Playhouse
Part of the 2019 Laguna Beach Music Festival
Performance co-presented and in collaboration with Laguna Dance Festival
Joyce Yang, piano | Festival Artistic Director
Efe Baltacigil, cello
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet
SATIE: Gymnopédies No. 1
CHOPIN: Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise
FRANCK: Sonata
DREAM PLAY (Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and Joyce Yang)
Opening night of the 2019 Laguna Beach Music Festival features award-winning pianist and Festival Artistic Director Joyce Yang and cellist Efe Baltacigil creating a dreamlike rhythmical world on stage with dance-inspired musical works. The second half features Aspen Santa Fe Ballet performing “Dream Play,” a work by acclaimed Brazilian-Swedish choreographer Fernando Melo which premiered in 2017 to critical acclaim.
Set to music by Chopin and French minimalist composer Erik Satie, “Dream Play” is a surreal play on perspectives. In this ballet without steps, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet dancers conjure mesmerizing scenes of flight and flips while never leaving the floor. The choreographed movements on the floor are captured by film from above and projected live onto a screen, creating an illusion of gravity-defying movements that challenges the bounds of reality.
About the Artists
Blessed with “poetic and sensitive pianism” (Washington Post) and a “wondrous sense of color” (San Francisco Classical Voice), pianist Joyce Yang captivates audiences with her virtuosity, lyricism, and interpretive sensitivity. A Van Cliburn International Piano Competition silver medalist and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, Yang showcases her colorful musical personality in solo recitals and collaborations with the world’s top orchestras and chamber musicians.
Turkish cellist Efe Baltacigil serves as principal cellist for Seattle Symphony and was the recipient of the 2005 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, The Peter Jay Sharp Prize also in 2005, and the Washington Performing Arts Society Prize in 2006. Baltacigil has since performed the Brahms Sextet with Pinchas Zukerman, Midori and Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall for Isaac Stern’s memorial, as well as participated in Mr. Ma’s Silk Road Project.
Aspen Santa Fe Ballet’s bold vision—top global choreographers, distinctive groundbreaking works, and virtuoso dancers—has fostered a jewel of a dance company in the American West. For almost two decades, ASFB has served as a prestigious arts incubator and a showcase for choreographic invention, to both popular and critical acclaim. In recognition of their pioneering and innovative model for American dance, executive directors Tom Mossbrucker and Jean-Philippe Malaty were honored by the Joyce Theater Foundation with the Joyce Theater Award in 2010.
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