Archives: Events and Performances

American Repertory Ballet’s flagship residency program, DANCE POWER, is the longest continuously running community/arts partnership in the state, serving more than 1,500 New Brunswick students each year. At the culminating performance, Waiting in the Wings, over 30 scholarships are presented to students so they can continue dancing at our Princeton Ballet School from 4th grade through their senior year of high school for free.

Pictured: Newly named DANCE POWER Scholars receiving a round of applause at the 2012 Waiting in the Wings performance

This performance is free and open to the public.

Douglas Martin, the innovative artistic director of American Repertory Ballet, will discuss his newest full-length ballet, Pride and Prejudice, with professor and renowned Jane Austen scholar Claudia Johnson.

Martin was a principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet and later with ARB before becoming its director. Pride and Prejudice marks the seventh world premiere he has choreographed for the company.

Johnson is the Murray Professor of English Literature at Princeton University. Her numerous books include Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel, The Blackwell Companion to Jane Austen, ed. With Clara Tuite and Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures. She has also prepared critical editions of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey and (with Susan Wolfson) Pride and Prejudice. She joined the faculty at Princeton in 1994 and was Chair of the English Department from 2004-2012.

Find us at our table where ARB and Princeton Ballet School staff and faculty will be on hand providing information about the organization’s programs along with some giveaways, fun activities and surprises for children.

Find us at our table in the Community Zone! ARB and Princeton Ballet School staff and faculty will be on hand providing information about the organization’s programs along with some giveaways, fun activities and surprises for children.

American Repertory Ballet will host the following workshops at our New Brunswick studio (7 Livingston Ave., 4th floor; Crossroads Theater building):

• 11 a.m.–11:45 a.m.
  “Hand in Hand” workshop (ages 3-4)
  A first dance class for young children and their parents!  The class will focus on discovering the world of rhythm and dance through gentle exercises and danced “hand in hand” with parents or caregivers. An adult needs to participate along with each child.
• 12 p.m.–12:45 p.m.
  Jazz Dance workshop (ages 9 and up)
  This workshop invites students to experience the magic of Broadway … and all that jazz!
• 2 p.m.–2:45 p.m.
  Beginning Ballet workshop (ages 6-8)
  An exciting introduction to the world of ballet.

Dean of Students Lisa de Ravel will be joined by Dr. Dinesh Dhanaraj MD, MSPH, an orthopaedic surgeon with the Princeton Healthcare System, and Megan Advani, PT, DPT, Manager of Outpatient Rehab for the University Medical Center of Princeton at the Princeton Fitness and Wellness Center, to discuss how to best care for a young, growing dancer’s body in order to prevent injury.

About the Guest Speakers
Dinesh Dhanaraj MD, MSPH, is an Orthopaedic surgeon with the Princeton Healthcare System, specializing in Sports Medicine. He completed his surgical internship and orthopaedic surgery residency at the NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York City. While working at the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries at the NYU Langone Medical Center, Dr. Dhanaraj worked extensively with dancers from numerous companies, including Alvin Ailey. Dr. Dhanaraj went on to complete an Orthopaedic Sports Medicine fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital System in Philadelphia, PA. This fellowship, combined with experience working with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), allowed Dr. Dhanaraj to become skilled at arthroscopic techniques in both adults and children.

Megan Advani, PT, DPT is the Manager of Outpatient Rehab for the University Medical Center of Princeton at the Princeton Fitness and Wellness Center in Princeton, NJ.  Megan has a doctorate in physical therapy degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.  She has been treating patients in outpatient orthopedics for the past 17 years with a focus on treating dancers for the past 8 years.  When treating dancers In physical therapy, Megan evaluates dance specific movement patterns and focuses on finding the cause of injury.  Treatment includes manual therapy, specific strengthening, flexibility exercises, neuromuscular re-education, and correction of dance specific movements.

Join us for the world premiere of Douglas Martin’s full-length ballet, Pride and Prejudice, featuring live orchestral accompaniment by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra under the direction of John Devlin. Martin, the innovative Artistic Director of American Repertory Ballet, brings the 1813 romantic classic penned by Jane Austen to life, celebrating its beloved tale of love, manners and marriage in the English gentry, a broad social class that includes those who owned land (the country or landed gentry) as well as the professional classes (lawyers, doctors and clergy) who did not. Specifically, it follows the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of the British Regency. The ballet is supported by the wonderfully melodic music of Ignaz Pleyel, the Austrian-born French composer, with costumes tailored to showcase the fashions of the English Regency period from 1790–1820. This is the seventh world premiere Martin has choreographed for American Repertory Ballet.

Choreography: Artistic Director Douglas Martin
Music: Ignaz Pleyel
Costumes and Set Design: Christina Giannini

For more information about this school-time performance, please call Lindsay Cahill at (732)249-1254, ext. 19, or email [email protected]