Photos:

1: American Ballet Theatre performing Garden Blue. Dancer: Hee Seo. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.

2: American Ballet Theatre performing Garden Blue. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor.

3: American Ballet Theatre performing in the premiere of Garden Blue at the David H. Koch Theater. Dancers: Katherine Williams and James Whiteside. Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Video: American Ballet Theatre performing Garden Blue at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, 2018.

Garden Blue

Choreography by Jessica Lang

Assistant to the Choreographer: Kanji Segawa and Christopher Vo
Music by Antonín Dvořák

(“Piano Trio No. 4 in E Minor ‘Dumky,’ Movements 1, 2 and 3”)
Sets and Costumes by Sarah Crowner
Lighting by Nicole Pearce

Length: 20 minutes

Number of Dancers: 7

Commissioned by American Ballet Theatre

World Premiere October 19, 2018 at the David H. Koch Theater, New York

World Premiere Cast: Hee Seo, Misty Copeland, Herman Cornejo, Katherine Williams, James Whiteside, Stella Abrera, Thomas Forster
"Between the two new works came Lang’s Garden Blue which, with its, richly-colored backdrop and costumes by Sarah Crowner (gorgeously lit by Nicole Pearce) and lush score by Antonin Dvorak (the first three movement of the “Dumky” trio) is as pleasing to the eye as ever. Here, the dancers are like streaks of color, human flowers, butterflies in a garden. With Garden Blue, Lang practically invents a new genre: ballet as abstract painting."

-Marina Harss, Dance Tabs, October 24, 2019

Sculpting With Bodies at American Ballet Theater

"The choreographer Jessica Lang, who is as interested in imagining shapes and compositions onstage as in inventing steps, makes her second work for the company." - Marina Harss, New York TImes, October 16, 2018

Link to Feature Article

"... it's a real theater piece, with a memorably peculiar conjunction of dance, music (Dvorak), and — especially memorable — design (by Sarah Crowner). A striking tension... derives from the contrast between Ms. Crowner’s strong visual colors (sky blue, lawn green, buttercup, fuchsia, tangerine) and the largely muted sound of the music, the first three movements of Dvorak’s “Dumky” piano trio in E minor; Ms. Lang’s choreography creates an odd harmony between them. She makes some surprisingly huge acrobatic lifts to quiet passages of music, she responds to the music’s changes of speed but sometimes works pointedly against its meter, and she gives the dancers linear configurations and arm positions that enrich the stage picture."

- Alastair Macaulay, New York Times

October 21, 2018

Jessica Lang
Director | Choreographer

Garden Blue

Credits

Press

More Info