The Kirov Ballet, from the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, returns for its sixth visit to Washington in a decade with a production of La Bayadre, while the Bolshoi Ballet begins a 10-year cycle of performances at the Kennedy Center under artistic director Alexei Ratmansky.
From Tokyo, the New National Theatre Ballet makes its American debut with two programs, one of mixed repertory and the other of the repertory standard Raymonda, with choreography by Asami Maki after Petipa, set to music by Glazunov. Sets and costumes are by Luisa Spinatelli and lighting by Yuji Sawada. The company appears as part of the Kennedy Center's festival JAPAN! culture + hyperculture.
The Kennedy Center's resident company, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, presents an all-Balanchine mixed repertory program; New York City Ballet will also present a mixed program.
The Kennedy Center's second Prot_g_s series will showcase rising stars from international ballet academies, highlighting different styles of training with performances by students of the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, Paris Opera Ballet School, the Royal Ballet School and the School of American Ballet.
The Ballet Across America series showcases companies from both coasts and the heartland. Nine companies — the Joffrey Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet (Seattle), Pennsylvania Ballet, Houston Ballet, Ballet West (Salt Lake City), Kansas City Ballet, The Washington Ballet, Boston Ballet, and Oregon Ballet Theater — present three programs of mixed repertory, including works choreographed by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Stanton Welch, Nacho Duato, Todd Bolender, Twyla Tharp and Christopher Wheeldon.
The 2007-08 contemporary dance season at the Kennedy Center includes return engagements by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ballet Hispanico, Dana Tai Soon Burgess and Company, Shen Wei Dance Arts, and Urban Bush Women, as well as performances by Black Grace, Compagnie Jant-Bi, Sankai Juku, and Tania P_rez-Salas Compaê±ia de Danza.
Dana Tai Soon Burgess and Company present the world premiere of Chino Latino and other mixed repertory; Ballet Hispanico and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra with Arturo O'Farrill perform Palladium Nights.
New Zealand dance company Black Grace, the Tania P_rez-Salas Compaê±ia de Danza and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater offer mixed repertory programs.
American choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Senegalese choreographer Germaine Acogny and their respective companies — seven dancers from the all-female Urban Bush Women and seven dancers from the all-male Compagnie Jant-Bi — will present the collaborative new work, The Beauty of Little Things.
Sankai Juku, the best-known exponents abroad of the unique Japanese modern dance style called butoh, will remount their 1978 work Kinkan Shonenespecially for the JAPAN! culture + hyperculture festival.
Shen Wei Dance Arts performs Connect Transfer, which The New York Times describes as "an ingenious synthesis of dance, music and visual art, each element unpredictably linked to another."
