MASTERS OF DANCE
Next Generation Ballet
62 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | MARCH APRIL 2017
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T he Patel Conservatory at the
Straz Center for the Performing
Arts in Tampa enriches the lives
of more than 70,000 dance, music
and theater students a year in schools,
onstage and in the community. The Next
Generation Ballet, housed within the
Conservatory, is led by its artistic director
Philip Neal, an acclaimed choreographer
and dancer. Neal has taught at the famed
School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center
in New York and for companies such as the
Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet
and the Joffrey Ballet. The Next Generation
Ballet, the official resident dance company
of the Straz, is a pre-professional trainee
program that helps outstanding young
dancers develop their classical ballet skills in
order to pursue a career in the art. Graduates
of this program have gone on to acclaimed
academies of dance throughout the world.
On May 13th and 14th, Next Generation
Ballet will perform a ballet program
called Masters of Dance: Balanchine and
Robbins plus Petipa’s Don Quixote Suite.
Neal is one of the select few who has
been invited to stage these iconic works
by the Robbins and Balanchine Rights
Trusts. Neal, who has not been onstage
for seven years since retiring as principal
dancer with the New York City Ballet
in 2010, will perform the Ringmaster
role in Jerome Robbins’ Circus Polka as
Robbins once did. The piece features
48 girls dancing to Igor Stravinsky’s
orchestration that was commissioned
by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum &
Bailey Circus. For George Balanchine’s
Donizetti Variations, Ballanchine is said
to have taken three hours of ballet and
compacted it into a brief 25 minutes of
extraordinary movement.
The program will conclude with a
production of the final act of Petipa’s
Don Quixote Suite with sets and costumes
that were created through a joint effort
between the Alabama and Louisville
Ballets. This show will be fun for the
whole family. 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tickets for Masters of
Dance at the Straz Center are available at the
ticket office in Tampa, online at strazcenter.org
or by calling 813-229-STAR (7827).
Philip Neal