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Highly acclaimed Ballet Kelowna to perform in Creston this week

The show will be held on Nov. 18
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Ballet Kelowna will perform live in Creston on Nov. 18. (Submitted)

Submitted by Creston Concert Society

The Creston Concert Society is bringing the next exciting live performance to town this week.

On Nov. 18, Ballet Kelowna will perform Mambo (and Other Works) at 7:30 p.m. at the Creston Valley Secondary School Theatre.

Founded in 2002, the company has delivered compelling and inspiring performances to regional, national, and international audiences.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director and CEO Simone Orlando since 2014, Ballet Kelowna presents numerous styles of dance from Canada’s finest emerging and established choreographers, and embraces the precision and athleticism of ballet technique to create original new works that captivate and engage today’s diverse audiences.

Serving as the only professional dance company in B.C.’s Interior, Ballet Kelowna is committed to its role as a leader in the region through encouraging, promoting, and developing Canadian dancers and choreographers. The company performs annually for over 12,000 audience members in Kelowna and on tour, while also providing unique dance training opportunities and outreach programs.

The MAMBO and Other Works program features a meticulous blend of contemporary and neo-classical works by Canada’s leading dance makers. With the jovially abstract Petrushka by Heather Dotto, Robert Stephen’s beautiful Celestial Mechanics, and Alysa Pires’ vivacious audience favourite MAMBO, this high energy program promises to please a wide range of spectators.

The program opens with Petrushka, a playful meditation on love and loss. Inspired by the darkly humorous tale of three puppets magically brought to life at a city fair, Dotto’s remix is an abstract meditation on the power of darkness and loneliness. Embodying Petrushka’s original playfulness and theatricality, Dotto makes use of exaggerated gestures and mime to create a layered, up-tempo response to Igor Stravinsky’s score and re-invigorate the work’s clownish foundation.

Stephen’s Celestial Mechanics is a classical work layered with unconventional pairings and arrangements for three women and three men. The work underscores the depth of Ballet Kelowna’s technical prowess with complex pointe work and a subtle, expressive movement vocabulary set to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 12. Featuring slow, sustained lines peppered with bursts of frenetic energy, Stephen’s nonlinear work is a study in contrasts, evoking nuanced emotions within the shared human experience.

Rounding out the program, audiences will be treated to Ballet Kelowna commissioned MAMBO. The work gained worldwide acclaim after performances at Beijing’s China International Performing Arts Expo and Toronto’s Fall for Dance North Festival in 2018. MAMBO is a colourful joiede vivre set to a vibrant soundtrack of Latin, swing, and jazz standards by musical legends such as Dean Martin, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Sarah Vaughn, and more.

Tickets for the performance will be $25 per adult and $12 for youth (ages 18 and under). To order, send an e-mail to info@crestonconcertsociety.ca. Please include the number of tickets requested as well as full names and contact information (essential for contact tracing). Tickets can only be purchased in advance and will not be available at the door.

COVID protocols are in place for this performance. For details, go to www.crestonconcertsociety.ca/covid-protocols.

For more information about Ballet Kelowna, visit www.balletkelowna.ca.



Kelsey Yates

About the Author: Kelsey Yates

Kelsey Yates has had a lifelong passion for newspapers and storytelling. Originally from Alberta, she graduated from SAIT Polytechnic's journalism program in 2016.
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