Vail Dance Festival will showcase a variety of styles on Opening Night

Vail Dance Festival starts Friday with an Opening Night performance including Jazz Jam 2024, as well as works by dancers from Limón Dance Company, New York City Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, American Ballet Theatre and Colorado Ballet. It also features notable musicians.

“This year’s Opening Night program will showcase the enormous range of extraordinary dance that audiences will enjoy this coming season,” said Artistic Director Damian Woetzel. “The first half of Opening Night features stars of ballet, tap, modern and ballroom, then the second half will celebrate the 90th anniversary this year of George Balanchine’s landmark ballet ‘Serenade.’”

The Jazz Jam features Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet’s Adji Cissoko, tap dancer Michelle Dorrance, Memphis jooker Ron Myles and ballroom pair Denys Drozdyuk and Antonina Skobina. Cissoko was last year’s artist-in-resident, introducing audiences to the kora, an ancient West African stringed instrument, which has been in her family for 72 generations on her father’s side; her cousin, Youba Cissokho, who also joined her last year, will play the instrument Friday. Other musicians in the Jazz Jam include Juilliard Alumni Jazz Ensemble’s Abdias Armenteros on saxophone, Jayla Chee on upright bass, Eliza Salem on drums and pianist Joel Wenhard.

Dorrance’s featured night at Vilar Performing Arts Center is nearly sold out, so this Jazz Jam is a chance to catch a glimpse of her, while Myles is a Vail favorite with his Memphis jooking style. Meanwhile, Ukraine-born Drozdyuk and Skobina, who co-founded a collaborative ballroom dance duet, DNA, to develop ballroom dance as a performing art, take the stage as well.

“The Jazz Jam will be a fun, celebratory way to enter the festival,” said Dante Puleio, Limón Dance Company’s artistic director. “It will get people into the spirit of dance.”

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The evening continues with “Suite from Choreographic Offering,” choreographed by José Limón and set to music by Bach. The work is part of the company’s larger season, which honors women who influenced Limón. This piece highlights motifs and paraphrases sections of the more extensive work choreographed by Doris Humphrey, who co-founded Limón Dance Company.

“It (showcases) the essence of what Doris created, and it lives within the Limón momentum and brightness. It is a celebration of who she was and the weight of the technique and the history,” Puleio said. “She used 1920s through ’40s vocabulary, (then) Limón made it in the ’60s, bringing back vocabulary that started modern dance — and hopefully (previewing) what the future holds.”

Since its inception in 1946, the company has been a leader in American modern dance. Artists are known for their dramatic expression, technical mastery and expansive and nuanced movement.

“The technique is born from the repertory — how we’re moving through space, how we release our joints, the momentum that feeds the intention behind the storytelling, who José is and why he made his works,” he said. “So much of the story is about the human condition — what it is to fall, what it is to recover. … His story is the fabric that brings people together.”

The following work, “When Love,” features Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Alexandra Hutchinson and Micah Bullard, set to music by Philip Glass.

“Dance Theatre of Harlem is such a phenomenal company with such fantastic technicians,” Puleio said.

American Ballet Theatre’s principles Catherine Hurlin and Aran Bell take the stage next with “Le Corsaire” (Act 3 Pas De Deux).

Then, artist-in-residence and New York City Ballet principal Sara Mearns makes her debut in George Balanchine’s “Élégie,” along with a debut by New York Philharmonic violist and 2023 Juilliard graduate Tabitha Rhee playing the Stravinsky score.

The second half of the evening features George Balanchine’s landmark ballet “Serenade.” The National Repertory Orchestra plays Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings,” as principal artists of American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet and Colorado Ballet perform; guest stars include Isabella Boylston, Chun Wai Chan, Lauren Lovette, Unity Phelan and James Whiteside.

“It’s going to be a night like no other under the stars and a truly exciting way to kick off the season,” Woetzel said.