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The Joyce announced Monday that the festival has been planned by Kevin O’Hare, the director of the Royal Ballet, who invited three artists — Royal Ballet principals Lauren Cuthbertson and Edward Watson, and designer Jean-Marc Puissant — to plan programs alongside his own.
“I thought it would be more interesting to get different points of view, and to include artists from other companies we have close relationships with,” O’Hare said in a telephone interview from Japan, where the Royal Ballet has been on tour. “Ed Watson has done some of this already and has a great interest in new choreography. Lauren is really interested in what’s going on in the dance world and it’s a new venture for her. And it seemed like a good combination to have a designer curate a program, too.”
O’Hare oversaw their choices and put together the first program, which includes a gathering of Royal Ballet past and present house choreographers (Frederick Ashton, Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon, Liam Scarlett), but also two new works by Calvin Richardson and Charlotte Edmonds.
Cuthbertson’s program features mostly new work, including pieces by Stina Quagebeur, Gemma Bond and Robert Binet, while Puissant’s program offers Maurice Béjart’s “Song of a Wayfarer,” performed by Gordon and Hallberg; Kenneth MacMillan’s “Elite Syncopations”; and a second piece by Bond, an American Ballet Theater dancer. New work is also the focus of Watson’s program, which features Fairchild and Kowroski, and will present commissions from Mauro Bigonzetti, Laila Diallo and Arthur Pita.
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“It’s a celebration of collaboration and creativity,” O’Hare said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.