The Sarasota Ballet's Program 7 Inspirations begins with Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s The American. Created to Dvořák’s wondrous string quartet, both score and choreography bring to life the tranquility and open sky of America’s Great Plains. While enjoying this ballet, one can sense the delight of a successful international artist who spent most of his life in Prague but had grown up in a small Bohemian village, responding to America's idyllic peace and natural beauty. 

Continuing the creative relationship between acclaimed choreographer Jessica Lang and The Sarasota Ballet, the Company Premiere of Lyric Pieces presents an engaging and visually dynamic creation that wonderfully and artfully animates its dancers. Drawing inspiration from the characteristics of each musical theme, this ballet quite literally unfolds into collections of scenes that charm viewers with its poetic sophistication and delightful wit. Praised by critics for her “exceptional stage imagination” (The Guardian, UK), Lang cleverly incorporates concertinaed paper as her set design, created by Molo. In Lyric Pieces, Lang creates an organic relationship between choreography and set to build new landscapes that suit the musical effect of each piano piece.

Closing the 2023 – 2024 Season will be Sir Frederick Ashton’s Sinfonietta, an exciting and fiendishly difficult abstract work. A ballet in three parts, describing its second movement, dance critic Alastair Macaulay wrote for The New York Times that it was “remote, lunar, a brilliantly formal ceremony in white picked out against surrounding darkness.” Ashton’s musicality is also revealed in the plotless ballet, following closely the structure of Malcolm Williamson’s specially commissioned orchestral score in three movements. It is essentially a mood ballet, responding to the music, its changing moods expressed in the dancer’s movements and the colors of the costumes.