Collaboration
Saint Paul City Ballet partners creatively with music and visual arts organizations of the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota, realizing the collective power of live performance and bringing that power to a more diverse and wider audience. We create relationships with artists of other disciplines to exchange wisdom, innovation, and creative energy.
Saint Paul City Ballet (SPCB) is known for creating original, collaborative performances that delight audiences.
In March of 2010, SPCB presented a mixed repertory program, featuring the return of George Maurer who has earned a spot among the Midwest’s jazz elite as a composer and musician. In his second collaboration with SPCB, George and Friends appeared live on stage with the dancers and infused the show with wit and musicianship.
In 2008, SPCB invited the Hopkins Youth Ballet under the direction of Leslie Daly to perform with SPCB students in their holiday show, Nutcracker Magique.
In 2007 SPCB premiered Enticed, a stunningly different meld of jazz and ballet with commissioned, original music by jazz composer George Maurer and choreographer Christa Anderson Hill. Phillip Carman choreographed to Maurer’s Song Cycle.
In 2006 and 2007, SPCB collaborated with the Grand Avenue Business Association to perform excerpts of A Christmas Carol in the living windows for the annual Grand Meander.
In 2006, SPCB dancers traveled to Italy to perform under the direction of Anna Marie Holmes in the White Nights Festival in Ascoli Piceno. Dancers performed Coeur d’ Amour with new choreography by Phillip Carman.
In 2006, SPCB collaborated with Scoil na dTri Irish Dance Academy and Ring of Kerry Irish musicians in the Spring Gala in St. Cloud, MN.
In 2005, SPCB’s holiday show ‘Tis The Season incliuded music performed by the Minnesota
Chorale, Kenwood Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Youth Symphonies, Land of Lakes Choir Boys, and Central Minnesota Music School. This production also featured new choreography by Phillip Carman to excerpts from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
From 2004 – 2009, artist Charles Gilbert Kapsner from Little Falls, Minnesota, has produced a series of oil paintings in the tradition of the French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. A studio and fresco artist whose collection includes portraits, figures and still lifes, Kapsner has been sketching and painting Saint Paul City Ballet dancers since 2004.
In 2004, Charles Gerard Dickens narrated SPCB’s version of A Christmas Carol, the Ballet playing his great grandfather, Charles Dickens.
In 2003 – 2006, SPCB collaborated with Tatyana Dikareva in her annual Russian Seasons.
In 2003, Gabriela Komleva, coach and ballet mistress at the Maryinski Theater created new choreography for students of SPCB. They performed Troika and Noontime Reveries with original music by Tatyana Dikareva.
In 2003, SPCB collaborated with choreographer Christina Onesko in staging her work Simple Pleasures.