A few minutes ago, I just did my last pirhouette and rondelay. Now, before you lose your breakfast thinking of of me in a cod piece, let me explain. Over 7 years ago, I concieved a ballet with a friend of mine - Raymond Van Mason. He was, at the time, a principle dancer with Ballet West, and had choreographed a previous ballet to selections from my CD "Seasons." Both of us us had been entranced by the story Secret Garden and felt it would make a great original ballet.
We finished the libretto fairly quickly and went about the arduous task of procuring financing. Since Ray was a member of Ballet West, we approached the Director John Hart about mounting the ballet. While intrigued, he shared with us the reality of funding a full-length ballet. Not detered, we sought out other performance opportunities and funding sources including several national grants and local composer commissions. Nothing panned out and we begrudgingly shelved our ballet.
Ray and I parted creative ways as he headed for the west coast and eventually Japan to pursue his ballet career and I continued writing music for a myriad of genres and mediums. Once in a while, when we'd bump into each other at various functions, we'd talk of resurrecting our dream. However - the continued financial realities of mounting it just made us meekly smile and say "someday."
That "someday" came when Ray - now the director of a new children's ballet "Imagine Ballet Theatre" in Ogden Utah - called me and said "let's do it." While still not a money-making venture, it has been fun composing music for this delightful and heart-warming story. It's written for a chamber orchestra and female soprano. Because of budetary constraints, I've had to mock the whole thing ups on synthesizers. Hopefully someday we'll mount the piece with actual musicians.
It will have it's premier on November 10, 2005 at the Peery's Egyptian Theatre in Ogden.
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