The Sarasota Ballet’s Program Seven

Three ballets that trace classical dance from imperial Russia to interwar London close the 20th season under director Iain Webb, played live by the Sarasota Orchestra. The Sarasota Ballet dances The Kingdom of the Shades for the first time. It is the vision scene from Marius Petipa's La Bayadère, set to Ludwig Minkus, in which a grieving warrior dreams of his dead beloved among a corps of spirits. Ninette de Valois' The Rake's Progress returns in Rex Whistler's Hogarth-inspired designs, following an heir's slide into ruin with only its virtuous heroine on pointe. Last comes Antony Tudor's Gala Performance, a 1938 comedy to Prokofiev in Hugh Laing's designs, in which three rival ballerinas try to upstage one another.