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Graham LustigArtistic Director |
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An internationally recognized director and choreographer whose work has been performed on four continents, Graham Lustig has been Artistic Director of American Repertory Ballet and ARB’s Princeton Ballet School since 1999. Since joining he has introduced numerous new ballets to American Repertory Ballet by choreographers such as Twyla Tharp, Dominique Dumais, Val Caniparoli and Kirk Peterson.
In 2001 Mr. Lustig launched Dancing Through The Ceiling, a groundbreaking initiative dedicated to showcasing the work of classically based women choreographers .To date, 12 new ballets have been commissioned. Many of his own productions further contribute to American Repertory Ballet’s repertoire including The Nutcracker, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Beauty and the Beast – A Gothic Romance. For ARB’s Princeton Ballet School he has choreographed productions of Don Quixote, Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty.
Mr. Lustig has also directed and choreographed for opera, theatre and film, including Eugene Onegin, Cleveland Opera, Aida, Boheme Opera of New Jersey, Carmen, Princeton Festival, plus collaborations with Christopher Nupen on the biographical film, Tchaikovsky’s Women, and with Robert Allen Ackerman on the award-winning production of When She Danced starring Vanessa Redgrave.
Formerly dancing as a soloist with both Dutch National Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, Mr. Lustig performed a diverse selection of leading roles in works by Ashton, McMillan, De Valois, Cranko and van Dantzig, as well as Balanchine’s Prodigal Son, Profiteer in Kurt Joos’s Green Table, Willie Mossop in Bintley’s Hobson’s Choice and Fokine’s Petrushka.
Since joining American Repertory Ballet, Mr. Lustig has been actively engaged in a variety of collaborations in the New Jersey community including DANCE POWER, a program that teaches dance to every New Brunswick School third-grader. Mr. Lustig is a charter member of the Artists Council for Americans for the Arts and has served numerous times as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. In the 2008-2009 season his premieres include Fanfare for Singapore Dance Theatre, Between Stillness for Louisville Ballet, Shadows in the Attic for American Repertory Ballet and West Side Story, which he both directed and choreographed, for Boheme Opera of New Jersey. His ballet Evening will be featured in the upcoming Singapore Arts Festival.
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Bat Abbit
Ballet Master |
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Bat Abbit began his professional career with the Nashville Ballet. He joined the North Carolina Dance Theatre where as a soloist he danced leading roles in works by Paul Taylor, David Parsons, Peter Pucci, and George Balanchine. He also performed works by Salvatore Aiello, most notably Fritz in The Nutcracker, and Miles in The Turn of the Screw. Mr. Abbit first worked with Mr. Lustig in 1997 when he created a role in Pomp for North Carolina Dance Theatre. Upon joining American Repertory Ballet in 2000, he danced the role of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cadenza, Borderlines, Paramour, Urban Tangos, Autumn in Cinderella, and created roles in Silkscreens, as well as the roles of Fritz and the Nutcracker in Graham Lustig's The Nutcracker. Mr. Abbit is a founding member of Terpsicorps Theatre of Dance in Asheville, North Carolina and has danced with them for three summers.
In 2000, he began maintaining select pieces of the repertory. In 2003 joined the Artistic Staff of the American Repertory Ballet as a Rehearsal Assistant and became Ballet Master in 2004. Mr. Abbit has rehearsed the students of ARB’s Princeton Ballet School in Coppelia, The Sleeping Beauty, and Swan Lake as well as each year in Graham Lustig's The Nutcracker.
For ARB Mr. Abbit has choreographed two ballets specifically for younger audiences, Jump, Frog, Jump! and The Very Hungry Caterpillar plus several new works for the Summer Intensive program.
In 1993, his pas de deux, Into The Light, won the Nashville Dance Project's Choreographers' Competition and lead to the creation of two more works for that company. He has assisted Jerri Kumery in staging Salvatore Aiello's Rite of Spring, and has mounted a full length Coppelia for the Carolina Ballet. His choreography for Bending Towards the Light, A Jazz Nativity can be seen annually in New York and New Jersey.
When leaving North Carolina Dance Theatre, Mr. Abbit was given a royalty free licensee for Tarantella by noted New York City Ballet ballerina Patricia McBride for whom the legendary George Balanchine created the ballet. He has since performed this work for audiences all over New Jersey and Delaware to much acclaim.
As a teacher Mr. Abbit has served on the faculties of the School of the Nashville Ballet, Vanderbilt University, Western Kentucky University, and DancePlace the official school of the North Carolina Dance Theatre. Mr. Abbit holds a BFA from Western Kentucky University. |
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Kathleen Moore
Ballet Mistress |
Kathleen Moore born in Chicago, Illinois, was raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She began dance lessons at a local ballet school and then studied dance seriously with Dame Sonia Arova during high school at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (ASFA). Kathleen also attended summer sessions in New York, at the School of American Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre School, before graduating from ASFA as a National Scholar in the Arts and moving to New York as a member of American Ballet Theatre’s junior company, ABT II. (1980).
Miss Moore joined American Ballet Theatre as a member of the corps de ballet in 1982, was appointed Soloist by Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1988, and Principal Dancer in 1991. Her roles with ABT were many, working in the classics as well as the dramatic and modern repertory. Her repertory includes Myrta in Giselle, Lescaut’s Mistress in Manon, Hagar in Pillar of Fire, The Cowgirl in Rodeo, a Stomper in In the Upper Room, and roles in works by Mark Morris, Paul Taylor, Jiri Kylian and Glen Tetley.
Miss Moore created the role of The Girl in The Informer by Agnes de Mille, leading roles in Mark Morris’ Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes and in Twyla Tharp’s How Near Heaven and Jump Start.
She was a member of the premiere tour of the White Oak Dance Project under the direction of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Mark Morris in 1990 and has appeared in several dance documentaries and the Herbert Ross movie Dancers.
In 1988 Miss Moore married Peter Tovar, in 1997 she gave birth to a son, Becket, and retired from dancing professionally in the fall of 1998. She currently lives in Princeton, is on faculty at ARB's Princeton School of Ballet and served as a member of the Executive Committee for the Princeton Symphony Orchestra Board for several years.
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