Lake Tahoe Dance Collective will present the 13th annual Lake Tahoe Dance Festival from July 22-25, featuring artists from New York City Ballet, Broadway, Boston Ballet, Metropolitan Opera Ballet and more. An opening night gala in Tahoe City at William B Layton Park marks the beginning of the Festival, followed by Tahoe City Community Night, Kings Beach Community Night and a closing night benefit in Incline Village.
With a mission to present the finest quality professional dance and dance instruction in North Lake Tahoe, Christin Hanna and Constantine Baecher started the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival in 2013, now in its second decade. Lake Tahoe Dance commissions new works, preserves the legacy of rarely-seen classics and fan favorites, while offering the highest caliber artists a creative platform.
Some of the artists featured at the 2025 Lake Tahoe Dance Festival include Lia Cirio and Paul Craig (Boston Ballet), Melody Mennite Walsh (Houston Ballet), Dwayne Brown (Metropolitan Opera Ballet), Amber Neff (New Chamber Ballet), Taylor Stanley and Indiana Woodward (New York City Ballet), and Stephen Hanna (New York City Ballet/Broadway).
Festival highlights:
Tarantella, George Balanchine
Dancers: Daniel Ulbricht, Indiana Woodward
This sprightly music, despite its Italian air, was composed by Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869), a New Orleans–born composer and pianist who made a large impact in his brief life. Gottschalk was a true American original, and his achievements had a great impact on composers and performers who followed. Balanchine admired this particular composition and choreographed a pas de deux for Patricia McBride and Edward Villella – two virtuosic dancers – in 1964. In his Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, Balanchine wrote of the music, “It is a dazzling display piece, full of speed and high spirits. So, I hope, is the dance, which is ‘Neopolitan’ if you like and ‘demi-caractère.’ The costumes are inspired by Italy, anyhow, and there are tambourines.”
New Commission, Holly Curran
Dancers: Amber Neff and Dwayne Brown
This will be Holly Curran’s second commission for the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival.
Floreciente, Melody Mennite
Dancers: Melody Mennite and Stephen Hanna, with workshop students.
Floreciente means to flourish or bloom. There was a time, not long ago, when we were closer to the rhythms of the natural world. We more intimately belonged to this Earth and simultaneously to each other. Finding ourselves out of balance in a modern era, we have become disoriented and searching for clearer path forward. We look back and see that despite all our distractions, natures rhythms, cycles, and wisdom continue to hold and sustain us. Listen to the song of nature, that rhythm of your own heartbeat, it is the deepest place in you that says you are home. May we bloom.
Chaptered in Fragments, Lia Cirio
Chaptered in Fragments was Lia Cirio’s first piece for Boston Ballet’s main stage. She began choreographing it during the pandemic and completed it as they were emerging from that time. It premiered in 2022. Lia chose the title because the piece felt like it had grown alongside the different chapters of our lives…the dancers and she were not the same people they were when we started creating it, and by the time it was performed, they had changed. The main pas de deux couple (particularly the woman) in the piece goes on an emotional journey, but Lia always felt there was more to their story. When Christin Hanna invited her to create something for the festival, it felt like the perfect opportunity to add a new fragment to that chapter. Lia is excited to dive into it again, both as a person and as a choreographer, she is constantly evolving.
Lake Tahoe Dance Collective’s mission is to promote classical, modern and contemporary dance of the finest quality in the Lake Tahoe area through performance, education, and outreach, enriching the community as a whole as a cultural destination.
What started as Tahoe Youth Ballet in 2009, with a single performance has become a company and school that presents a range of performances for Lake Tahoe audiences throughout the year, including its own productions as well as visiting dance companies.
For more information, visit www.laketahoedancecollective.org/laketahoedancefestival.
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