The Sarasota Ballet was founded in 1987, but only began achieving its present level of success twenty years later with the appointment of Iain Webb as Director. Together with his wife, Margaret Barbieri, Webb is responsible for introducing more than a hundred ballets into the company’s repertory, including works by Balanchine, MacMillan, Tudor, Bourne, Wheeldon, and others. The company has become best known for its extensive collection of dances by Sir Frederick Ashton, bringing new attention to this British choreographer who epitomized the Royal Ballet for decades beginning in the late 1940s. The trio seen here, one of his rare abstract dances, is only the fifth Ashton work ever to be performed at Jacob’s Pillow.
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