For the second year in a row, Colorado Ballet will leave its home stage — the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in downtown Denver — to open its season at DU’s Newman Center. Playing at the Newman Sept. 11–13, All Pointes West kicks off the company’s 49th season.
The Colorado-themed show features “Great Galloping Gottschalk,” choreographed by Denver native Lynne Taylor-Corbett, and Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo,” a Western-themed opera set to an original score by Aaron Copland.
“I find the Newman Center just a beautiful theater, and for works like these, smaller repertory pieces, they work very well on that size of a stage,” says Colorado Ballet Artistic Director Gil Boggs. “It also gives us a second venue to perform in here in Denver. Instead of being downtown, we’re able to go a little bit south, and maybe we’re able to attract some people that come to Newman Center that wouldn’t necessarily come downtown.”
The audience-building outreach continues throughout the fall as Colorado Ballet takes the show to Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Pueblo. The traveling — and the show’s theme — were inspired by a grant the company received from the Colorado Council on the Arts (CCA) earlier this year.
“The CCA put out a call for anybody who was interested in doing a tour on the Front Range of Colorado, they would do a grant for it,” Boggs says. “The stipulation on that grant was that it had to have the theme of Colorado somehow.”
All Pointes West also includes the third-act pas de deux from Marius Petipa’s “Sleeping Beauty” and the Colorado Ballet premiere of Dwight Roden’s “Ave Maria.”
Showtimes at the Newman Center are 7:30 p.m., Sept. 11; 2 and 7:30 p.m., Sept. 13; and 2 p.m., Sept. 13. Tickets are $19–$109. For more information, call 303-837-8888 or visit www.coloradoballet.org.