Meditation
Choreography: Jacques d’Amboise
Music: Jules Massenet
Costumes: Russ Vogler
Lighting: Stephen Quandt
Surely the most familiar music from Jules Massenet’s 1894 opera “Thais,” the richly sensuous Meditation, an orchestral interlude with violin solo, has long been a concert favorite. Jacques d’ Amboise’s Meditation is a romantic pas de deux. Choreographically inspired by the music, it observes traditional forms and keeps the classical technical idiom. D’Amboise first premiered and danced Meditation in St. Louis in 1956. It is a highly emotional ballet in which two lovers search for each other.
Jacques d’Amboise began an extraordinary career in dance at the age of 8 as a student at the School of American Ballet. A long time principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, he has choreographed for television, films, and Broadway, and has become a missionary for dance, as founder and director of the National Dance Institute, a non-profit foundation that supports and develops classes in dance to inner city children in New York. Mr. d’Amboise has served as guest faculty for the State Ballet School.