‘Beautiful energy.’ New Charlotte Ballet show inspired by Chagall, Philip Glass
For four years, Alejandro Cerrudo has served as Charlotte Ballet’s artistic director. The choreographer and former dancer’s works have been performed by professional companies around the world.
But so far local audiences have not gotten to see a full-length ballet choreographed by him. Until now. Cerrudo’s “One Thousand Pieces” runs from May 7-10 at Knight Theater.
The work comes with a fascinating origin story and innovative production elements, including a section in which dancers perform in actual water on stage.
It’s a big production, featuring around 25 dancers, drawing from both the main and second company. And the show is accompanied by live music performed by the Charlotte Symphony.
The work’s Charlotte debut is also timed to coincide with festivities around the 250th anniversary of the United States. That’s fitting, since in many ways, the ballet is a celebration of America.
It’s inspired by Marc Chagall’s stained-glass masterpiece, “America Windows,” and features the music of Philip Glass, one of America’s greatest living composers.
For Cerrudo, a Spanish immigrant, it’s especially meaningful to present this work now.
It’s not only a time for celebration, he said, but a moment to reflect on “who we are as a country and who we want to become from here on.” And he hopes the ballet will offer audiences the chance to do just that.
He recently spoke with The Charlotte Observer about how the ballet originally came together, the ways it has evolved and what he’d like to see audiences take from it.
Putting the pieces together for Charlotte Ballet
Cerrudo originally choreographed the work in 2012. Back then, he served as the first resident choreographer for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, a contemporary dance company.
Hubbard Street’s then artistic director Glenn Edgerton suggested the Chagall artwork to Cerrudo as a possible source of inspiration for his first evening-length work, for the company’s 35th anniversary season.
That’s because “America Windows” was installed at The Art Institute of Chicago in 1977, the same year as Hubbard Street’s founding. The artwork was a gift from Chagall in gratitude for the city’s longstanding support and in honor of America’s bicentennial.
“The windows celebrate America,” Cerrudo said, “celebrate all the diversity of America, the arts, theater, music … It’s a beautiful artwork. It’s very magical. Like most stained-glass windows, the light going through the glass and they’re mostly blue and shades of blue and has some red and yellow and green.”
After Cerrudo studied “America Windows” up close, he worked from memory trying to capture the artwork’s essence in his ballet.
For him, Chagall’s artwork mirrors the world we live in, “filled with so many different cultures and different people and different fragments… yet we all hopefully project a beautiful light.”
In “One Thousand Pieces,” Cerrudo said many fragments also come together to create the whole. And among the most important pieces is the music. Selecting that is always among the most difficult parts in his process, Cerrudo said, because music carries such weight in dictating the identity of a dance.
For this work, Cerrudo knew he wanted to highlight the music of Glass, whose work he adores. Too often we take for granted the work of living artists, he said.
“We wait for them to die and then 200 years later we realize how great their work was. … I’m not saying Philip hasn’t been recognized, but I consider him at the level of these other masters from centuries ago, and he’s our generation.”
But choosing the music is not so simple when a composer has such a huge body of work. The 89-year-old Glass has composed more than 30 operas, 14 symphonies, 13 concertos as well as film soundtracks and other works.
He’s known as one of the pioneers of minimalism, a style which focuses on repetition and structure. But his more recent works, which the ballet mostly draws from, are more melodic and cinematic in scope.
Music for the ballet includes bits from the 2007 work “Selections from Songs and Poems for Solo Cello,” chamber music commissioned by Universal Studios Home Entertainment in 1998 to accompany the classic film, “Dracula,” and Piano Concerto No. 2 “After Lewis and Clark,” which premiered in 2004.
“I started listening to these pieces of music and it just felt right,” Cerrudo said.
Glass’s music evokes a range of sensations, he added. It can be beautiful, then at times more aggressive, busy or crazy, then moving towards calmness and simplicity.
Those textures enrich Glass’s work, Cerrudo said, and, of course, his ballet.
“It’s part of ‘One Thousand Pieces,’ ” he said. “The idea of all these fragments that are very diverse, very different from each other but yet become a cohesive all. These little fragments that sort of coexist with each other and I just love that idea … not only the music and the musical pieces but the dancers, the musicians, the set and the costumes, the audience — all of it creating one beautiful event.”
Cerrudo got to meet Glass in 2012 when he was developing the choreography.
He attended an intimate concert Glass gave at The Art Institute of Chicago and spoke to him in his dressing room after the performance. Cerrudo was nervous because he didn’t know how Glass would react to him creating a work using a “collage” of his music rather than a whole musical composition.
But Glass was open and supportive of the project. He even gave Cerrudo his personal email address, and said he might have additional unreleased music for Cerrudo to listen to and consider.
“It was a very special moment for me to meet him. He sort of gave me his blessing that what we were doing was exciting and that he was on board with it.”
Choreographing with water
In one visually stunning section of the ballet, dancers perform in water. Behind them are three curtains of mist that represent the “American Windows.” It’s one of several abstract ways the artwork is portrayed in the ballet.
“It’s beautiful imagery,” Cerrudo said.
The windows are the same size as Chagall’s artwork, and a blue light streaming through the mist is reflected in the water.
Like other aspects of this production, the scene’s magic comes from multiple components. Cerrudo said the visual effects are enhanced through the work of the lighting designer and the shiny Marley floor used.
Cerrudo developed the choreography for this scene with the dancers in water from the beginning. “We didn’t do the steps and then hope that they wouldn’t slip or, you know, hurt themselves,” he said.
But there were crucial things to consider. The water had to be very hot, Cerrudo said, and the rehearsals kept relatively short.
“When you’re wet for a long time, it starts to affect your mood. It’s not pleasant because you start to get cold … But at the same time, everybody involved knew that it was so special and that it was really working and so the atmosphere was beautiful.”
As water rehearsals began in Charlotte, Cerrudo said you could also see “everybody very invested in the work and excited to put it together.”
An evolving ballet work
Charlotte Ballet is the third professional company to present “One Thousand Pieces.”
After Hubbard Street, the work was performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet in 2024. (It was originally scheduled for March 2020, but postponed due to the COVID pandemic. Later that year, Cerrudo became PNB’s first resident choreographer, a post he held through his first year in Charlotte.)
When choreographers create, Cerrudo said, they often work on a deadline, resulting in certain sections that aren’t as refined as they would like. Each new version of a work becomes an opportunity for a choreographer to make small changes.
While the overall structure stays the same from one company to another, each group gives it a different life. Cerrudo often tells dancers not to think in terms of an individual step to execute but as a sensation.
“When we transmit movement through sensations, each individual, each dancer is going to project it differently,” he said.
Bringing the ballet to Charlotte
It feels great to Cerrudo to bring his work to Charlotte now.
“The company is evolving beautifully in a city that’s also evolving.”
He is fortunate, he said, to have been welcomed into this “great city” and be in a position where he can help Charlotte Ballet do its part to shape the city’s future.
And as an immigrant, now a naturalized American, Cerrudo said this production also provides a moment for him to express his own gratitude for what he has been able to do in the United States as an artist.
He hopes audiences enjoy “One Thousand Pieces” or find comfort in the production. Perhaps it will open their imaginations to what is possible through the arts, in life and in the way we think, he said.
But “as long as an audience member gets something out of it, even if he’s just entertained for an hour and a half.…. I’ll take that,” Cerrudo said.
“It means we’re doing the right thing.”
Want to go?
‘One Thousand Pieces’
Charlotte Ballet: May 7-10.
Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St., Charlotte
Tickets, $32-$150
More arts coverage
Want to see more stories like this? Sign up here for our free, award-winning “Inside Charlotte Arts” newsletter: charlotteobserver.com/newsletters. And you can join our Facebook group, “Inside Charlotte Arts,” by going here: facebook.com/groups/insidecharlottearts.