Für Alina

Music

Arvo Pärt (1976)

Choreography

Edwaard Liang

Costume Design

Mark Zappone

Lighting Design

Randall G. Chiarelli

Duration

14 minutes

Premiere

September 16, 2006
New Ballet Choreographers (New York)

PNB Premiere

September 15, 2007

The 2007 Pacific Northwest Ballet premiere of Edwaard Liang’s Für Alina was generously underwritten by Lyndall Boal.

Formerly a dancer with New York City Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater, Edwaard Liang has made ballets for New York City Ballet, Shanghai Ballet, Hubbard Street, Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process series, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, and Morphoses, The Wheeldon Company.

Liang’s Für Alina is an episodic duet for a man and a woman set to Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s spare piano solo of the same name. R.M. Campbell of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer described Pacific Northwest Ballet’s performance of Für Alina at First Look 2007 as “tumultuous,” while Susan Reiter, writing about the premiere on New York’s 2006 New Ballet Choreographer’s program in danceviewtimes, described the pas de deux as “…so delicate and unforced that in retrospect one hardly remembers [the dancers] moving.” Reiter continued, “…Liang found a way to make the silences palpable through the choreography, and sustained a profound sadness, so that even as these two figures found strength through each other and flowed in and out of some more extreme shapes, their return to the despairing sense of lost hope of the opening felt inevitable.”

Für Alina is the first work by Edwaard Liang to enter Pacific Northwest Ballet’s repertory.

Notes by Doug Fullington.

Artist Biographies

Edwaard Liang

Edwaard Liang was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and was raised in Marin County, California, where he began his ballet training at the age of five at Marin Ballet. In 1989, Mr. Liang entered the School of American Ballet. He joined New York City Ballet in the spring of 1993 and was promoted to soloist in 1998. Mr. Liang danced with New York City Ballet until 2001, when he joined the Broadway cast of Fosse. In 2002, Mr. Liang became a member of the acclaimed Nederlands Dans Theater, where he danced, choreographed and staged ballets. After returning from Holland, Liang danced with New York City Ballet until 2007.

Mr. Liang has choreographed a number of works, beginning with Flight of Angels for the Nederlands Dans Theater workshop. Flight of Angels has since been staged for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and Configurations. Mr. Liang was invited to choreograph a piece for the 2004 New York Choreographic Institute and also choreographed a work for Cedar Lake Dance Company. His Distant Cries, performed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Peter Boal and Wendy Whelan, was premiered to rave reviews from The New York Times at the Joyce Theatre, New York City Ballet and City Center of Music and Drama. Mr. Liang has since choreographed ballets for companies and projects, including New York City Ballet, Shanghai Ballet, Hubbard Street, Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process series, Sadler’s Wells Theatre and Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses company. He was named one of the “Top 25 to Watch” for 2006 by Dance Magazine, won the 2006 National Choreographic Competition and was invited to be part of the 2007 National Choreographers’ Initiative.