Ballet and Music at Princeton Festival

COLLABORATION: American Repertory Ballet and the Attacca Quartet share a program at the Princeton Festival on Saturday, June 17. (Photo by Eduardo Patino NYC)

On Saturday, June 17, at 7 p.m., the Grammy Award-Winning Attacca Quartet pairs with dancers from the American Repertory Ballet for an Evening of Contemporary Ballet at the Princeton Festival, held in a performance pavilion on the grounds of Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street.

On the program are ballet excerpts from Circadia, choreographed by Caili Quan to the music of Gabriella Smith’s Carrot Revolution; and Wood Work, choreographed by Ethan Stiefel to Nordic folk tunes arranged by the Danish String Quartet. Attacca Quartet will also be performing compositions by Pulitzer Prize-winning composers John Adams and Caroline Shaw.

In 2021, the quartet announced their exclusive signing to SONY Classical, releasing two albums, Real Life and Of All Joys, that embody their redefinition of what a string quartet can be. The quartet performs at such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Sala Sao Paolo, San Francisco Performances, Paris’ Théâtre de la Ville, Palau de la Musica, Concertgebow Brugges, De Doelen, Kings Place, and Amsterdam’s String Quartet Biennale. 

Quan is a New York-based choreographer who danced with BalletX from 2013 to 2020. She has created works for BalletX, The Juilliard School, Vail Dance Festival, American Repertory Ballet, Flight Path Dance Project, Stars of American Ballet, Asbury Park Dance Festival, Oakland Ballet, Columbia Ballet Collaborative, and Ballet Academy East. She served as an Artistic Partnership Initiative Fellow and a Toulmin Creator at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. She participated in New York Choreographic Institute’s 2022 Fall Session, under the direction of Adrian Danchig-Waring, creating a work on dancers from New York City Ballet. Quan was one of the 2022 Artists-in-Residence at the Vail Dance Festival and is a creative associate at The Juilliard School.

Stiefel, the artistic director of ARB, began his professional career at age 16 with the New York City Ballet where he quickly rose to the rank of principal dancer. He held the same rank with Ballett Zürich and American Ballet Theatre. Stiefel has served as dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) as well as the artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. As a choreographer, he has created new works for American Repertory Ballet, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, The Washington Ballet, ABT Studio Company, Northern Ballet (UK), The Royal Ballet School, among others.

Tickets are available at princetonsymphony.org/festival or (609) 497-0020.