Boston Ballet: Play With Fire

Boston Ballet's Resident Choreographer Jorma Elo premiered Sharp Side of Dark with Boston Ballet in 2002. It was his first commission for the Company. The work is choreographed to Bach's Goldberg Variations and features large-scale architectural sets and a haunting lighting design.

Elo, who danced with Netherlands Dans Theater for 15 years, became Boston Ballet's Resident Choreographer in 2005 where he has since created seven new works. Most recently, two of Elo's works were nominated for the 2011 Benois de la Danse. The New York Times has written of Elo, "he knows classical technique and how to use it in new ways, how to transform it. This is not modern dance and ballet: it is modern ballet."

Play with Fire also includes Jiri Kylian's Bella Figura, a work Boston Ballet will premiere in the U.S. in April 2011. The Los Angeles Times wrote of it, "in an increasingly dark world, [Kylian's] dancers are beautiful enough to give almost anyone renewed faith." The work is tangibly sensual in its adoration and reverence towards the human body and contains partial nudity.