Mariinsky Ballet Joins Royal Shakespeare Company et al. in 2011 Lincoln Center Festival

The Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet joins the previously-announced Royal Shakespeare Company and The Cleveland Orchestra, completing the trio of leading performing ensembles coming to  New York this summer as part of Lincoln Center Festival 2011. Nigel Redden, Festival Director, today announced the complete Festival schedule, which runs from July 5 through August 14.  In a co-presentation with the Metropolitan Opera, the renowned Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet returns to the Festival for eight performances at the Met Opera House, dancing three programs. Highlighting the company's appearance are the U.S. premieres of Anna Karenina and The Little Humpbacked Horse, evening-length ballets by critically-acclaimed choreographer Alexei Ratmansky set to music by leading Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin. A third program pairs Alberto Alonso's Carmen Suite, to Shchedrin's arrangement of Bizet's score, and George Balanchine's neo-classical masterwork Symphony in C, also with music by Bizet. Artistic Director of the Mariinsky, Valery Gergiev will conduct the Mariinsky Orchestra.

Said Mr. Redden, "We are privileged to have three of the world's foremost performing ensembles-the Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Shakespeare Company and The Cleveland Orchestra-highlighting dance, theater, and music presentations, respectively at Festival 2011. At the same time, we are thrilled to present the Festival debuts of Peter Brook, Tom Zé and the Danish Royal Opera, and to welcome back Garry Hynes, Amon Miyamoto, David Michalek, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This year's Festival is the longest running one in its fifteen-year history and once again offers New York a feast of innovative and compelling artists and performances from around the world."

Three leading stage directors will bring exciting new productions to Festival 2011. Legendary theater artist Peter Brook, whose last Lincoln Center production was La Tragédie de Carmen at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1983, brings his intimate A Magic Flute to the Festival for its U.S. Premiere with 16 performances at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater. The fully-staged adaptation of Mozart's opera, created for his Paris-based Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, is performed by an ensemble of two actors and alternating casts of seven singers, with pianist. Tony Award-winning director Garry Hynes, whose DruidSynge was a high point of the 2006 Festival, returns with the Druid Theatre Company's production of Seán O'Casey's The Silver Tassie, a searing drama set during and after World War I. This rarely-staged O'Casey play will have eight performances at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater.

Japanese director Amon Miyamoto, who made his Festival debut in 2002 with his acclaimed production of the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical Pacific Overtures, returns with the U.S. Premiere of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion which is the opening production of the Kanagawa Arts Theatre, where Miyamoto serves as Artistic Director. Based on the wrenching novel by Japan's acclaimed writer Yukio Mishima, the play features Go Morita in the main role of the young monk. A member of V6, a popular Japanese boy band and a rising star of stage and film, Morita makes his first American stage appearance with this engagement. Temple will have four performances at the Rose Theater.

As previously announced The Royal Shakespeare Company, in a co-presentation by Lincoln Center Festival and the Park Avenue Armory, in association with The Ohio State University, will have an
unprecedented six-week New York residency, offering 44 performances of five Shakespeare plays-As You Like It, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and The Winter's Tale-at the Park Avenue Armory in a specially-constructed replica of the new thrust stage Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratfordupon-Avon. The auditorium has been named the Scarlet & Gray Stage. Under Artistic Director Michael Boyd, this will be a rare opportunity for American audiences to see this extraordinary ensemble of actors, who will have worked together for three years, undertaking multiple roles. In conjunction with the main-stage repertoire, the Royal Shakespeare Company's residency alsoincludes a major education program at the Park Avenue Armory, presented in collaboration with Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, the New York City Department of Education and The Ohio State University to reach under-served young people in New York and share skills with teachers, with productions of The Comedy of Errors (in association with Told by an Idiot) and Hamlet.