Dancers Brittany Yevoli and American Contemporary Ballet artistic director Lincoln Jones in"Astaire Dances II,” which the company premiered in 2019. Astaire Dances III kicks off on Feb. 1 at Metropolis Los Angeles.
Lincoln Jones will never forget the first time he saw Fred Astaire dance. "It was from [the 1942 film]," the artistic director of American Contemporary Ballet recalls. "It blew my mind. His choreography was the same quality as George Balanchine, and it was integrated so well with the music.” , the latest in a series that re-creates romantic numbers from the star's musicals, which this season includes pieces from . The program is comprised of six numbers, five from Astaire musicals and an original ballet choreographed by Jones.
Footwork from Astaire’s choreography has been replicated as closely as possible, with adjustments made for the transition from cinema to live performance. “In the films you often see Astaire and his partner jump from room to room, so we had to adapt the numbers for our staging,” Jones says. “But the feet, hands, heads, all of it, are as close as we can get to the original numbers, including those beautiful fixed romantic gazes as they were doing incredibly complex steps.