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Filling Station The San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education Out of the Wings A Study Guide Series for Classroom Teachers Filling Station & Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes Filling Station guide.indd 1 1/16/2008, 12:30 PM The San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education Mission Statement The mission of San Francisco Ballet is to share our joy of dance with the widest possible audience in our community and around the globe, and to provide the highest caliber of dance training in our School. We seek to enhance our position as one of the world’s finest dance companies through our vitality, innovativeness and diversity and through our uncompromising commitment to artistic excellence based in the classical ballet tradition. Katita Waldo in Balanchine’s Symphony in C. © Lloyd Englert, 2001. 2 © San Francisco Ballet Association 2008 Filling Station guide.indd 2-3 1/16/2008, 12:31 PM The San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education Table of Contents Mission Statement .................................................................................................................................. 2 About This Guide ...................................................................................................................................... 4 What is Dance? ............................................................................................................................................ 5 Filling Station ............................................................................................................................................. 6 Lew Christensen, Choreographer ................................................................................................. 7 Virgil Thomson, Composer ................................................................................................................ 8 Paul Cadmus, Designer .................................................................................................................... 9 Signs of the Times: the 1930s ........................................................................................................... 11 Creative Dance: Movements from Everyday Life ........................................................... 12 Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes ............................................................................................. 15 Mark Morris, Choreographer .......................................................................................................... 16 Santo Loquasto, Designer .............................................................................................................. 18 Poetry in Ben Jonson’s Time ................................................................................................................. 19 Writing a Friendship Poem .............................................................................................................. 20 Milestones in Ballet ............................................................................................................................. 21 A Ballet Timeline .................................................................................................................................... 22 Essentials of Ballet ............................................................................................................................. 23 Common Questions about Ballet .............................................................................................. 25 Theater Etiquette ................................................................................................................................ 27 About San Francisco Ballet .......................................................................................................... 29 Helgi Tomasson, Artistic Director ............................................................................................. 31 About San Francisco Ballet Orchestra ................................................................................ 34 About the San Francisco Ballet School ................................................................................ 36 About The Center for Dance Education ............................................................................. ..37 Answers to Activities .......................................................................................................................... 39 Further Resources ..................................................................................................................................... 40 3 Filling Station guide.indd 2-3 1/16/2008, 12:31 PM The San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education About this Guide This guide is meant to inform, spark conversation, and inspire engagement with San Francisco Ballet’s production of Lew Christensen’s ballet Filling Station and Mark Morris’ Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes. The guide is divided into several sections including information about theater etiquette, essential ballet vocabulary, ballet history, answers to common questions about ballet, San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet School, and the San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education, which produces this guide. Included are questions to consider and activities to experience before or after viewing these ballets. These are designed to enhance and support your experience watching these ballets. You might consider copying portions of this guide for your class and/or bring the guide to the theater. There is even room in the margins to take notes. Ikolo Griffin leads a San Francisco Ballet Family Workshop © SFB CDE, 2007. 4 Filling Station guide.indd 4-5 1/16/2008, 12:31 PM The San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education What is Dance? Bending, stretching, jumping, and turning are all activities dancers do. They work hard to transform these everyday movements into the language of dance, using each step as a word to compose first a phrase, then a sentence, a paragraph, and finally a story, or an expression of a feeling such as joy, sadness, anger, or love. This is one of the greatest forms of communication we have available to us. Through movement and facial expressions dancers learn to convey emotions and sometimes even entire stories without needing to speak out loud. Since dance uses no words, people around the world understand and respond to it. This is why dance is sometimes called a universal language. Movement to music is a natural response to our enjoyment of sounds. Even an infant begins bobbing his head to music he enjoys. There are many different types and variations of dancing from tribal dances to swing dancing, from hip hop at a party to a classical ballet on an opera house stage. Dance is a wonderful way of expressing our joy of life. You might explore how to communicate an emotion through movement yourself. Notice how different music inspires unique motion, especially from children. All dance is a valid form of expression. Pierre-François Vilanoba & Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun in Tomasson’s 7 for Eight. © Erik Tomasson, 2005. 5 Filling Station guide.indd 4-5 1/16/2008, 12:31 PM The San Francisco Ballet Center for Dance Education Filling Station Music: Virgil Thomson Choreography: Lew Christensen Libretto: Lincoln Kirstein Decor and Costumes: Paul Cadmus First Performance: Ballet Caravan, January 6, 1938, Hartford Connecticut Original Dancers (1938): Lew Christensen as Mac, Eric Hawkins and Eugene Loring as the Truck Drivers, Todd Bolander as the State Trooper, Harold Christensen as the Motorist, Ruby Asquith as the Child, Fred Danieli and Marie Jeanne as the Rich Boy and Girl, Michael Kidd as the Gangster The comic ballet Filling Station has been called the first truly American ballet. Choreographed by an American dance-maker, set to music by an American composer, with sets and costumes by an American artist, Filling Station was also one of the first ballets to tell a story based on a slice of life that would be familiar to any American audience member: a stop at the gas station. The hero of this tale is not a prince or a king, but rather a resourceful, clever, all-American guy—a filling station attendant. Although Christensen uses many classical ballet steps in Filling Station, the ballet also demonstrates that dance can be used to tell a modern story, a comic strip-like fable not unlike the fairy-tale ballets of the 19th century. Synopsis: It’s late at night at Mac’s Filling Station, and we catch sight of Mac himself, reading a newspaper by the light of his gas station’s neon sign. Alone in his thoughts, Mac dances an energetic, jaunty solo, which is interrupted by the entrance of a Motorist. Comically dressed in checked suit with a giant straw hat, the cigar- chomping Motorist asks Mac for directions, which Mac shows him on a giant map. In the meantime, Mac’s buddies Roy and Ray, two truck drivers, sneak into the station and when the Motorist goes on his way, the three friends dance an athletic pas de trois. They are, in turn, interrupted by the State Trooper, who accuses the truck drivers of speeding—which they vehemently deny. As the Trooper leaves, after giving the men a warning, the Motorist returns, this time with a his nagging wife and a whiny daughter, who are looking for the restroom. Another young couple, who’ve obviously had too much to drink, wander in and the girl insists on dancing a drunken duet with her companion and then with Mac and his buddies. The Motorist and his family return and everyone joins in a San Francisco Ballet rehearses Christensen’s Filling Station.
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