Running Time: Approx. five minutes

Music: Manheim Steamroller's Silent Night

Dancer Requirements:

Three to Ten Women

All must be technically accomplished with a strength for

adagio, balance and extension.  It is also important that the dancers have emotional range in their performance ability.

Technical Requirements:

Stage Size: 30 x 20 preferred

No crossover needed

With a small cast, this is very suitable for small stages.

Costumes:

Women: Originally created for knee-length, flowing, "handkerchief hem" dresses in muted tones of steel gray, green, purple & blue.  Would be lovely in any flowing dress.

Costumes Owned by: The Georgia Ballet,  Atlanta, GA

Description

Silent Night is a short, beautifully lyrical ballet originally created for a small group of strong students.   The music is poignantly-played and creates a truly emotional experience for audiences.

The choreography uses a strong ballet background with modern dance movements, especially advanced modern turns, and allows dancers to be expressive throughout the work.

The opening of the music is a chorus of men's voices emotionally humming the tune of the Christmas classic, "silent night."  During this beautiful beginning, dancers begin in a posed formation at stage right; they each have a beautiful and technical solo (in larger casts, we would change these solos to duets or trios) demonstrating turns, penchee, extensions and other adagio movements.  At the end of the first section, the dancers return to a group downstage left.

In the second section, as the instruments begin to take over the melody, the dancers begin to dance together.  There are canons, unison sections, and duets ands trios.  There are also lovely moments in the choreography where the dancers hold hands in an advancing line and later partner one another as a group.  In the climax of the music, the dancers have the opportunity to perform technical grand allegro movements such as coupe jete turns and tour jete before coming together in a circle.

At the end of the piece, the dancers return to their upstage right corner, then exit, one-by-one, down stage left in a spine-tingling finish as the music fades.

History:

Silent Night was first commissioned by The Georgia Ballet as a work for its apprentice ensemble.  It was premiered in fall of 2002 and has been brought back "by popular demand" for several 2002 performances (including the community outreach performance pictured here) and again in 2003.