NYC BALLET TO HOLD AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL

The New York City Ballet will mount a three-week American Music Festival next spring to enlist not only choreographers from the company’s extended family but several major modern and post-modern figures as well, it was announced Wednesday.

Scheduled for the opening of the company’s 40th anniversary season, the American Music Festival will focus on a musical concept like the four company festivals previously directed by the late George Balanchine.

Modern dance practitioners Paul Taylor, Laura Dean, and Lar Lubovich are among the seven choreographers so far invited to participate in the 10-program festival.

After allowing that the broad-based theme of this festival precluded a comprehensive view, Peter Martins, the company’s co-director, said that factors of selection sprung from American music “that appealed to us,” that “was suited to dance” and “that the choreographers had chosen.”

The roster of guest choreographers will also include Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, Eliot Feld, William Forsythe and Helgi Tomasson. With Leonard Bernstein as chairman of the Honorary Festival Committee, the event’s musical side will involve commissioned scores from Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Charles Wuorinen, Paul Schwartz and Michael Torke.

“Obviously, most exciting of all, is the collaboration,” Martins said about the prospect of working closely with a composer. But, obviously, one of the festival’s most notable plans is a project--with no composer yet listed--in which Martins will collaborate with modern dance master Taylor. The plan is to enlist the resources of both City Ballet and Taylor’s own dancers for this work, though no other details were given.

Of the revivals of appropriate pieces from the company’s own past repertory, Martins made special mention of “Jubilee” by the late Joseph Duell and “Summerspace” by Merce Cunningham.