In the Headlines!
Glen Tetley's impact on the dance world
as an innovative and forward-moving choreographer is still felt today.
His choreography inspires new generations of choreographers
and dancers to stretch the bounds of their bodies and classical ballet.
Please enjoy these recent articles in which Glen Tetley and his choreography are referenced.
August 5, 2018
The Guardian
"Nadine Baylis obituary: Stage designer who set the standard for modern dance costume"
By: Jane Pritchard
Having recently learned on the November 2017 death of designer Nadine Baylis, author Jane Pritchard (curator of dance for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) details Baylis' contribution to modern dance costumes. Baylis was a longtime collaborator of Glen Tetley's creating the costumes for many of his ballets including "Ziggurat", "Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain", "The Rite of Spring", and "Alice" among others.
"Nadine Baylis, who has died aged 77, was an internationally recognized designer for the stage who played an influential role in developing the appearance of modern dance production in Britain. She was an austere and stylish designer noted for the spare and sculptural quality of her settings – and became a key figure in establishing painted, dyed and decorated Lycra all-in-one body tights as dance costumes. [Her] most important contact at Rambert was Glen Tetley. They first collaborated when she designed his Ziggurat (1967), a work that used projections and inspired Richard Buckle’s observation that Baylis 'was the heir of [the innovative Russian designer Pavel] Tchelitchew; and has invented more ways of being nude than any other living designer ... In Ziggurat, Baylis dressed her dancers in holes.'"
ABOVE: From the Glen Tetley Legacy Archives, Original artwork with inscription by Nadine Baylis given to Glen Tetley on the occasion of the November 1967 premiere of "Ziggurat". Reads: Glen, Thank you for the chance. Very best wishes for tonight. Nadine "Ziggurat" Nov '67
Link to view original article
Link to view Nadine Baylis' original "Oracle" costume designs in the Glen Tetley Legacy Archives.
May 17, 2018
PLAYBILL
"Wayne McGregor Choreographs His First American Ballet Theatre Work"
By: James Sutton
In anticipation of the American Ballet Theatre's world premiere of Wayne McGregor's "AFTERITE" this May, the author reflects on the history and controversy of the revolutionary Stravinsky score as well as acknowledges the succession of choreographers who have been inspired to create their own interpretations of the music, notably Glen Tetley's 1974 production.
"McGregor’s new production this season is not the first Rite for American Ballet Theatre. Glen Tetley’s highly successful contemporary production, originally created for Munich’s Bavarian State Opera Ballet in 1974, was set on ABT in 1976, and featured a stellar opening night cast that included Mikhail Baryshnikov, Martine van Hamel and Clark Tippet. Following a traditional scenario and musical impulse, Tetley’s stunning, dynamically theatrical interpretation utilized his personal choreographic language, a blend, unique for the time, of classic modern and ballet vocabulary, and it proved to be a popular work for the Company. Unlike the original, Tetley cast a man in the leading role of the Chosen One, or victim of the rite. In a harrowing, inexorable progression, the work built to the sacrifice of the chosen youth, and in a final coup de théâtre, he was drawn aloft in an explosion of energy."
Photo Credit: Martine van Hamel and Clark Tippet in Glen Tetley's "The Rite of Spring" (1976). Photographer: Martha Swope.