Since founding the Philadelphia-based BalletX, Christine Cox has built the company around artistic creation. “I wanted to be an advocate for artists,” she says. Under her leadership, BalletX has premiered more than 150 works by 80 choreographers, establishing itself as a leading company grounded in artistic curiosity and experimentation.
That commitment shapes The Four Seasons Reimagined, coming to Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Thursday, June 11, as part of BalletX’s 20th anniversary season. The evening length collaboration by choreographers Morgan Runacre-Temple, Penny Saunders, Jamal Roberts and Trey McIntyre is set to a newly commissioned score by composer Dan Deacon and reflects, says Cox, “the beauty and fragility of the natural world.”
The production originated at Philadelphia’s Mann Center for the Performing Arts to honor the nations’ 250th anniversary. In bringing the performance to SPAC during its 60th season, Cox hopes the audience will encounter an uplifting dance and provide what she calls “a playground of freedom” for choreographers to explore their ideas.
After a 20-year performing career with leading companies, Cox discovered she was drawn not only to performing but to working with choreographers to realize new dances. Rather than building BalletX around existing repertory, she made creation the “heart and soul” of the company.
When selecting choreographers, Cox looks for “a flexibility, a curiosity, a conversation.” Creation, she suggests, is not a rigid process but an exchange among choreographers, dancers, musicians, designers, and audiences. “The process matters as much as the experience,” she says. “The act of creating is the fire in all of us.”
That process unfolds differently for every artist. BalletX commissions between six and 10 new dances annually, a remarkable number. Most choreographers arrive with movement ideas and music, but once dancers enter the room, they begin influencing the choreography itself. Their physical instincts, questions and discoveries often shape the choreography as it develops. Some artists build slowly and incrementally, while others move quickly through material before refining it later. “One choreographer may meticulously build a phrase and do that phrase work for an entire week. Another may gloss over and get the project created and then fine tune,” Cox explains.
When asked whether a particular commission shaped her thinking as an artistic director, Cox points to BalletX co-founder Matthew Neenan’s Sunset, o639 Hours. Inspired by aviation pioneer Captain Edwin Musick, the work combined an original score by New Zealand composer Rosie Langabeer, invented instruments, historical recordings, and evocative physical imagery. “It was just an epic, unusual, touching work,” says Cox. “It touched you in your heart and had you crying, and you didn’t even know why.”
The Four Seasons Reimagined reflects that commitment to artistic exploration. Three of the four choreographers, Saunders, Roberts, and McIntyre, have worked previously with BalletX, while Runacre-Temple, is creating with the company for the first time. Her Summer opens the program, followed by Saunders’ Fall, Roberts’ Winter, and McIntyre’s Spring.
While united by Deacon’s score and an overarching concern for the environment, each choreographer approaches the seasons differently. Cox describes movement as blossoming like flowers as time “ticks by.” In Fall an all-female section repeatedly advances and retreats, and Winter passages feature dancers’ shoulders rising toward their ears and arms breaking like tree limbs. Spring, she says, erupts with movement resembling “sprouts coming through fingertips.” The first half of the evening is danced in socks, while the second moves onto pointe, underscoring the distinct physical worlds created by each artist.
Deacon, who previously collaborated with BalletX, has created a 70-minute score performed live by a nine-member ensemble. The musicians each play several instruments, ranging from tuba to guitar. Referencing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Cox describes the result as a “physical moving tapestry.”
For Cox, the evening is about more than choreography. “There is a connection between the creation of art, the creation of something new through our human experience, and a connection to the natural world. Nature is about creation, growth, birth, life and then rebuild and renew. BalletX is about birthing, living, and renewing work. There is a symmetry in what we’re doing as it relates to the natural world.”
Catherine Tharin is a choreographer, writer, curator, and educator. Her writing on dance has appeared in The Dance Enthusiast, Interlocutor, Side of Culture, and the Boston Globe. Tharin currently curates The Dance Series at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains, NY, and dance film at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY.
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