Amherst Ballet Spring Performance – Working to Transcend

Spring Show: Working to Transcend

~Live Music and Dance~

Join us for our spring show, Working to Transcend, which celebrates women composing against the current. We are honored to have local professional musicians performing Rebecca Clarke’s “Sonata for Viola and Piano” (1919), choreographed by Madeleine Bonn and Mikayla Archambeau, and Florence Price’s “Piano Quintet in A-minor” (1936), choregraphed by Mikayla Archambeau.

the dances

Both pieces in our upcoming performance began with the music—each step of choreography unfolded in direct response to the sound. Together, they explore themes of creativity and what it means to live as an artist throughout one’s life.

In the piano quintet, the entire school takes the stage—from our youngest dancers just beginning their journey to those with rich and varied experience in ballet. The goal of the piece was to offer every dancer meaningful movement to engage with and to create a shared vocabulary that resonates across all levels.

We look forward to sharing this work with you. It’s a celebration of music, movement, and the creative spark that connects us all.

the choreographers

Mikayla Archambeau brings both vitality and depth to her work as a dancer and teacher, shaped by years of rigorous, immersive training and guided by a belief that ballet is for every body. She challenges students to surpass their perceived limits, blending precise technical knowledge with compassion and a deep reverence for the art form—an approach rooted in her commitment to accessibility, equity, and joy in dance education. Before performing Giselle and The Nutcracker with the corps of the Kansas City Ballet, Mikayla trained for six formative years at the Kansas City School of Ballet under Alecia Good-Boresow, Paula Weber, and Peter Pawlyshyn. She continued her development through summer intensives at Alonzo King LINES Ballet in San Francisco, studying with Meredith Webster, Carmen Rosenstraten, and Alonzo King, and earlier at the Washington School of Ballet with Kee Juan Han and Kristy Windom.

Madeleine Bonn began her classical ballet training at the age of 2 at the Royal Academy of Dance in California, and continued at the San Francisco Ballet on full-scholarship, where she was a recipient of the Rosalie Helman Merit Award for outstanding achievement. Her background includes the Vaganova method, Balanchine technique, Bournonville, Spanish/Russian character dance, modern, contemporary, and neo-classical. She was a principal dancer with José Mateo Ballet Theatre in Cambridge, MA, for 14 years and has also performed abroad in Romania and Mongolia. Bonn holds a teaching certification from American Ballet Theatre National Training Curriculum, and received an award from the Amherst Cultural District for her choreography in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a teacher, Bonn focuses on fostering confidence and self-esteem in her students, encouraging them to find their own voices through experimentation, music appreciation, phrasing, classical technique, and artistic expression.

the music

Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) was something of a maverick 100 years ago: a working female musician. Initially, she released her compositions under a male pseudonym to give them a better chance at reception during a time when women musicians were frowned upon.

At the beginning of her score to the sonata for viola and piano, she inscribed the words of Alfred de Musset (“La Nuit de Mai”): Poet, take your lute, the wine of youth ferments this night in the veins of God. This epigraph paraphrases the torrid drama of the piece. It is emotional, passionate, and turbulent throughout; one wonders at what the composer must have been feeling when she wrote it.

Florence Price (1887-1953) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to the only Black dentist in town. She graduated from the New England Conservatory in Boston, studying piano and organ. Price could not find work in Little Rock due to segregation, so moved to Chicago with her husband and two daughters in 1927.

In 1932 when her Symphony in e minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, it the first performance by a major symphony orchestra of a piece by a Black composer. Price’s piano quintet is an example of a gifted composer at the height of her powers.

the musicians

Robyn Quinnett, violin
Hillary Dumond, violin
Geoffrey Archambeau, viola
Ignacy Gaydamovich, cello
Corbin Beisner, piano

Suggested Donation - $20

Payment forms accepted at the door: Venmo, PayPal, Cash, Check