Free Montgomery Philharmonic Concert:The Dance Edition

The Montgomery Philharmonic’s concert season starts with the DANCE EDITION. Each piece in this edition is selected to represent different aspects of dance. Brahms represents the folk dancing of the Hungarian diaspora, dances noted for their well-developed sense of rhythm. Each dance demonstrates folk dancing still celebrated in villages. The second set of dances originates in Panama. These four dances are based on a collection of Panamanian folk tunes collected in the 1920’s by Ethnomusicologist Elizabeth Waldo. Waldo brought these folk tunes home and turned over all of her music and notes about what she had seen in Panama to William Grant Still. The result was a transcription of these dance forms, with several of them woven together for strings. The final segment of the DANCE EDITION is Aaron Copland’s Rodeo. Copland’s magical piece was choregraphed by Agnes DeMille for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, an American outgrowth of the famous Ballet Russe in Paris. The story is about an American Rodeo, and this is the only ballet where Copland left the American folk tunes intact. DeMille danced the lead, American Cowgirl, and received 22 curtain calls for her work in the premiere.