A piano alone has many sounds. Our upcoming performance ranges from Adue, a ballet of slinky movements to the sharp, crystalline sounds of Salvatore Sciarrino's music, to Spring, a youthful trio to Mozart's delicate melodies. Another side is revealed in Constantine Baecher's Viduity, a quietly dramatic piece which the NY Times called "a ballet made for sinking into."

Adding a special accent, a new solo will feature both music and choreography by Miro Magloire. Tickets are on sale already - reserve your seats today!

Saturday, November 10th at 8pm &
Sunday, November 11th at 7pm (early curtain!)
New York City Center Studio 4
130 West 56th St, 4th floor (betw. 6th and 7th Ave)

Her name, she insists, is pure coincidence - but a welcome one. And pianist Melody Fader (photo) has more than lived up to it since she began performing with NCB after graduating from Juilliard three years ago.

Herself an avid dancer, Melody has a special affinity for movement. While audiences admire the artistry and virtuosity of her playing, dancers are especially fond of her innate sense for their art. "It's very interesting to me how differently dancers and musicians work. Spending time with dancers changes my attitude and way of working," Melody explains, "it's very freeing." At NCB, her repertory ranges from Scriabin's daunting Etudes (in Constantine Baecher's ballet Terzetto) to contemporary scores by David Lang (in Deborah Lohse's Night is Falling) and William Bolcom (in Ian Spencer Bell's Ghost Rags).

This past spring, Melody entered new territory by recording her fist solo CD, featuring pieces from NCB's repertory (Scriabin and Mozart) along with works by Chopin. With its irresistible mix of clarity and passion, the CD has been a popular item at our gift shop.

With the new program on November 10th and 11th devoted to ballets with solo piano music, she will be in the spotlight all night long. In addition to playing piano sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Leos Janacek, she will perform a set of pieces by Salvatore Sciarrino which embraces a radically different aesthetic - an experience she welcomed: "After sweating through the difficulty of basically learning a new language, I had a whole new world opened to me." A world that both audiences and fellow performers will be happy to follow her to.

How will I know when it's finished? The question arose this fall as I created, for the first time, a ballet for which I conceived both the steps and the music. I was most curious about the process: would it be different from the usual?

My first surprise was that time immediately became a major issue. Music and Dance are subdivisions of time - one in sounds, the other in movements. With no set score to guide me, I found myself engulfed in durations. More, less, longer, shorter - and when should the whole piece end? I alternatingly worked on the movements, in silence, and the music, at the piano.

The ballet is now half finished - I believe. I am gaining a better sense of proportion, but I miss the inspiration from an existing score. Is it worth it? I hope so, since it entails twice the work, a challenge even for a piece of modest dimensions...

With Damien Johnson on leave to perform with Los Angeles Ballet, we are thrilled to be joined by a new dancer for our upcoming performance. Kfir Danieli hails from Haifa, Israel, where he also received his training. Since moving to the US, he has danced in numerous places, including a seven year stint as a principal dancer with Alabama Ballet under Wes Chapman.

Since relocating to New York a year ago he has been performing with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. With New Chamber Ballet he will perform in Miro Magloire's Spring opposite Christin Hanna and Elizabeth Brown.

New Chamber Ballet's artists have been dancing and playing up a storm lately. Denise Small (photo) performed with Christopher Wheeldon's Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company at its inaugural season at New York's City Center last week in a performance that drew loud cheers... After recently returning from dancing with Willow Oak Contemporary Ballet in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Damien Johnson will head to California next month to perform with Los Angeles Ballet along with Lauren Toole... Melody Fader just returned from Toronto, where she played in a recital in honor of Maria Callas. Earlier this fall, she gave a mesmerizing account of Ligeti's seminal piano etudes in a performance of the Dankmeyer Dance Company... Erik Carlson will travel to Italy in November, performing with the VisionIntoArt Ensemble at the Arte Padova Festival... Artistic Director Miro Magloire spent part of the summer at director Robert Wilson's Watermill Center on Long Island, participating in the development of a staging of Gounod's opera Faust and immersing himself in the artist's striking vision... And Emily Vonne SoRelle got engaged to her boyfriend Kenyon Adams - congratulations from all of us at NCB!

At the beginning of this new season, we're asking for your money again... Why? Ticket sales cover only about 20% of the costs of each performance. We aim to keep our costs as low as possible, but there are rehearsal studio fees (a big item here in the city), performance space fees, music royalties, performer fees, printing costs, costume building and maintenance, sheet music costs, stamps, banking fees, advance ticket sale fees, PR costs...

All of these items are necessary to produce our little, bare bones performances. Instead of cutting back, we try to perform more to keep our art alive and you, our audience, happy. Not an easy task, but we can do it with your help! Please take a moment to go to our website and find out how you can support our work...