Signature Series Closes Tulsa Ballet's Season

This year, Tulsa Ballet’s Signature Series (an annual program for the Oklahoma company) features three distinct works that will put an exclamation point at the end of the current season.

While You Were Gone, a hip hop piece created by Jennifer Weber in 2021, will return to Tulsa, this time will a full audience at the Lorton Performance Center.

“I am thrilled to have Jennifer Weber work with our company again. The entire connection with her was made almost by mistake, or by faith, during the COVID pandemic. Daniela and I were invited to a virtual birthday party for one of our dearest American friends, and his uncle and aunt kept sharing stories about their daughter, Jenn the choreographer. Just to be polite I asked for a couple of videos of her work… Well, Jenn was THE Jennifer Weber, winner of an Oliver Award for her choreography of & Juliet, which is now playing on Broadway, choreographer of Disney’s Zombies 2 and choreographer of the Hip Hop Nutcracker that has been filmed and broadcast nationwide! She created While You Were Gone to close our 2021 Season. However, given the strict capacity rules of the time, her work was performed in front of 350 audience members. I am thrilled to share this piece with our full audiences this time around!”

Marcello Angelini

Artistic Director of Tulsa Ballet

Also making a reprise appearance by Tulsa Ballet is Alexander Ekman’s comedic Cacti. Regarding its return, Angelini comments:

“Cacti by Alexander Ekman is one of the most innovative, groundbreaking, creative, off-the-wall funny and overall entertaining works created during the last 15 years. Alexander’s works grace the repertory of more than 50 companies worldwide, including the most prestigious ballet companies in the world. I am happy to share this work again with our audiences, six years after its original Oklahoma premiere.”

Closing the program is a world premiere work by Polish choreographer Katarzyna Kozielska who created an original work for Tulsa Ballet before, with 2021’s Ode.

“Katarzyna Kozielska is, in my opinion, one of young choreographers of her generation with a definite voice, a vocabulary to express that voice and the sensitivity to steer emotions into an audience’s soul. I followed her career for years, hearing about this young Polish dancer who was creating works for Stuttgart Ballet, the company where she spent most of her dancing career.

The more I saw the more I realized she had it all! She has the versatility to create works that span from the pure physical to the pure emotional, and the choreographic articulation to make both captivating to watch.” – Marcello Angelini