ABOUT THE COMPANY

With its glamorous mix of original choreography, music and costumes, New York City–based dance company Ballets with a Twist has everything you need for an intoxicating evening of entertainment.

In the company’s signature program, Cocktail Hour, critically acclaimed dance-maker Marilyn Klaus’s extravagant ballet-vaudeville style shakes it up with Grammy-nominated Stephen Gaboury’s jazz and classical Hip Hop remixes, and ultra-chic costumes by Catherine Zehr.

This irreverent suite of dances brings iconic American drinks to life—saluting the elegance of cocktail culture as Martini, Mai Tai, Gimlet and more spring off the menu and onto the stage. The show has seduced audiences new and seasoned, and no wonder: Huffington Post calls Klaus “a hip ballet romantic.” The New York Times calls her work “witty and fantastic.” You’ve never seen cocktails like these!

Recent Highlights

During 2011, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts presented Cocktail Hour, Marilyn Klaus’s full-length work paying tribute to iconic American drinks. A rock-concert atmosphere prevailed at The David Rubenstein Atrium, as a sell-out crowd cheered the company’s glamorous evocations of cocktail culture.

The company enjoyed prestigious engagements throughout New York City, including HOWL! Festival, in Tompkins Square Park; HBO Stage at Bryant Park; and Downtown Dance Festival, at Battery Park. That year, Klaus also premiered a new full-length work, Holy Water; the debut was at Tribeca Film Festival, a New York City event that has programmed the company annually since 2002. First Look, an innovative dance series at Schermerhorn Performance Space, in Brooklyn, showed the piece as well.

In 2010, an exclusive performance at Teatro in Piazza, a Los Angeles outdoor theater, treated a stylish, invitation-only audience to an evening of Klaus’s work. This included the debut of Absinthe and White Russian, companion pieces with a royal-wedding finale. A Huffington Post review described the company as “a bevy of pretty ballerinas [prancing] on pointe through dance-nuggets interpreting Martini, Mai Tai, Margarita, Manhattan, Shirley Temple, Gimlet, and more.” The event was a triumph, said the Huffington Post: “Klaus brought her retro, pop-culture-infused sensibility to a town that gets the references.” Tribeca Film Festival and First Look both programmed the company.

The year 2009 saw the debut of Cocktail Hour at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center, in New York City. Additional showings of other pieces in the company’s repertoire took place at venues including Kumble Center for the Performing Arts and Tribeca Film Festival, both in New York City.

History

The 1980s and early 1990s found Klaus forming an association with musical director and composer Stephen Gaboury and presenting dances to acclaim in New York City, around the United States, and in Europe. Dance Magazine called her work “wonderfully convoluted madcap pieces…operating on a dozen different levels at once.” The New York Times said, “Arms slither one moment and jab at the air the next…feet bouncing like popping corn,” while Mainzer Rhein-Zeitung raved, “Auch die Ballerina tanzt Rock’n’Roll!”

The numerous premieres during this period included Klaus’s signature ballroom-dance suite for eight women, Return to Normalcy; the quintet Silver Thaw, about longing tempered by hope; and The Johnny Show, a blend of honky-tonk, circus, and comic revue—all still part of the company’s repertory.

In 1996, Klaus formed her company, Ballets with a Twist, and began working with costume designer Catherine Zehr. In succeeding years, the group was in demand, showing work at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Clark Theatre, New Choreographers on Pointe, and many other venues and festivals. Among Klaus’s premieres were the original fairy tale, An Awfully Big Adventure Act I; Seven Minute Musical, in which an aging beauty reports from the frontlines of memory; and a short musical film, Temple of Swing, in which a glamorous “she” and her charismatic mentor meet in a world of fast cars, packed night clubs, and mysterious fortune tellers.