Spotlight: Christine Redpath | In The Night

Ballet West has been so lucky to have Christine Redpath with us helping our dancers with In the Night, choreographed by Jerome Robbins.  (In the Night premieres in ONE MONTH as part of Ballet West’s triple-bill The Wedding, playing from April 14-22!) As a dancer with New York City Ballet from 1969 to 1978, Redpath trained with Robbins during the time he put together the program in the 1970s.

“The finished product took a long time with him,” said Redpath. “He would have version A, B, and C, then have us do half of version A, half of version C, then tell us to go back to A. He would get very frustrated with himself in the process because he was a perfectionist.”

Redpath later became Robbins’ Ballet Master and Repertory Director in 1985 and continues to carry on his legacy after his death in 1998.  

“I learned so much directly from him, and now that he’s gone, it’s an important part of the process to pass it forward to the different generations of dancers,” she said. “It’s exciting, because he always wanted the truth from each individual to come forward, and that’s the most fun part of the process.”

“Once you lay the groundwork of the steps in the right timing and things like that, it’s so wonderful to peel away the layers to get the dancer to feel comfortable and bring themselves to be true within that framework,” Redpath continued. “It’s like painting after you’ve sketched it; you fill in the colors in the right way, you erase, and then you deepen that color or lighten that other one.”

Redpath says of her time at Ballet West last week, “The dancers are so wonderful, free, acceptive and work hard along with the pianists, who play such a beautiful piece [composed by Frédéric Chopin] for the dancers to work off of.”

Thanks for joining us, Christine!