Tulsa Ballet arrives at the Joyce Theater in less than two weeks. Tulsa, as in Oklahoma. As in the defunct Roughnecks and other necks. They’re coming to Chelsea. And they just might be the hottest ticket of the late summer. Tulsa, Oklahoma is about 75% white, overwhelmingly Republican, and is getting a new baseball stadium for its minor league Tulsa Drillers (their star pitcher, Jhoulys Chacin, just got called up by the Colorado Rockies for the bullpen). The mayor recently inaugurated a Mentoring to the Max with Music program where local musicians volunteer to mentor 4th and 5th graders in local schools. And Paul McCartney will be in town next month for a concert. While that may not be exactly what it takes to make Tulsa your next vacation destination, the city is not the butt of fly-over jokes it used to be. And it has a darned good ballet company. Tulsa Ballet’s dancers hail from China, Sweden, Spain, Venezuela, South Africa, Jamaica, Korea, Brazil, Italy, Russia, Netherlands, Japan, Hungary, and the U.S. (CA, NY, MN, NC). That’s New York-style diversity. The company has an extensive repertory of choreography by Nacho Duarto, Lila York, Stanton Welch, Paul Taylor, Christopher Wheeldon, Ben Stevenson, Roman Jasinski, MacMillan, Balanchine, Petipa, Robbins, Tudor, Perrot, Jooss, de Mille and many others. Again, that’s New York-style diversity. The program at the Joyce includes Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, Nacho Duarto’s Por Vos Muero, and Young Soon Hue’s This Is Your Life. Program diversity – New York-style. Tulsa Ballet has a spiffy website and sports a logo which in some ways resembles a newish moon – Day 2 of the lunar cycle, to be precise. Astrologers say that new moons are a good time to dream. But the logo also resembles a solar eclipse – and those have been said to throw electrical disruptions, disorient bees, and make water undrinkable. Which ever moon they bring to the Joyce, Haglund is going to be sitting under it – either dreaming or disoriented – or if he's lucky, both.
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