Lyrical Dances
Ballade
1965
(15 minutes)
2 men, 2 women
Music: Alexander Scriabin
"Ballade plays the age old game of youth and its discoveries, with a touching grace and understanding straight out of their own youngness."
Ann Barzel ~ Dance News
Anna Sokolow's Players' Project, NYC
Photo: David Fullard
Four Songs
1995
(10:20 minutes)
large group of women
Nocturn (4:20)
Music: Paul Ben-Haim
Polka (1:15)
Music: Marc Lavry
Love Song (2:45)
Music: Ladino Traditional
The Land of Laltadam (2:00)
Music: Naome Shem
"Essentially a muted ritual for four (or more) women, girlish yet age-old."
Jennifer Dunning ~ New York Times
Anna Sokolow's Players' Project, NYC
Photo: Sally Cohn
Lyric Suite
1953
(30 minutes)
large group work
Music: Alban Berg
* Music rights required
"It is one of the finest examples of lyric theater dance seen in many a season...it speaks in abstract and stark simplicity, translating the qualitative moods of the music into penetrating and evocative movement designs. Superbly choreographed and thoroughly integrated, its beauty has a direct appeal to kinesthetic response."
Louis Horst ~ Dance Observer
Repertory Dance Theater, UT
Photo: Scott Peterson
Preludes
1980
(5:30 minutes)
female solo or 2 female solos
Music: Sergei Rachmaninoff
Section 1 (3:30)
Section 2 (2:00)
These joyous solos express the emotional range of two selected Rachmaninoff preludes. The first solo introduces a theme of Sokolow's distinctive dramatic intensity. It is followed by a contrasting dance filled with light, lively variations.
Sokolow Now!, MA
Photo: Paul Bloomfield
Quartertones
1974
(10:35 mintues)
female solo or 3 female solos
Music: Charles Ives
* Music rights required.
Section 1 (3:45)
Section 2 (2:50)
Section 3 (4:00)
"This solo seemed at first to recall Martha Graham's solo works, but with its quick-snap tempo changes and sultryhip-slides to the tangy, disorienting soundscape of a Charles Ives work for quartertone-tuned piano, this piece developed its own distinctive personality."
Miriam Seidel ~ The Inquirer
Dancefusion, PA
Photo: Suellen Haag
Scenes From The Music Of Charles Ives
1971
(20 minutes)
large group piece
Music: Charles Ives
* Music rights required.
Halloween (2:15) large group
Central Park in the Dark (6:50) large group
The Pond and the Cage (5:55) male solo
The Unanswered Question (5:30) large group
"Take the Charles Ives piece, full of gestural images used as steps, loaded with dance metaphors carrying the kinetic weight dance movement. Sokolow's concentration on individual expression is shown perfectly herein a pin-pointed male solo of anguish."
Clive Barnes ~ New York Post
Anna Sokolow's Players' Project, NYC
Photo: David Fullard
September Sonnet
1995
(17 minutes)
male/female duet
Section 1 (5:44) duet
Music: Avro Part
Section 2 (3:52) male solo
Music: Sergei Rachmaninoff
Section 3 (4:11) female solo
Music: Francis Poulenc
Coda (3:09) duet
Music: Robert Schumann
"It was a love duet - though not an ordinary one. Ms. Sokolow avoided choreographically rhyming moon with June or idealizing dewy-eyed youth."
Jack Anderson ~ New York Times
"...pedestrian gestures of reaching and touching evoke powerful feelings of emotional bonding."
Lisa Jo Sagolla, Backstage
Anna Sokolow's Players' Project, NYC
Photo: Ron Williams
Song
1975
(8 minutes)
female solo
Music: Gustav Mahler
Set to the adagio section of Mahler's 5th Symphony, this tour-de force is a delicate, romantic journey that mirrors the cycles of the earth.
Sokolow Now!, MA
Photo: Tom Bowling