Children’s Matinee: Ballet Hispánico

ADF's Children's Saturday Matinee series presents performances by professional dance companies specially curated to ignite and inspire the imaginations of children. Each one-hour performance is followed by a FREE Kids' Party, complete with live music and activities.

Ballet Hispánico will close the series with a stellar line-up of work. In the ADF-commissioned Papagayos, Omar Roman De Jesús allows us to enter the upsidedown forest, where paradise comes ready laden with wings, and psychedelic stories write themselves out of order. A three-second love ritual between two birds transforms into a movement poem celebrating the pleasure of human physicality. We can be both as we want and as we are here where the colors cry out at their maximum volume. Sometimes all we want to be is part of someone else. In her new work Sor Juana, Michelle Manzanales takes on the powerful Mexican visionary Sor Juana, who was a 17th-century nun, self-taught scholar, and acclaimed writer of the Latin American colonial period and the Hispanic Baroque. 18+1celebrates Gustavo Ramírez Sansano’s 19 years as a choreographer and the vulnerability, care, and hope that comes with each artistic endeavor. In a display of subtle humor and electric choreography, the movement merges with the playful rhythms found in Pérez Prado’s mambo music. Sansano draws from his history and memory to take a joyous look at the past, present, and coming future. The show will also include William Forsythe’s New Sleep which first premiered in 1987 by the San Francisco Ballet.

Tickets go on sale on April 25, 2023.

Photo Credit: Paula Lobo