Comstock’s Magazine: A New Era in Ballet

By Sena Christian

6 May 2019

Amy Seiwert is only the fourth artistic director in the Sacramento Ballet’s 65-year history. Seiwert — who danced with the company from 1991 to 1999 — assumed the role in July 2018. Comstock’srecently spoke with Seiwert about her vision and goals for the ballet.

Your inaugural season, “Roots and Wings,” is nearing completion. What were you hoping to achieve during your first season, and did you achieve it?

Coming in after 30 years of [co-artistic directors] Ron Cunningham and Carinne Binda, it is very important for me to honor that lineage. … We did [Cunningham’s] “Incident at Blackbriar,” in our first series at The Sofia theater, “Telling Stories.” To have him back in the studio and with the dancers and to watch him coach, that was all fantastic. Honor the lineage — that’s the roots aspect. But … where else can we go? How can I subvert people’s expectations of what they’re going to see when they come to a Sacramento Ballet performance? Also in “Telling Stories,” we did the ballet “Instructions,” which is based on a Neil Gaiman poem. He’s more associated with contemporary mythology and graphic novels than ballet. In that piece, I have a dancer who is live miked. He starts as the narrator of the poem and ends up locked inside the poem and becomes the protagonist of the story. It’s also got live music — there’s a cellist onstage.

Read the full article in Comstock’s.