NJ Ballet Opens 2010-11 Morristown Series at Community Theatre

New Jersey Ballet explores the variety of love – human and otherworldly – at 8 p.m. Saturday,  Nov. 20 at The Community Theatre at Mayo Center for the Performing Arts, Morristown. The evening is NJB's first performance of its 2010-2011 Morristown series. The program will consist of two premieres and two revivals.

The first premiere, Bettijane Sills's Masquerade, presents a lighthearted look at mistaken identity at a masked ball. It's boy meets girl, boy loses girl (but doesn't know it) as fourteen masked dancers glide and turn to Katchachurian's Serenade Suite. In the end, dancers unmask, discover the joke, and return to their original partners once more.

The second premiere, The Raven, is a dramatic interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's poem about love, loss and a midnight visit by a strange bird that sends a young man spiraling into madness.

The score, used with permission by Academy Award winner Elliot Goldenthal, intensifies the spooky atmosphere.

Also on the program, Act II of Giselle, the 1844 classic in which a pure, steadfast love stronger than death redeems a faithless suitor. And Robert North's powerful Death & the Maiden, in which a young woman lives out an agonizing love-hate relationship with Death to Schubert's achingly beautiful string quartet No.14.

Tickets are $42, $32, $22. To order, call the theater at 973-539-8008 or go online www.mayoarts.org.