The Magic Flute

Tony Tucci, former resident lighting designer for Ballet Austin, has created lighting design for the company’s repertory for over 34 years, lighting designer/director for Ben Stevenson’s Texas Ballet Theater and Bruce Wood Dance. Recently designed Flemming Flindt’s Phaedra Ballet for the Mariinsky Theatre in Vladivostok Russia. Tucci created the lighting designs for Bernstein’s Mass at the Long Center in June 2018. In September 2018, Tucci designed a new production of Cinderella, choreographed by Ben Stevenson for the National Ballet of China. Tucci and has created designs for national and international dance companies: Washington Ballet, Houston Dance Salad, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Colorado Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Ballet West, Cirque Ziva-Golden Dragon Acrobats, Royal Danish Ballet, Winnipeg and Swedish Ballets, Hong Kong Ballet, Singapore Dance Theatre, Ballet Contemporaneo de Caracas, Christopher Bruce’s Kingdom- Geneva Ballet, Flemming Flindt’s Caroline Mathilde and Lucifer’s Daughter-Royal Danish Ballet. Tucci has designed for musical theater, including Austin productions of Damn Yankees, Carousel, West Side Story, Annie, Gypsy, Jesus Christ Superstar, Music Man, Oklahoma, A Chorus Line, Carousel and Sound of Music as well as Charles Duggan’s productions of Dames at Sea in San Francisco and at the Goodspeed Opera House. For 1996 Summer Olympics, Tucci designed for the Cultural Olympiad, showcasing national and international companies. He is the recipient of two Iden Payne Awards and Critics Table awards for lighting in Austin.

Caryl Kientz is a writer, performer, theater practitioner, and visual artist living in Oakland Calif. Her practice includes performance, installations, puppetry, art direction and props for film. A focus on illusory environments. integrating art and performance into daily routines has led her to experiment extensively and collaborate with a diverse number of groups. She has been working primarily with Shadowlight Productions in San
Francisco since 2008 on multiple productions as ensemble member, assistant director, shadow designer, shadow a theater consultant and tour manager. Her show credits are Ghosts of the River, The Good For Nothing Lover, The Magic Flute (Ballet Austin). Jana & Baladoor (dir. Bahram Beyzaie). Poro Oyna, Poison Fish and Science Fiction Project Installment 1+2 (dir. Ellen Sebastian Chang) shadow scenes for the documentary film Finding Kukan (dir. Robin Lung), The Pigeoning (dir. Robin Frohardt), and Feathers of Fire (dir. Hamid Rahmanian). She is theatrical director for the Facing West Shadow Opera in California.

Larry Reed is the founding artistic director of Shadowlight Productions and is a trailblazer in the contemporary shadow theatre field. He is one of the first Westerners to have trained in the traditional Balinese shadow theatre (wayang kulit) and is a “dalang,” or “shadow master.” Over the years, he has performed over 250 shows in this tradition around the world. In the early 1990s, Reed entered a new phase of his career by inventing an ingenious shadow casting method, integrating traditional shadow theater techniques with film, modern theatre and dance styles. His major works include In Xanadu, The Wild Party, Coyote’s Journey, A (Balinese) Tempest, Monkey King at Spider Cave, Ghosts of the River, The Good-for-Nothing Lover and Poro Oyna: The Myth of The Aynu. His work with Caryl Kientz on The Magic Flute received “Sorcery By Silhouette Award” from Austin Critics’ Table Award 2011-12.

Composer Donald Grantham is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in composition, including the Prix Lili Boulanger, the Nissim/ASCAP Orchestral Composition Prize, First Prize in the Concordia Chamber Symphony’s Awards to American Composers, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, three First Prizes in the NBA/William Revelli Competition, two First Prizes in the ABA/Ostwald Competition, and First Prize in the National Opera Association’s Biennial Composition Competition. His music has been praised for its “elegance, sensitivity, lucidity of thought, clarity of expression and fine lyricism” in a Citation awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In recent years his works have been performed by the orchestras of Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta and the American Composers Orchestra among many others, and he has fulfilled commissions in media from solo instruments to opera.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born in Salzburg in 1756, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. He displayed prodigious musical talent from a young age, composing his first piece at five and performing for European royalty by six. Despite his short life, Mozart composed over 800 works, including operas, symphonies, concertos, and chamber music, many of which are considered masterpieces. He is regarded as one of the greatest composers in Western music. 

Known for his innovative and collaborative choreographic projects, Stephen Mills has created over 60 premieres for Ballet Austin and has works in the repertoires of companies across the United States and around the world.

His inaugural season as artistic director in 2000 attracted national attention with his world-premiere production of Hamlet, hailed by Dance Magazine as “… sleek and sophisticated.” The Washington Post recognized Ballet Austin as “one of the nation’s best kept ballet secrets” in 2004 after Mills’ world premiere of The Taming of the Shrew, commissioned by and performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The Company’s first Kennedy Center invitation in January of 2002 was to perform Mills’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Ballet Austin presented a variety of Mills’ works at The Joyce Theater (NYC) in 2005 and returned to the Kennedy Center in collaboration with The Suzanne Farrell Ballet in 2008 and for the Ballet Across America Festival in 2013.

In 2005 after two years of extensive research, Mills led a communitywide human rights collaboration that culminated in the world premiere work Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project (Light). In 2006 Light was awarded the Audrey & Raymond Maislin Humanitarian Award by the Anti-Defamation League. The work made its international debut in September 2013, with performances in three cities across Israel and is the subject of the award-winning documentary film, FINDING LIGHT. In October 2016, Mills led the company through a 16-city tour of the People’s Republic of China, concluding in China’s largest city, Shanghai.

READ MORE…

Michael B. Raiford is a Production Designer from Austin, Texas. For Ballet Austin: POE/A Tale Of Madness, Magic Flute, Mozart Project, Exit Wounds. Additional Ballet: Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, Colorado Ballet. Upcoming: Oklahoma City And Nevada Ballet. His Designs for Septime Weber’s “Wizard of Oz” Ballet were honored by the “Benois de la Danse” at the Bolshoi Ballet. “Oz” will be soon be seen at the Hong Kong Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet and Pittsburgh Ballet. In Austin: ZACH Theatre, Rude Mechanicals, Hyde Park Theatre and Zilker Summer Musical. Additional Credits: Opera Boston, Central City Opera, South Coast Repertory Theatre, The Alliance Theatre ( Atlanta), City Theatre (Pittsburgh), Cleveland Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, Playmakers Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, Ford’s Theatre (Washington, D.C.), New Victory Theatre (New York), Merrimack Repertory Theatre, The Lyric Theatre (Oklahoma City), Antaeus Company (LA), Shelter VG4 Theatre (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico ) and Actors Theatre of Louisville: 20 productions, twelve world premieres for the Humana Festival. Director of “Blast: The Music of Disney,” Tokyo. M.F.A. :The University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for 10 years. He is a Member of United Scenic Artists. Visit: michaelraiford.myportfolio.com