Roses For The Last Dance

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.

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Johann Sebastian Bach, (born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Thuringia, Ernestine Saxon Duchies—died July 28, 1750, Leipzig), German composer. Born to a musical family, he became a superbly well-rounded musician; from 1700 he held positions as singer, violinist, and organist. His first major appointment, in 1708, was as organist at the ducal court at Weimar. This was followed by a six-year stay (1717–23) as kapellmeister at the princely court of Köthen, which was in turn followed by his appointment as cantor at the great church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, where he would remain for the rest of his life. Imbued with the northern German contrapuntal style (see counterpoint) from early childhood, he encountered the lively Italian style, especially in the works of Antonio Vivaldi, about 1710, and much of his music embodies an immensely convincing melding of the two styles. At St. Thomas he wrote more than 200 church cantatas. His orchestral works include the six Brandenburg Concertos, four orchestral suites, and many harpsichord concertos, a genre he invented. His solo keyboard works include the great didactic set The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722 and 1742), the superb Goldberg Variations (1742), the massive but unfinished Art of the Fugue (1749), numerous suites, and many organ preludes and fugues. His surviving choral works include (in addition to the sacred cantatas) more than 30 secular cantatas, two monumental Passions, and the Mass in B Minor. His works, never widely known in his lifetime, went into near-total eclipse after his death, and only in the early 19th century were they revived, to enormous acclaim. He was perhaps the most accomplished organist and harpsichordist of his time. Today Bach is regarded as the greatest composer of the Baroque era, and, by many, as the greatest composer of all time.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Johann Sebastian Bach summary”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 29 Apr. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/summary/Johann-Sebastian-Bach. Accessed 22 May 2026.

Christoph Willibald Gluck, later Ritter (knight) von Gluck, (born July 2, 1714, Erasbach, Upper Palatinate, Bavaria—died Nov. 15, 1787, Vienna, Austria), German opera composer. Son of a forester, he ran away to study music in Prague. He traveled widely, writing operas for various cities, before settling in 1750 in Vienna, where he would remain—except for an interlude in Paris (1773–79)—the rest of his life. In 1762, with the librettist Ranieri di Calzabigi (1714–95), he wrote his famous opera Orfeo ed Euridice, in which he borrowed aspects of French opera to achieve a simplified dramatic style that decisively broke with the static and calcified Italian style. His preface to Alceste (1767) laid out the musico-dramatic principles of his “reform opera”; the goal was “simplicity, truth and naturalness.” In 1773 he moved to Paris, where his former pupil Marie-Antoinette was on the verge of becoming queen. There he won acclaim for Iphigénie en Aulide (1774), Armide (1777), and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). His other operas (numbering more than 40 in all) include Paride ed Elena (1770) and Echo et Narcisse (1779). He also wrote five ballets, of which Don Juan (1761) was one of the first successful ballets d’action.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Christoph Willibald Gluck summary”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 May. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/summary/Christoph-Willibald-Gluck. Accessed 22 May 2026.

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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.

Amy Seiwert enjoyed a nineteen-year performing career dancing with the Smuin, LA Chamber, and Sacramento Ballets.

As a dancer with Smuin Ballet, she became involved with the “Protégé Program,” where her choreography was mentored by the late Michael Smuin, and she became Choreographer in Residence there upon her retirement from dancing in 2008. Named one of “25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine, her first full evening of choreography was named one of the “Top 10” dance events of 2007 by the SF Chronicle.

Twice, she has worked with dancers from the New York City Ballet, participating in the NY Choreography Institute. Collaborations include works with visual designers Marc Morozumi and Matthew Antaky, composers Daniel Bernard Roumain and Mason Bates, media designer Frieder Weiss, and spoken-word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

She is honored to have been an Artist in Residence at ODC Theater from 2013-15 and the first National Artist in Residence with the Joyce Theater in 2017. She has worked in the repertory of Ballet Austin, BalletMet, BalletX, Smuin, Washington, Atlanta, Oakland, Sacramento, Colorado, Louisville, Cincinnati, Carolina, Oklahoma City, Dayton, Milwaukee, and American Repertory Ballets, as well as Robert Moses KIN.

From July 2018 to July 2020, Seiwert was the Artistic Director of Sacramento Ballet.

In 2023, Seiwert was appointed Associate Artistic Director of Smuin Ballet, and she will assume the role of Artistic Director at the beginning of the 2024/2025 Season.

Kitka is an American women’s vocal arts ensemble inspired by traditional songs and vocal techniques from Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Founded in 1979 as an offshoot of the Westwind International Folk Ensemble, Kitka began as a grassroots group of amateur singers from diverse ethnic and musical backgrounds who shared a passion for the stunning dissonances, asymmetric rhythms, intricate ornamentation, and resonant strength of traditional Eastern European women’s vocal music. Since its informal beginnings, the group has evolved into an award-winning professional touring ensemble known for its artistry, versatility, and mastery of the demanding techniques of regional vocal styling, as well as for its innovative explorations in new music for female voices.

With an overarching mission of cultivating local and global community through song. Kitka’s activities include an Oakland-based home series of concerts and vocal workshops, leadership of community choirs, regional, national, and international touring, programs in the schools, recording, publication, and broadcast projects, artist residencies, commissioning original works, community service, and adventuresome collaborations. Kitka’s wide-ranging performance, teaching, and recording activities have exposed millions to the haunting beauty of the ensemble’s exquisite and unusual repertoire. With deep ties to Balkan, Slavic and Caucasian lands, Kitka has performed, taught, and conducted cultural exchange activities in Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia, as well as in communities throughout the USA, Canada, and beyond.

The ensemble has produced 14 critically acclaimed recordings on the group’s independent Diaphonica label (most recently, Evening Star), songbooks, soundtracks for major motion pictures and independent films, and Kitka and Davka in Concert: Old and New World Jewish Music, a PBS television special.

An important aspect of Kitka’s work has also been the creation of multidisciplinary vocal theater works that tell stories of unconventional women in Eastern European folklore, myth, and history. Projects of note include ACT’s productions of Hecuba with Olympia Dukakis and Viola Davis, directed by Carey Perloff with original music by David Lang; Women in Black with AXIS Dance directed by Thais Mazur with original music by Katrina Wreade; Songs from Mama’s Table with Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir; Cantigas de Amigo with Ensemble Alcatraz; The Rusalka Cycle: Songs between the Worlds and Singing Through Darkness, directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang and Andre Erlen with original music by Mariana Sadovska; Meredith Monk’s Vocal Alchemy; Eric Banks’ I will remember everything: a lyric biography of Sophia Parnok; and, most recently, a critically acclaimed, sold out run of Iron Shoes, a contemporary folk opera created by Janet Kutulas (composer), Michelle Carter (playwright), and Erika Chong Shuch (director and choreographer), co-produced by Shotgun Players.

Kitka was recently honored by a coveted Hewlett50 Arts Award, with which they will commission Slovenian composer and stage director Karmina Šilec to create BABA, a new dramatic work inspired by the lives of transgender “sworn virgins” of the Balkan highlands.

A frequently occurring symbolic word in Balkan folk songs, “Kitka” means bouquet in Bulgarian and Macedonian.

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Kaori began dancing when she was 3 at the Kitamura Ballet Studio in Shiga, Japan. When she was 18 she attended Japan Grand Prix 2004 where she won the bronze prize and also received a scholarship prize to attend The Royal Ballet School in England. While at The Royal Ballet School she had an opportunity to perform Raymonda Act III, Kirk Peterson’s The Eyes That Gently Touch and Robert Hill’s Piano Concerto No.2 under Ms. Jacquelin Barrett. After she graduated from The Royal Ballet School, she joined Colorado Ballet Studio Company for two years before joining The Saint Louis Ballet. Some of her favorite performances while working with The Saint Louis Ballet include The Nutcracker (Snow Queen/ Dew Drop), Christopher d’ Amboise’s Tribute (principal role) and George Balanchine’s Valse Fantasie (principal role). Kaori joined Sacramento Ballet in 2012 and some of her favorite works are Ron Cunningham’s Carmina Burana, A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, Blackbriar, George Balanchine’s Who cares?, Rubies, Serenade, Agon pas de deux, and contemporary works by Darrell Grand Moultrie, Gabrielle Lamb, Ma Cong, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Edwaard Liang. Kaori is a founding member of Capital Dance Project and has supported it as a dancer, choreographer, and costumer. She loves designing and creating costumes and leotards, and has worked with Ron Cunningham, Rex Wheeler, David Fernandez, Texture Contemporary Ballet, Smuin Ballet, and Richmond Ballet.

Brian’s lighting for dance includes work for Kate Weare (Dark Lark, Garden, Bright Land, Lean-to, and other repertory); Larry Keigwin (Caffeinated); Charlotte Boye-Christensen (Walls), and more. A close collaborative relationship with Amy Seiwert includes The Nutcracker, Wandering (SF Bay Area “Izzie” Award), Broken Open, Under Covers, But Now I Must Rest, Dear Ms. Cline, Requiem, and Short Ride. His work has premiered at New York City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, Sacramento Ballet, The Washington Ballet, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. With the Kennedy Center and composer Mason Bates’ KC Jukebox series he has lit concerts for artists including Victor Gama, Chanticleer, and the band Thievery Corporation. His lighting spans alls genres, from theater and dance to concerts and events.

MFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts; member United Scenic Artists 829.  Brian lives in Baltimore with his wife, costume designer Sarah Cubbage.

Edith Piaf (born December 19, 1915, Paris, France—died October 10, 1963, Plascassier, near Grasse) was a French singer and actress whose passionate interpretation of the chanson, or French ballad, made her internationally famous. Among her trademark songs were “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I Don’t Regret Anything”) and “La Vie en rose” (literally “Life in Pink”). The latter song’s title is a French idiom that means through “rose-colored glasses,” or to see the world from an optimistic point of view. Together the two songs represent the indomitable spirit of a singer whose life was famously marked by heartbreak. Considered by many to be France’s greatest singer, Piaf remains revered by a global and devoted fan base decades after her death from cancer in 1963.

Britannica Editors. “Edith Piaf”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Apr. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edith-Piaf. Accessed 22 May 2026.

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

Erin Earle Fleming is an accomplished lighting designer whose work spans dance, opera, and theatre stages around the world. A proud member of USA 829, she has collaborated with renowned choreographers and directors on productions from Bruce Wood Dance in Dallas to the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia, and from Houston’s Hobby Center to La Mama in New York.

Her portfolio includes lighting designs for Loves Gentle Spring, POE / A Tale of Madness, Bubblegum (Ballet Austin); Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker (Ballet Lubbock); Florencia en el Amazonas (Opera de Tenerife); Star Crossed, Violin Concerto in D (Texas Ballet Theatre); GHOST, Slip Zone (Bruce Wood Dance). In addition to her professional design work, Erin has shared her expertise as an educator, serving as adjunct faculty and guest lecturer at institutions including Mississippi State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and her alma mater, St. Edward’s University.

Holding an MFA in Design from Yale University’s School of Drama, Erin brings a thoughtful blend of artistry, technical precision, and storytelling to every project she undertakes.