Legendary Choreographer Gloria Contreras left back an impressive legacy of 260 original dances.

The Peace of God to all that belong to the Light,
Dear Readers,

The Mexican dancer and choreographer Gloria Contreras, a genuine legend of the Modern Dance, died this November 25th 2015 at 81 years old.

She studied dancing under Nelsy Dambré in Mexico from 1946 to 1954, and, after joining Royal Winnipeg Ballet, visited School of American Ballet in New York from 1956 to 1964, where she was taught by Pierre Vladimirov, Felia Doubrovska, Anatole Oboukhoff, Muriel Stuart and George Balanchine. From 1958 to 1965 she was also taught by Carola Trier.

María del Carmen Gloria Contreras Röniger was the most iconic choreographers of Mexican Classic and Modern Dance, her studio competed internationally in the most prestigious events of Dance around the world for five decades.

This extremely sensitive and fine lady brought studied rigurously different dance schools but without doubt the core of her own dance language comes from the old Russian school Ballet technique in the 1950s that she refined mentored by great legends like George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky in New York.

She spent about a decade with her own company in USA before to dedide to bring a kind of poetic style that emerged originally from the Neoclassicism expressed in the steps the best of the pure Russian Classic Technique she learnt from Balanchine to Mexico and melt it with a lot of so creative ideas to give birth to an extremely original proposition in Dance.

George Balanchine was the Ballet Choreographer of the Neoclassism, Roland Petit the one of Neorealist Passion, Maurice Bejart of the herculean Energy, Mrs Gloria Contreras created Poetry in Dance, she taught the world to Dance a Ballet plenty of lyricism with Mexican spice.

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In the begining there was only movement and all the feelings, ideas, emotions of the human beings were completely communicated just with body expression and face gestures, in that sense Dance emerged as the first language that ever existed in the world. ... That was the creed of Gloria Contreras.

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Gloria left New York for Mexico City to lead there perhaps the most fruitful Dance studio of the western Hemisphere for 40 yrs. www.youtube.com...

Gloria made a remarkable work into stilize also popular dances to express them in the standards of academic dance.

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Gloria Contreras received a homage in Tijuana in 2012, on this occasion she gave this interview.

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In November of 2014 she received a national homage in Mexico city, honored with the highest recognitions that Mexico grant to any creative talent in culture and Arts.

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Hers is a titanic adventure in Culture, she fought and incredible difficult Quixotesc battle in Mexico city to be able to give birth to one of the most reputed and internationally known Dance Studios at the National University of Mexico.

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Just to give you an idea of the monstruos virtuosso creative work of Gloria Contreras notice that while Balanchine left us 150 Ballets , Bejart composed 140 and Petit 176, she composed 193 just along the years of the Choreographic studio she founded in Mexico city, to complete about 260 in all her career including her years in America.

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The Mexican Congress offered a minute of absolute silence the monday after her death in homage and respect for a woman that wrote one of the most beautiful pages of Art in the History of Mexico.

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Thanks for your attention, the thread is open to all the members that are interested in performing arts and in particular in Dance.

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

One of the most admirable and famous chreographies of Mrs Gloria Contreras was her own adaptation or reconstruction of the Spring rite.

This is interesting work is important for two different aspects:

First, because as we all know the original chreography of the Rite of the Spring became, developed by the legendary Diaghilefff ballet russes dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky became lost soon after the scandal of its premiere in Paris in 1913 and also due the unfortunate dementia of its author after 1917.

Here a documentary by Janos Darvas and a BBC film by Andy Wilson ( The Riot at the Rite) that put all this in context, the contribution of Nijinsky to such important period of the History of Dance.

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Here there is another effort to rebuild it, based on modern computer graphics technology, that as others before, are primarily based in to try to encompass the illustrations of the epoch, by Nicholas Roerich and other artists of the company, and the few pictures that have survived of the few presentations it had.

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Second, since Gloria Contreras has been one of the very few choreographers that have attempted to make again this work that met personally the composer of the Music Igor Stravinsky, and possibly the only one that was actually mentored by him.

Here a very important documentary of how Stravinsky created in Switzerland around 1912 the fabulous music of the Rite of The Spring, as a reaction against the rigid canons of the Classic orquested music of the ending of XIX.

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The official Russian version of the Rite of the Spring was developed for the centenary of this so important work as a result of tremendous effort of the professionals of the Marinsky Theater ballet company of St Petersburg

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Finally here aspects of the Rite of Spring choreography by Gloria Contreras.

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Thanks

The Angel of Lightness