Ballets with a Twist

History

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Klaus began working with composer Stephen Gaboury, presenting dances set to original music in New York City, around the United States, and in Europe. Premieres during this period included Klaus’s ballroom suite for eight women, Return to Normalcy; the quintet Silver Thaw; and The Johnny Show, a blend of honky-tonk, circus, and comic revue.

In 1996, Klaus formed Ballets with a Twist and began working with costume designer Catherine Zehr. In its inaugural year, the company appeared at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' Clark Studio Theater, the Church of the Holy Trinity, and other venues. Premieres included Seven-Minute Musical, in which an aging beauty reports from the frontlines of memory, and a short musical film, Temple of Swing, in which a glamorous “she” and her mentor meet in a world of fast cars, packed night clubs, and fortune tellers.

From 1996 to 2008, the company appeared at a variety of venues and events throughout New York City, including the Kumble Center for the Performing Arts, the Taste of Dance Festival, To the Pointe programs, and First Look at the Schermerhorn Performance Space in Brooklyn. Since 2002, the company has performed annually during the Tribeca Film Festival, premiering a new dance each year.

Cocktail Hour, Klaus's signature evening-length collection of dance vignettes, debuted at Manhattan Movement and Arts Center in November, 2009, with a total of nine cocktail-themed selections. In 2010, Ballets with a Twist presented the suite at Teatro in Piazza, an invitation-only theater in Los Angeles, California. The next year, the company was invited to Lincoln Center for a sold-out performance of Cocktail Hour at the David Rubenstein Atrium, incorporating animated graphic background projections (now standard for the show) for the first time.

In 2012, XL Nightclub and Cabaret on 42nd Street presented two summer showings of Cocktail Hour in a unique floorshow format. XL hosted the company again in September for a performance featuring music icon Cyndi Lauper and benefiting Lauper's True Colors Fund. The company joined Lauper again several months later at the Beacon Theatre, for an appearance during Home for the Holidays, Lauper's annual True Colors Fund benefit concert.

Also in 2012, Hamilton Stage, an arm of the Union County Performing Arts Center(UCPAC) in Rahway, New Jersey, welcomed Ballets with a Twist as an artistic affiliate during the theater’s inaugural season. During the company's residency, the UCPAC invited Klaus and her company to represent Hamilton Stage and the city before the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in celebration of the federal Our Town grant awarded to Rahway by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The company's 2013 fall season featured return engagements at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Hamilton Stage; debut performances at PlayhouseSquare's Ohio Theatre in Cleveland, Manhattan's Stage 48, and the Morris Museum's Bickford Theatre in Morristown, New Jersey; and appearances on Cleveland television stations WKYC and WEWS-TV.

Significant engagements in 2014 included premieres at Oregon's Craterian Theater and at Staten Island's St. George Theatre, where the company partnered with award-winning New Jersey youth gospel choir The Special Ensemble. A return to the Beacon Theatre for a guest appearance during Cyndi Lauper's fourth annual Home for the Holidays benefit concert brought the year to a close. 2015 saw additional company firsts: a Texas debut at El Paso's Plaza Theatre, featuring young dancers from Mexico; a lecture/performance presentation on costume design at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology; a Vermont premiere at the Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center in Stowe; and a holiday engagement presented by the Chenango Arts Council in Norwich, New York.

In 2016, Ballets with a Twist completed a university residency with the Department of Theater Arts at Ohio Northern University. Following a week of master classes and choreography workshops, several students were invited to join the company on stage during performances at the Freed Center for the Performing Arts. In the spring, Pennsylvania's Bucks County Playhouse programmed ballet for the first time with a weekend run of Cocktail Hour. Several months later, Brooklyn Ballet invited the company to participate in First Look, a curated program of new choreography, held at the Actors Fund Center. Closing out the year were a performance of Cocktail Hour at Westchester Community College; another Beacon Theatre guest appearance at Lauper’s Home for the Holidays; and, in celebration of the season, a set of site-specific showings at Saks Fifth Avenue Downtown.

January 2017 brought Ballets with a Twist to Florida for the first time with an engagement at The Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center, in The Villages.

As of 2017, the number of Cocktail Hour vignettes had reached 25. To date, the cocktail menu includes (in order of creation)

Dancers

Ballets with a Twist maintains a consistent roster of 12 to 14 dancers. In addition, young apprentices frequently join the professionals on stage. When on tour, the company often hosts workshop auditions for local children, some of whom have the opportunity to rehearse and perform with the ensemble.

Collaborations

Artistic partnerships with professional and aspiring musicians are a regular feature of Ballets with a Twist's regional and national outreach efforts. The company's in-house band, the B-Twist Orchestra, first joined the dancers in performance during Cyndi Lauper's Home for the Holidays concert at the Beacon Theater in 2012. Subsequent productions of Cocktail Hour have included appearances by the Rahway High School Marching Band, East Cleveland's Mighty Shaw High School Marching Cardinal Band, Newark Symphony Hall's Special Ensemble, and professional solo artists throughout the country.