With tickets going fast, Sarasota Ballet adds extra performance

If you tried to buy tickets for this weekend’s program from the Sarasota Ballet, you may have been disappointed. Weeks before Friday’s opening performance, four of the six originally scheduled shows had completely sold out.

But give it another try. Because of the heavy demand, the Sarasota Ballet has added a seventh performance, a Monday matinee.

Works by three of the Sarasota Ballet’s favorite choreographers — Sir Frederick Ashton, Will Tuckett and Ricardo Graziano — are on the program for the performances at the Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts. Ashton and Tuckett are regarded as two of the greatest British choreographers of the past 60 years or so. Graziano is the Sarasota Ballet’s resident choreographer.

The ballet performed Tuckett’s “Changing Light” in 2013, and people who saw it then have been asking for an encore ever since.

The Ashton work is titled “Valses nobles et sentimentales.” It’s a series of waltzes set to music by Maurice Ravel. It’s one of the pieces the Sarasota ballet performed in New York City over the summer, and it got a positive response from audiences and critics there.

Graziano’s “Before Night Falls,” is a contemporary ballet with seven sections, set to an eclectic mix of ambient electronic music by composer Ólafur Arnalds. The Sarasota Ballet last performed the piece in February 2014.

The Friday and Saturday performances are sold out, as is the Sunday matinee.

Details: Jan. 27- 30, Mertz Theatre at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday-Monday . $55-$69. 941-359-0099, SarasotaBallet.org.

This story was originally published January 25, 2017 at 5:18 PM with the headline "With tickets going fast, Sarasota Ballet adds extra performance."