Sarasota Ballet opens season with Tuckett’s ‘Secret Garden’

For the second time in four seasons, the Sarasota Ballet is opening its season with Will Tuckett’s “The Secret Garden.”

Tuckett, the famed British choreographer, created the work for the Sarasota Ballet just before the 2014 season.

It’s scheduled for five performances beginning Friday at the FSU Center for Performing Arts.

The ballet is, of course, an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1910 tale of a sickly and neglected girl who is sent to live with her uncle in the English countryside. She soon discovers a secret garden and a young boy who has been locked in a room of the house. Through playing in the garden, she quickly recovers her health. The boy who had been locked away soon begins to thrive, too.

The story seems at first, Tuckett said, to be the kind of ominous “big, dark house” story that has been popular since the Victorian area. But unlike such tales, it leads to a happy and inspirational ending. Besides the two children healing through the magic of the garden, the girl’s selfish and bitterly divided family comes together in the end.

It’s one of two family-friendly programs on the 2017-18 Sarasota Ballet season. “John Ringling’s Nutcracker” is scheduled for mid-December.

Details: Oct. 27-29, FSU Center for Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Show times: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets: $30-$115. Information: 941-349-0099 ext. 101; sarasotaballet.org.

This story was originally published October 25, 2017 at 4:21 PM with the headline "Sarasota Ballet opens season with Tuckett’s ‘Secret Garden’."