The Sarasota Ballet Celebrates 20 Years of Iain Webb

On Oct. 23, The Sarasota Ballet opens its 20th season under director Iain Webb. Program One runs through Oct. 25 at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, and it's built as a birthday present: a company premiere of Gemma Bond's Manner, a set of Sir Frederick Ashton divertissements, and Wolfgang for Webb, the Mozart ballet Dominic Walsh made for Webb's very first season.

Webb took over in 2007 after a dancing career at the Royal Ballet and Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, and he brought Ashton with him. He knew the choreographer personally, and he made Ashton's ballets the company's calling card. Along with his wife and assistant director, Margaret Barbieri, a former Sadler's Wells principal, he has taken a regional company to the Kennedy Center, New York City Center, the Joyce Theater, and a London tour in 2024. Last season the company premiered Ashton's full-length Romeo and Juliet and secured the rights to perform it for good.

That's a big part of why Sarasota gets to call itself an arts town with a straight face. Plenty of cities our size have a ballet company. Very few have one that New York's Joyce Theater and City Center keep inviting back, dancing a body of Ashton work most American audiences only get to read about.

The anniversary season runs 16 ballets from 13 choreographers, eight of them company premieres. Watch for The Two Pigeons at the Van Wezel on Dec. 18–19. It was the first Ashton ballet Webb staged here back in 2007, and it's coming home for the 20th.

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