Kansas City Ballet: Pulse

Kansas City Ballet: Pulse at Muriel Kauffman Theatre - Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

Two titans of twentieth-century ballet meet a bold new voice when Kansas City Ballet takes the stage at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments and Jerome Robbins's Glass Pieces anchor a triple bill that places modernist mastery alongside a world-premiere work by Melissa Hough, offering both landmark choreography and fresh discovery in a single evening.

Balanchine's The Four Temperaments uses Paul Hindemith's music to explore the contrasts within human nature through movement and form. Robbins's Glass Pieces translates Philip Glass's driving rhythms into a study of motion itself, where dancers and music pulse together in relentless momentum. Both works reveal how pattern and energy can express something beyond words—temperament, rhythm, the architecture of feeling.

Hough's premiere completes the program, adding an unknown element to the established voices. For audiences who already love Balanchine or Robbins, there is another choreographic voice to discover. For those drawn to new work, the program places that curiosity beside two established names. The contrast gives a ballet date several different attractions without depending on a familiar story or characters.

The Kansas City Symphony performs the music live, bringing the scores into the same physical space as the dancers. At the Muriel Kauffman Theatre, Kansas City gets three distinct takes on how bodies and sound shape each other.

Get Pulse tickets for Balanchine, Robbins and a new Hough work.