For Immediate Release: October 7, 2008 Elaine Mariner, elaine.mariner@state.co.us, 303-892-3870 Colorado Ballet Receives 2009 Colorado Masterpieces Award Grant will fund a dance tour that celebrates Colorado’s unique cultural legacy

DENVER (October 7, 2008) The Colorado Ballet has won the 2009 Colorado Masterpieces award to develop and implement a dance tour that will acquaint Coloradoans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy.

The $55,000 award to the Colorado Ballet will support a 5-city tour featuring Agnes de Mille’s ballet classic Rodeo and a selection from Great Galloping Gottschalk by Tony-nominated Colorado native Lynne Taylor-Corbett. The tour will also Ave Maria and an excerpt from Don Quixote. The grant review committee was particularly impressed with the Ballet’s education outreach plans and the enthusiasm evident from the proposed tour communities. The tour will launch next fall with a performance at the Newman Center on the campus of the University of Denver. Tour stops will include Greeley, Sterling, Pueblo, and Colorado Springs.

The Colorado Masterpieces program annually funds a single statewide tour of an exhibit or performance event that is artistically, historically and culturally significant and in some way highlights and celebrates the extraordinary and rich evolution of an art form as it relates to Colorado.

This marks the third year of the Colorado Masterpieces program, which is funded by the NEA through their American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius initiative. The Colorado Masterpieces recipient for 2007 was Foothills Art Center for a Colorado landscape painting exhibit which traveled to Durango, Golden, Canon City, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs and Denver. The Colorado Symphony was the 2008 recipient for a western-themed concert tour to Montrose, Gunnison, Telluride, Glenwood Springs and Denver.

The mission of the Colorado Council on the Arts is to promote the cultural, educational and economic growth of Colorado through development of its arts and cultural heritage. Funding is provided through an annual appropriation from the state’s Gaming Fund and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

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