Cate Blanchett and Bolshoi to star in NYC festival

NEW YORK (AP) — Cate Blanchett, a Kabuki theater company from Japan and the full force of the mighty Bolshoi's ballet, opera, chorus and orchestra companies will be the highlights of this summer's Lincoln Center Festival.

The festival announced Wednesday that its works will include the Bolshoi Ballet's "Swan Lake," ''Don Quixote" and "Spartacus" and the Bolshoi Opera, Orchestra and Chorus performing Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Tsar's Bride."

The Bolshoi's ballet dancers will include Svetlana Zakharova, David Hallberg, Maria Alexandrova, Ekaterina Shipulina, Vladislav Lantratov, Olga Smirnova and Ekaterina Krysanova. The Bolshoi's opera singers will include Anna Aglatova, Dinara Alieva, Svetlana Shilova, Elena Manistina, Vyacheslav Pochapsky and Stanislav Trofimo.

Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert also will star the U.S. premiere of Jean Genet's play "The Maids," produced by the Sydney Theatre Company. Blanchett earned raves in 2012 at the festival in the company's production of "Uncle Vanya."

The Brussels-based danced company Rosas, founded by dancer-choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker will perform four works, and the Houston Grand Opera will stage Mieczyslaw Weinberg's "The Passenger."

The Japanese Kabuki theater company Heisei Nakamura-za will offer the classic revenge tale "Kaidan Chibusa No Enoki" or "The Ghost Tale of the Wet Nurse Tree."

Artists and ensembles from 11 countries will be represented at the festival, which runs from July 7 through Aug. 16. The shows will be held in six venues on and off the Lincoln Center campus.

Single tickets for the entire festival go on sale to donors of Lincoln Center on March 24 and the general public starting March 31.

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Online: http://LincolnCenterFestival.org