Kansas City Ballet: Pulse

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

Movement and music collide when Kansas City Ballet brings three choreographers together in a program designed around rhythm, energy and discovery. At the Muriel Kauffman Theatre, dancers have live musical partners in Kansas City Symphony musicians through a triple bill that mixes modernist landmarks with brand-new work.

Jerome Robbins's Glass Pieces channels Philip Glass's pulsing minimalism into patterns of motion that build and shift with the score's relentless drive. It's ballet shaped by repetition and transformation, where the choreography answers the music's hypnotic loops with geometric clarity and urban momentum.

George Balanchine's The Four Temperaments draws on Paul Hindemith's commissioned music to trace human moods through abstract movement—melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric—each temperament unfolding as a distinct study in line and form. The piece strips away narrative to let the partnership between sound and body speak directly.

Rounding out the program is a world-premiere work by Melissa Hough, offering Kansas City audiences the chance to witness new choreography alongside these established masterworks. Hough's contribution adds an element of surprise to an evening already stacked with contrasting voices and musical textures.

Get tickets for Pulse at Muriel Kauffman Theatre and enjoy three distinctive choreographic voices with Kansas City Symphony’s live orchestral playing.