An Artistic Evolution, in Fragments

Choreography wasn’t on Lia Cirio’s radar when artistic director Mikko Nissinen asked her to participate in Boston Ballet’s ChoreograpHER initiative in 2018. The principal dancer had always thought, “Oh, that's not something for me. I just like being in the room and helping people and being choreographed on.” But her good friend and colleague at the time, Kathleen Breen Combes, gave her a nudge.

Lia Cirio brings her work, “Chaptered in Fragments” to the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival. Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor

“She encouraged me to try to make a five-minute piece,” said Cirio. The dance quickly turned into a ten-minute piece. “It pushed me. I felt like I was expressing myself in a totally different way. Of course, dancing is always my favorite thing to do, but choreographing is just a whole other way to use my voice and what I've learned and who I am. I can tell a story and impart knowledge.”

Now, choreographer is simply another standout role in her celebrated career, spanning over two decades with Boston Ballet. Her ballet “After,” will return to Boston Ballet’s repertoire this coming spring after a premiere last season. And Cirio Collective, an artist collaborative she began with her brother Jeffrey Cirio in the summer 2015, returned to Martha’s Vineyard this summer for another creative residency.

In a week, she will return, for the third year in a row, to the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival. Now in its 13th season, the festival brings a mix of classical and contemporary repertoire, including commissions, to the west and north shore of Lake Tahoe in California and Incline Village in Nevada, from July 22nd -25th. The festival is the realized dream of two close friends, Christin Hanna and Constantine Baecher. Each year they bring an impressive roster of artists to perform lakeside on an outdoor stage, and this year is no exception: Cirio and Paul Craig (also of Boston Ballet) will be joined by Taylor Stanley, Indiana Woodward, Daniel Ulbricht, Stephen Hanna, Melody Mennite Walsh, Dwayne Brown, and Amber Neff. This year will also feature a collaboration on July 26th with the musicians of Classical Tahoe at the Ricardi Pavilion at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.

Cirio will be dancing in her own choreography, adding a new chapter on to her 2022 work, “Chaptered in Fragments,” in addition to performing an excerpt from Yury Yanowsky's “Lady of the Camellias” in the Classical Tahoe evening.

I caught up with her in early July by phone inbetween her summer engagements to talk about her process, revisiting an earlier work, and how her foray into choreography has influenced her dancing.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Lia Cirio leads rehearsal at Boston Ballet. Photograph by Angela Sterling

Once you started choreographing, how did you fit it in with the demands of your dancing schedule?

It never feels like I'm dividing my time and cramming things in when I'm dancing and choreographing. I always feel extra fulfilled; they seem to complement each other in my in my career. I think I've grown as a dancer because of my choreography.

In what ways has choreographing affected your dancing?

Musicality and awareness. I think I'm even more aware of musicality, and what the choreographer I’m working with is getting at — even in classical ballets. Even dancing [George] Balanchine, there’s a curiosity about the different phrasing and I have found that I want to understand more about what he was thinking. Being in the front of the room, you can see everything that goes on in the studio, from peoples’ eye rolls to like huffing and puffing to like happiness and things like that, just the mood of the room. Now I feel like I'm aware of my actions and how I contribute to that.

I also feel like I am able to articulate to a choreographer or the person at the front of the room how I'm actually feeling. Before I would just hide it and move on.

I feel like what you're describing is a new or different kind of confidence.

Yeah, exactly, that's another thing too. There's much more confidence. I have been in front of the room and have been able to talk to the dancers about what's in my head, so then I can confidently do that vice versa.

Lia Cirio warms up at the Lake Tahoe Dance Festival. Photograph by Rosalie O'Connor

Has your process changed since that first choreographic workshop?

I came really prepared with ideas and phrases for that first workshop—which is a really great thing to do—but now I trust myself more to just be in the spur of the moment and see what inspiration the dancers give me. I come prepared with music, and I always have a story I want to tell, or a phrase, or a picture. I have all that in my head and I listen. I've listened to the music over and over again and see it in swirls, but I don't have phrases prepared. I trust myself in the studio, and I trust what will flow out of me naturally.

Does your inspiration come from the music, or do you keep a notebook with ideas?

It's both. For the last thing that I did for Boston Ballet, “After,” which premiered last fall and is also coming back this spring season, I didn't have any ideas to begin but a composer in mind. Mikko had also asked for me to make it a little bit more neoclassical. I tend to do things on pointe, but my style is more contemporary and quirky. So that was in my head going into it. And then he asked me if I wanted to use a set, basically a sculpture that had been offered to him. From the sketch of the set, I got my ideas. It’s always all over the place for me, but I do keep a catalog of ideas, mostly music. And then whenever I can, I buy poetry books or if I see a painting, I take a picture. I'm looking for inspiration everywhere.

For this year’s Lake Tahoe Dance Festival, you're adding on to a piece that you already created.

Yes, “Chaptered in Fragments.” It was created through the pandemic, when we were in pods, and it was the first thing we started working on. It premiered in 2022, and it evolved into the next season as some people moved on from dance after the pandemic and then someone got injured. I had to put the second cast in for my first cast. That's kind of the premise of “Chaptered in Fragments”: the different chapters of our lives and the decisions we've made, and how, not only I changed from the pandemic, but the dancers also changed and evolved.

Lia Cirio in “Chaptered in Fragments.” Photograph by Brooke Trisolini

What is the music?

Another fragmented part of it was that I used four different composers, which my which my director did not love. But somehow it worked out really well. But for Lake Tahoe, I decided to use the same [George Frideric] Handel in G minor, a solo piano minuet, for the new fragment that comes just before the music I use for the pas de deux.

So this new chapter is a duet for you and your fiancée, Paul Craig?

Yes, we’re doing the duet that ends the ballet, so the chapter I'm adding is a prequel.

Is the new fragment autobiographical?

When Christin asked me to add on, I was kind of reluctant because I felt like I closed that chapter. But as I was thinking about it, I started thinking about these great choreographers I've worked with—like Bill Forsythe, Jorma Elo—how they always look back on their work and they add things, or they subtract, or they say, “let's go back to this, and let's set this differently.” And so I thought, why not? I can do that too. Let me try this. With these performances in Tahoe, I'm dancing with Paul, and I think that maybe I'll use that as something, as some sort of inspiration. I've always looked at these two characters as different from myself. I'm not part of this story, but it's always nice to dive in and be someone else.

Candice Thompson

Candice Thompson has been working in and around live art for over two decades. She was a dancer with Milwaukee Ballet before moving into costume design, movement education and direction, editing and arts writing. She attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduated from St. Mary’s College LEAP Program, and later received an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. From 2010-2021 she was editorial director of DIYdancer, a project-based media company she co-founded. Her writing on dance can be found in publications like Andscape, ALL ARTS, ArtsATL, The Brooklyn Rail, Dance Magazine, and The New York Times.

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