After Eden

After Eden, a ballet suite in five pas de deux, was commissioned by the Harkness Ballet Company and premiered in 1966 with original choreography by John Butler. Lee Hoiby’s score is a rich and dramatic depiction of the story of Adam and Eve after their expulsion from Paradise, matching Butler’s keen sense of kinetics and theatricality. In response to his study of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, John Butler wrote, ‘We all have our own Garden of Eden, and we all, I suppose, could fall from that state of grace.’ Productions of After Eden have been mounted by Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Australian Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, La Scala Ballet, Netherlands Dans Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, The Royal Ballet of Flanders and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, among many others.