The world premiere of State Street Ballet’s Rite of Spring is the centerpiece of a contemporary program to be presented by the company at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18 at the Granada Theatre. Dancers also will perform Five by Gershwin and (con)version.

Set to the score of the same name by Igor Stravinsky, Rite of Spring is choreographed by Edgar Zendejas, whose Common Ground collaboration with State Street Ballet, Eisenhower Dance, and Santa Barbara Dance Theater premiered to a sold-out house last year.

For this season’s production, Zendejas has teamed with designer Michael Slack, who will create the sets and costumes for Rite of Spring. Slack and Zendejas collaborations have included two pieces for the National Circus School of Montreal — MEANDRE in 2014 and COLIBRI in 2016 — and audiences can expect a similar avant-garde look and feel in this new work.

Zendejas, known for his emotional and innovatively abstract style, describes Rite of Spring as “a point of reflection where we release to the ecstatic dance between body and spirit, earth and the unknown.”

The evening also will feature William Soleau’s Five by Gershwin, originally set on State Street Ballet in 2002 and praised by the Los Angeles Times for its “breezy romanticism” and “uplifted elegance,” and Kassandra Taylor Newberry’s (con)version.

With music by Thomas Newman and The Junkman, percussive sound effects, and a unique vocabulary of movement, (con)version debuted on the company to rave revues in 2016.
 
State Street Ballet’s 2016-17 season is sponsored by Margo-Cohen Feinberg and Tim Mikel. Choreographer sponsors for Rite of Spring are Barbara Burger and Paul Munch.

Tickets to Rite of Spring are available at granadasb.org or the Granada box office, 899-2222. Patron (loge or box seating) tickets are $104; single performance tickets, $56, $46 and $36; students/children’s tickets, $24. Group discounts are available for parties of 10 or more.

— Barbara Burger for State Street Ballet.