Mastery, on point

This weekend’s Modern Masters is the final program of the Sacramento Ballet’s 2016-2017 season, and it promises to be a doozy. Not only does it feature George Balanchine’s ground-breaking masterpiece The Four Temperaments and Focus Point, a new piece by Ashley Walton featuring moving light props, but it will also highlight what is likely the last original dance created for the company by Ron Cunningham, the troupe’s co-artistic director who is set to depart at the end of the company’s next season.“[The Seven Deadly Sins] is something I’ve wanted to do for some time,” Cunningham said as he began work on the new piece.

“I always have to have a point of view about what my dance is going to say,” he said, adding that as he started this piece, all he knew was that he wanted to say “something about humanity.” Creating the new piece led Cunningham to much thought about the nature of man, the concept of sin and why seven sins in particular are considered “deadly.” Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth each will be portrayed in the piece.

“It will be very gritty—and possibly shocking,” Cunningham said. “How the hell I’m going to do this, I don’t know for sure.”