Nashville Ballet, Bluebird Café Team For Attitude Series

Nashville Ballet has collaborated with the Bluebird Café for a new installment of the dance organization’s Attitude series.

A Valentine’s Day evening performance has been added to the original schedule due to popular demand, with a total of four performances Feb. 12-14 at TPAC’s Polk Theater.

The ballet will convey the look and feel of the Bluebird Café. Songwriters Victoria Banks, J.T. Harding and Georgia Middleman will perform a selection of their biggest hits in typical Bluebird fashion, in a writers’ round featuring a stripped-down sound, the stories behind their songs and spontaneous collaboration.

Hit songs made famous by country superstars like Keith Urban, Blake Shelton, Reba McEntire and Sara Evans will provide the soundtrack to new choreography by Nashville Ballet’s Christopher Stuart, New Dialect’s Banning Bouldin, Brian Enos and Gina Patterson. The piece, entitled City of Dreams, is named after Banks’ song that was recorded by more than 40 artists to support Tennessee flood relief in 2010.

“The overarching theme is City of Dreams, because Nashville is that,” said Erika Wollam Nichols, The Bluebird Cafe’s Chief Operating Officer and General Manager. “Nashville is the place where people come with dreams, even if you’re not a songwriter or musician. The energy of chasing your dreams is here.”

“As songwriters, we’re always thinking about how we’re making people feel and how to use words and melodies in a way that will make people connect with our music,” Banks said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how the choreographers use their own interpretations of the songs to add an extra visual element to the performance to make people connect in an even deeper way.”