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All American

May 11, 2013 by 7 Comments
Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild in Christopher Wheeldon's A Place for Us. Photo: Paul Kolnik

New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center, April 30 through June 9 In the Spring of 1988, the New York City Ballet put on an American Music Festival. George Balanchine had been dead for five years, and the two Ballet Masters in Chief, Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins, commissioned enough new ballets to keep dancers, guest choreographers, and resident choreographers rushing in and out of the company’s studios, gnawing on health bars. Was this Eliot Feld’s rehearsal? No, it was Bart Cook’s. Then when was Martins scheduled? Not too many … [Read more...]

05/11/13 2:38 PM | filed under: ballet |

Fair Winds from the West

February 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Seth Orza as Balanchine's Apollo with (front to back) Carla Körbes, Maria Chapman, and Lesley Rausch. Photo: Lindsay Thomas

Lincoln Kirstein has written that while the New York State Theater (now the Koch) was under construction, George Balanchine wandered in and saw that the pit would hold no more than 35 musicians. He immediately threatened to withdraw the New York City Ballet as the principal designated tenant. The pit was redesigned to accommodate 70 players. Had Balanchine, to whom music was so important, visited City Center during the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s recent season, he would, I’m sure, have been overjoyed to hear the scores for three of his … [Read more...]

02/22/13 11:58 PM | filed under: ballet |

See the Music

January 27, 2013 by 10 Comments
Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, keeping an eye on his creations

George Balanchine once said that during his grueling years as a pupil in the Imperial St. Petersburg Theatrical School, he didn’t fall in love with ballet until he was twelve. The change occurred the first time he appeared onstage in Marius Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty, set to Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score, and young Georgi Melitonovitch was cast as a Cupid. His arrows, so to speak, boomeranged back, and he was smitten. Tchaikovsky remained Balanchine’s favorite Russian composer (barring Stravinsky, of course), and the … [Read more...]

01/27/13 11:46 AM | filed under: ballet |

About That Nutcracker

December 16, 2012 by 2 Comments
A dream wedding: Clara and her Prince (Hee Seo and Cory Sterns). Photo: Gene Schiavone

The Nutcracker in its many manifestations is like an attic toy box into which generations of children have tossed the playthings they’ve grown too old for. Amid the dolls and stuffed animals and fairy tales and toy soldiers are folded longings, nightmares, pre-pubescent thoughts of sex, and fear of growing up. The ballet by Lev Ivanov that premiered in St. Petersburg in December of 1892 has bourréed across centuries, discarding this, adding that. Mark Morris, for his delectable The Hard Nut, even leapfrogged backward over the ballet to … [Read more...]

12/16/12 10:07 AM | filed under: ballet |

In Season

October 23, 2012 by 1 Comment
The peerless Herman Cornejo in Ratmansky's Symphony #9. Photo: Gene Schiavone

Hello!  Goodbye! American Ballet Theatre’s City Center season came and went with dispiriting speed—seven performances in five days (October 16 through 20). The pleasures outweighed the disappointment. New Yorkers could rendezvous with revivals of three ballets in the company’s history: Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo (1942), Antony Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading (1977), and Mark Morris’s Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes (1988).  Alexei Ratmansky premiered a gorgeous new ballet. And a live orchestra played the music. Ratmansky’s … [Read more...]

10/23/12 7:35 PM | filed under: ballet |

Astray in Summer Dreams

June 28, 2012 by 6 Comments
Cory Stearns as Oberon and Xiomra Reyes as Titania in ABT's The Dream. Photo: Gene Schiavone

If you can’t see a production of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a woodland setting during a long June twilight, as I once did, you can be enthralled by a different sort of magic conjured up by the Bard’s plot. George Balanchine’s 1962 ballet of the same name ended its week in the New York City Ballet’s season before American Ballet Theatre hit the solstice dead on with Frederick Ashton’s 1964 The Dream. These are two such beautiful ballets that I wish I could have crossed Lincoln Center Plaza from an NYCB matinee … [Read more...]

06/28/12 6:04 PM | filed under: ballet |

Flaming Magic and Goofy Girls

June 14, 2012 by 1 Comment
Natalia Osipova in Alexei Ratmansky's new Firebird for ABT. Photo: Gene Schiavone

One of the most surprising things about American Ballet Theatre’s new Firebird is how Russian it isn’t. When Serge Diaghilev commissioned 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky to write his first ballet score, one of the impresario’s continuing aims was to acquaint Paris with Russian music and culture. L’Oiseau de Feu premiered in 1910 with a wandering Tsarevitch as its hero and a magic bird as its ballerina. All manner of colorful ogres guarded the maidens that the evil sorcerer Kaschei had captured. Although ABT’s Firebird was choreographed … [Read more...]

06/14/12 6:00 PM | filed under: ballet |

Love and Death in an Imagined India

May 31, 2012 by 8 Comments
Herman Cornejo and Alina Cojocaru in Act I of ABT's La Bayadere. Photo: Gene Schiavone

People interested in ballet history can entertain themselves with unlikely questions. What, for instance, would Marius Petipa think of the production of his 1877 La Bayadère that the great ballerina Natalia Makarova constructed for American Ballet Theatre in 1980?  If he were sitting in a seat at the Metropolitan Opera House during ABT’s current season of classics and new works, how much of the choreography would he recognize as his own? Makarova wasn’t the first to delete, add to, and alter the ballet. Bayadère today is like a … [Read more...]

05/31/12 2:10 PM | filed under: ballet |

New York City Ballet: The New and the Refurbished

May 20, 2012 by 2 Comments
Tiler Peck floating over Tyler Angel in Two Hearts. Photo: Paul Kolnik

Have you noticed that many new ballets look like older ballets?  Either that, or they introduce kinks that take them far outside the classical vocabulary. The best ballet choreographers have a way of making steps that every advanced student dancer does many times a day look newly expressive, or interweave with the music in deeply satisfying ways. I can’t say that Peter Martins’s new work for the New York City Ballet’s spring season is refreshing in that way. Martins, as the company’s ballet master in chief, has responsibilities that … [Read more...]

05/20/12 4:11 PM | filed under: ballet |

One Good Thing About Arizona. . .

February 29, 2012 by 3 Comments
The women of Ballet Arizona in Ib Andersen's Play. Photo Kyle Froman

Ib Andersen didn’t move to Phoenix in 2000 to become artistic director of the Arizona Ballet. According to a recent interview, when he took on the job he was already in Arizona—loving the clear light, open sky, and sere landscape, and painting in his spare time. He may not have much spare time these days. During his tenure, the company debt has been erased, the board has labored to raise money, and the number of donors has grown, along with the company’s repertory and the level of its dancing. In August Ballet Arizona and its school will … [Read more...]

02/29/12 11:02 AM | filed under: ballet |
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