New York City Ballet opens its fall season (September 20 to October 16) with four new ballets. The New York City Ballet’s gala performances are intriguing phenomena—so many gowns trailing hazardous trains during the pre-performance cocktail party on the second floor promenade, so many tiny, slightly slippery hors d’oeuvres, and at the same time such pride and good spirits among those … [Read more...]
Borne on a West Coast Breeze
The Pacific Northwest Ballet performs during Jacob's Pillow's last week of the summer. It takes more than a moderate climate, ocean breezes, and lots of rain for a ballet company to flourish, and the Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet yields a well-chosen repertory and dancers from all parts of the U.S. and beyond, who make skill and precision look chosen and invested in, rather than … [Read more...]
From England Via Florida With Love
The Sarasota Ballet presents an all-Ashton program at the Joyce Theater. I have long been enamored of Frederick Aston’s ballets—narrative ones, such as La Fille mal gardée, Cinderella, and The Dream; abstract ones, such as Monotones; and thoroughly unusual ones, such as A Wedding Bouquet and Enigma Variations. There’s something sweet-tempered about all of them. Who but Ashton would make one … [Read more...]
Legends and Visionaries
New York Theatre Ballet performs a new work and a classic at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Young choreographers are usually advised to start out “small.” You know, try their wings. Diana Byer, the artistic director of the fine little New York Theatre Ballet, took the opposite tack. According to an interview with Steven Melendez, a dancer in NYTB, and Zhong-Jing Fang, a member of … [Read more...]
A Wintry Tale of Love and Jealousy
“What were you thinking, Will?” And “Eat your heart out, Marius Petipa.” These two silent remarks to the eminent dead periodically rattled around in my head while I was at Lincoln Center watching The National Ballet of Canada perform Christopher Wheeldon’s remarkable three-act work based on William Shakespeare’s 1611 play The Winter’s Tale (staged for the NBC by Jacquelin Barrett and Anna Délicia … [Read more...]
Once Upon a Time. . .
American Ballet Theater mounts Alexei Ratmansky's The Golden Cockerel. It occasionally happens that a ballet from another era comes to us tangled in its own history, even as it tries to make sense of it. American Ballet Theatre’s production of The Golden Cockerel as re-imagined by Alexei Ratmansky is just such a work—gorgeous to look at, often comical, often perplexing. At the end of the … [Read more...]
Love Finds a Way
American Ballet Theatre revives its production of Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée. If I had been able to write about American Ballet Theatre’s production of Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée before the company’s performances of it ended on May 30, I would have said, “if you’re having a bad day, go see this ballet.” So fragrant, so tender is its depiction of love, innocence, … [Read more...]
Speaking of Love
Alexei Ratmansky introduces Plato to American Ballet Theatre in its Lincoln Center season. Serenade after Plato’s Symposium is the twelfth ballet that Alexei Ratmansky has choreographed for American Ballet Theatre in the past seven years; clearly he takes his position as the company’s artist in residence seriously. This beautiful new chamber ballet is subtly different from anything of his … [Read more...]
The Sleeping Beauty Wakes in a Brave New World
Katy Pyle's Ballez performs Sleeping Beauty and the Beast in the La MaMa Moves Festival. This is, I promise, the last time I will blame acute jet lag for my sense of disembodiment and lapses in understanding. It kicks in the moment I go to the La MaMa box office, and there seem to be no tickets in my name for Katy Pyle’s Sleeping Beauty and the Beast. Once in the theater, I don’t read the … [Read more...]
Satin and Furs and Love of Dancing
New York City Ballet's Spring Gala celebrates with new ballets and a recent masterwork. Fundraising galas are strange beasts. The New York City Ballet’s May event was no exception. Women swan by in improbable gowns, assuming no one would dare to step on their trains; some display—intricately—enough skin to make you wonder how the garment is anchored. Festive roped-off tables and a … [Read more...]