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Youth in Bloom

June 6, 2013 by 2 Comments
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To call the School of American Ballet “selective” is an amusing understatement.  It’s the training ground in the U.S. for potential professional classical dancers (who must, of course, begin on the path as children) and the alma mater of a majority of the performers in the New York City Ballet. School of American Ballet Workshop Performances:  Jordan Miller and Alejandro Ocasio in George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15 Photo:  Paul Kolnik The academy draws students who show basic potential for the trade to which they aspire in … [Read more...]

06/6/13 3:04 PM | filed under: main |

Keeping Count

June 2, 2013 by 3 Comments
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In Creases does well enough as a title for Justin Peck’s latest work for the New York City Ballet because you understand the reference to arithmetic in the punning title.  And Peck—on whom the company may be pinning its choreographic hopes—keeps to his subject matter doggedly by manipulating his eight dancers.  Grouping and regrouping, they make you pay keen attention to the shifting clusters’ numbers.  Still the ballet’s title doesn’t arouse much excitement or joy; neither—alas—does the choreography. Robert Fairchild in … [Read more...]

06/2/13 12:23 PM | filed under: main |

Dvorovenko Moves On

May 20, 2013 by 11 Comments
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Irina Dvorovenko as Polyhymnia in George Balanchine’s Apollo Photo:  Marty Sohl On May 18, Irina Dvorovenko gave her final performance with American Ballet Theatre as Tatiana in John Cranko’s Onegin.  She plans to continue dancing elsewhere as a guest artist. Portrait of Dvorovenko Photo:  Gene Schiavone Interestingly, she probably has a higher rating for good looks than any—except, perhaps, for Julie Kent­­—­­of the illustrious ballerinas who have danced with the company in, say, the last decade.  This just proves, once … [Read more...]

05/20/13 11:07 AM | filed under: main |

On Balanchine’s “Ivesiana”

May 3, 2013 by 9 Comments
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“I don’t have to tell you that Mr. B is with Mozart and Tschaikovsky and Stravinsky,” Lincoln Kirstein announced to the New York City Ballet audience, exactly 30 years before the company’s April 30 opening night this season.  The program, which inaugurated City Ballet’s three-week American Music Festival attracted a good house and fervid audience enthusiasm for two big pieces easy on both eye and spirit:  Who Cares? to Gershwin songs (their lyrics unsung, but engraved in popular memory; Tiler Peck at her familiar finest) and Stars … [Read more...]

05/3/13 5:48 PM | filed under: main |

Onward

April 11, 2013 by 6 Comments
NYCB principal dancer Wendy WhelanCREDIT: David Michalek

Wendy Whelan knows how to make her “sunset years,” so to speak, work well as a much-admired principal dancer—a veteran of over a quarter-century with the New York City Ballet.  With this company, astute technique has become an essential—indeed the foremost—of a star dancer’s attributes, competing only with musicality, which is not Whelan’s primary forte.  And, at the age of 47, some of this ballerina’s technical prowess, which was distinctive as she displayed it, is naturally failing her.  Anatomy is remorseless. Of late, … [Read more...]

04/11/13 11:56 AM | filed under: main |

Life Lessons

April 5, 2013 by 6 Comments
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Mark Morris Dance Group / James and Martha Duffy Performance Space, Mark Morris Dance Center, Brooklyn, NY / April 3-14, 2013 Jenn and Spencer, being given its world premiere on the opening night of the Mark Morris Dance Group’s run at the company’s studio/theater in Brooklyn, refers to two of the company’s splendid dancers, Jenn Weddel and Spencer Ramirez.  The duet named for and performed by them illustrates the magic a pair of dancers may be capable of and an extraordinary exploration of the duet form. Mark Morris Dance … [Read more...]

04/5/13 10:46 PM | filed under: main |

Folk Tales

March 10, 2013 by 10 Comments
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Paul Taylor Dance Company / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / March 5 – 24, 2013 Paul Taylor, having boxed in the stage of Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater so it won’t look outlandishly large for a modern-dance group—it was built, first and foremost, for the New York City Ballet—has added two new works to the repertory of his company, which is in residence through March 24.  As usual when Taylor comes on stage at the end of the program to take a slightly abashed bow—he has never forgotten the boy he once … [Read more...]

03/10/13 5:12 PM | filed under: main |

Ballet’s Sweetheart

February 17, 2013 by 15 Comments
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Pacific Northwest Ballet / City Center, NYC / February 13-16, 2013 The Pacific Northwest Ballet, whose home is in Seattle, has just made a rare visit to New York.  It offered two programs, one an acid-test rep of three top-of-the-line Balanchine classics; the other, Jean-Christophe Maillot’s take on Romeo and Juliet, to that Prokofiev score  ballet fans hear far too often.  Evolved by Francia Russell and her husband, Kent Stowell, in the course of the 1970s, the company is one of several groups whose roots lie in Balanchine territory.  … [Read more...]

02/17/13 9:51 PM | filed under: main |

Youth’s Sweet Dream

February 4, 2013 by 9 Comments
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New York City Ballet:  Justin Peck’s new work, Paz de la Jolla / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / January  31, February 2, 6, and 8, 2013 Justin Peck, choreographer of Paz de la Jolla for New York City Ballet Photo:  Paul Kolnik Justin Peck, a 25-year-old member of New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet, seems to have lots of useful ideas and moods in his unstoppably busy brain.  His latest work for the company is Paz de la Jolla (the peacefulness of La Jolla) and set to a similarly evocative score along the same lines by … [Read more...]

02/4/13 11:06 PM | filed under: main |

Bliss!

January 28, 2013 by 6 Comments
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New York City Ballet / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / January 15 – February 24, 2013 The New York City Ballet’s two-week festival (January 15-27, 2013) of Balanchine’s choreography to music by Tschaikovsky came with a guarantee:  no duds, no Eurotrash or other Terpsichorean fads, no feeble imitations of the greats.  How wonderful it was to head for Lincoln Center night after night, knowing one was about to encounter dance that was sublime, to music by an ideal partner.  George Balanchine (1904 - 1983) Photo:  … [Read more...]

01/28/13 8:34 PM | filed under: main |
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