Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance / New York City Center / October 23 – November 3, 2013 Matthew Bourne, who has changed classical ballet into sheer—often outrageous, often delicious—entertainment, has just brought to New York the last of his three works based on the glowing inheritance from the nineteenth century. Having tackled Swan […]
Enterprises that Require New Clothes
New York City Ballet / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / September 17 – October 13, 2013 On September 19, with considerable fanfare in the media, the New York City Ballet gave its Fall gala. The orchestra was raised on a platform, liberated from the pit that is its usual home, to let […]
Glimpses #13: Sara Mearns Away from Home
Sara Mearns, studio portrait Sara Mearns, the object of fervid admiration as a principal with the New York City Ballet, is paying a visit to Fall for Dance. This annual event, which showcases bits of every kind of dance imaginable (something for everyone, so to speak, and at a reasonable price), is sheltered at City […]
A Cheated Flight
New York City Ballet / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / September 17 – October 13, 2013 The New York City Ballet opened its fall season at the David H. Koch Theater with a week of Swan Lakes—broken only by a trio of new works for the gala on September 19. The version […]
Onward
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. […]
Youth in Bloom
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 […]
Keeping Count
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 […]
Dvorovenko Moves On
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 […]
On Balanchine’s “Ivesiana”
“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 […]
Onward
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. […]