Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée, being shown about town in the Ballet in Cinema series, creates a world of delight. The beloved 1960 ballet is set in a peaceable countryside, back when wheat was harvested with scythes. Yet even this bucolic wonderland is threatened—by greed. A farm owner intends to marry off her delicious […]
Starry Night
American Ballet Theatre: Gala / Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NYC / May 14, 2012 The 15 items presented in American Ballet Theatre’s gala opening night program proceeded, one after another, like items on a To Do list. The individual numbers, most of them familiar (at least half of them overfamiliar), provided many an occasion […]
What’s New?
New York City Ballet : Spring Gala, Á La Française / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / May 10, 2012 New York City Ballet’s spring gala treated its extravagantly dressed audience to two new ballets—one by Peter Martins, who heads the company, the other by the dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, who recently […]
Glimpses #6: Sara Mearns
Dancing to the spiky Hindemith score for Balanchine’s Kammermusik No. 2, Sara Mearns—a favorite of connoisseurs as well as New York City Ballet’s general public, is like a coiled spring unfurling and rewinding in bursts of energy tempered by minute doses of calm. She’s like a wild creature, acquired by auction, probing her new environment. […]
Glimpses #5: Vuillard
Edouard Vuillard, Misia and Vallotton at Villeneuve, 1899, oil on cardboard. Collection of William Kelly Simpson. As you can see from the Jewish Museum’s rich retrospective of his pictures, Edouard Vuillard (1868 – 1940) was obsessed by fractured patterns. Clothing in figured fabric and décor vie for attention with the people represented. Dresses, […]
Tracking Corella
Barcelona Ballet / New York City Center / April 17-20, 2012 Ángel Corella, artistic director of the Barcelona Ballet and the company’s star dancer Photo: Erin Baiano For a long and happy time, we thought of Ángel Corella, a much-adored star with American Ballet Theatre, simply as a king of dance. Now we’re coming to […]
Glimpses #4: Re-inventing Tanny
Now that truth and privacy have been banished from our culture, it’s not astonishing (or, apparently, actionable) that Varley O’Connor should have co-opted a chunk of a singular artist’s life and “novelized” it. Tanaquil LeClercq was not a heroine in a middle-brow tale. She was a unique, fascinating, and—for those, like me, who saw her […]
To My Readers
Dear Readers, I want to share with you the honor and pleasure I feel in having been named a finalist in this year’s Pulitzer Prize for criticism. The citation reads: “For work appearing on ArtsJournal.com that reveals passion as well as deep historical knowledge of dance, her well-expressed arguments coming from the heart as well […]
Glimpses #3: Paris in New York
Here in the States we all know Brigitte Lefèvre, head of the Paris Opera Ballet, thanks to Frederick Wiseman’s documentary on the venerable company, La Danse. She’s a woman who knows how to take charge. At a press conference hosted by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, she tells us about the company’s upcoming […]
Occupy Lincoln Center
Paul Taylor Dance Company / David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / March 13 – April 1, 2012 What dance company director could resist the opportunity of playing the grand-scale Lincoln Center house formerly known as the New York State Theater, even if his or her usual venue were the now handsomely refurbished City […]