★★★✰✰ The Washington Ballet new program titled Balanchine + Ashton showcased four works by the two great choreographers, who “forever shaped our art form,” as the company’s artistic director, Julie Kent, put it in her opening remarks.
Tag - Allegro Brillante
★★★★✰ How is the company looking? ...the company looks good so far.
★★★✰✰ Their hunger for dance – that sense of palpable excitement to be onstage and in the moment – was particularly evident during the company’s premiere of Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas.
Robert Barnett joined New York City Ballet in 1949. In those early years he worked closely with Balanchine and Robbins particularly before going on to direct Atlanta Ballet. Now 91 he is still actively involved in dance and passing on all he knows...
★★★★✰ Sara Mearns, who made her name as Swan Queen at the age of nineteen, is still the most thrilling Odette around.
★★★✰✰ “Hi! I am Julie Kent, artistic director of the Washington Ballet.” Looking ravishing in her long strapless slivery-white gown, her hair immaculately styled, the new director of the Washington Ballet introduced herself to the audience of the fully-packed Eisenhower Theater...
For twelve years, the Fall for Dance festival has been going strong, and one can see why. No other dance series offer such an expansive, egalitarian and uncomplicated glimpse of what’s going on in dance...
It’s hard to imagine a better program to showcase the power of ballet as an expressive art than Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s impressive offering for its annual season at the Kennedy Center.
Justin Peck has gone from unknown corps-member to choreographer-of-the-moment in a blink of an eye. (He created his first piece for the company in 2012; this is his sixth.)
Wherever Virginia Johnson goes, she seems to travel on a cloud, with a kind of regal composure few possess in our day. She appears imperturbable...
Do you perceive a difference between the musicality of American dancers and that of Russian dancers? AR: There is a huge difference in the musicality. I often found Russian dancers unmusical... But they have other qualities...
After twenty-six years in Miami, Edward Villella is back in New York, just across the East River from his old stomping grounds in Bayside Queens. He was an unlikely danseur, a scrappy kid...
The revitalizing impact of Balanchine’s choreography on Tchaikovsky’s music was particularly evident in the all-Tchaikovsky, all-Balanchine program presented by New York City Ballet at the Kennedy Center Opera House during the last week of March.
In New York one can begin to feel proprietary about Balanchine, to form the illusion that his choreography is a local specialty, the province of a select group of dancers, all of them employees of New York City Ballet. But this is mere local pride.