The New York City Ballet spring season is off to the races with a week devoted to George Balanchine, specifically the “black-and-white” ballets that for many have come to define his style.
Tag - Ashley Bouder
Oksana Khadarina reviews the Serenade, Agon and Symphony in C bill - prepare for many happy adjectives and lots of history...
If Harlequinade is somewhat less than the sum of its parts, Square Dance (1957), which preceded it on the program, never fails to lift the heart.
More from the NYCB Winter Season with Marina Harss reviewing 2 bills made up of 6 works: Concerto Barocco, The Goldberg Variations, Symphonic Dances, The Cage, Andantino and Cortege Hongrois...
In recent seasons New York City Ballet has gotten into the habit of starting things off with a week or two of Balanchine. It’s an excellent idea.
This time, I made 15 trips to the theatres – there were performances at 5pm and 9pm each day - and saw 82 different full-length ballets or extracts in the eight days I was in Havana.
One cannot help but be amazed by the number of exceptional women in the company, and by how differently they approach the steps, the music and the temperament of each ballet.
At the outset I have to say I thought this year was one of the better years and we should all feel encouraged at the creativity on show.
Watching these three ballets, made over a span of thirty-two years, one can see how Balanchine’s style evolved toward the hyper-stylization of Violin Concerto...
Acheron, Liam Scarlett's new piece, revealed a choreographer of prodigious imagination and compositional craft, adept at building an atmosphere and suffusing it with traces of meaning.
There is perhaps no better way to start off a season at New York City Ballet than with a performance of Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco.
One feels as Débussy did when he wrote, at the end of the nineteenth century, that “amid too many silly ballets, Lalo’s Namouna is something of a masterpiece.”
Jeu de Cartes, by Peter Martins, is jaunty and busy, a cross between the pas de deux in Balanchine’s Rubies, the trios in Danses Concertantes, and the non-stop action of Martins’ Fearful Symmetries....
What most struck me on this particular evening was the transparency, and clarity of intention, that marked each work.
The 12th International Ballet Festival - Dance Open - was held over 4 days in St Petersburg. Margaret Willis (our Ms Expressivity) was there to report on much ballet and not a little award giving...
But 'A Place for Us' (new Wheeldon) feels like a bauble, not quite a jewel.
But stuck in the middle of all this brightness was Ivesiana, like a ghost at a birthday party. It is a most unsettling ballet.
It’s a good thing indeed when a visit to the ballet turns out to be a night full of surprises, all of them good.
Is there a ballet more deceptive than Balanchine’s Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée’? If so, I’m not aware of it.
I’m not yet fully convinced of the wisdom of New York City Ballet’s thematic seasons, organized around the music of a single composer....