★★★✰✰ In the last week of its winter season, New York City Ballet unveiled a new work by its resident choreographer, Justin Peck, to a score by the popular neo-Minimalist composer Nico Muhly. It was a homecoming of sorts for Peck...
Tag - New York City Ballet
★★★★✰ The four ballets make for a slightly over-long evening (both Episodes and Rodeo are substantial works). But it’s a small price to pay for seeing these rarities back onstage.
★★★★✰ There was always something new around the corner, a surprising shape, a witty step, an unlikely transition. It’s clear that Ratmansky felt liberated by the unusual structure and soundscape...
★★★★✰ How is the company looking? ...the company looks good so far.
★★★★✰ New York City Ballet is off to a fine start when it opens the winter season with a very well-danced all Balanchine, all Stravinsky program.
I don’t really believe in lists, but it’s admittedly fun to look back over the year and reflect on moments that have stayed with me. So here they are, in no particular order…
★★★★✰ As a special one-off, Michael Trusnovec, now a guest artist, danced the solo from George Balanchine’s spiky and ascetic Episodes which he made for Paul Taylor in 1959.
★★★★✰ This season, as part of the 75th anniversary of Appalachian Spring, Martha Graham Dance Company invited Troy Schumacher to create a new piece to be danced alongside the iconic work...
★★★✰✰ The pairing of prestigious participants does not always guarantee success – a lesson learned again and again in the theater.
Pam Tanowitz, well known in New York, just created her first work outside the States - for the Royal Ballet. It's been a critical success and Jann Parry (who gave the work 5 stars) finds out what makes her tick and why so many directors are seeking Tanowitz out...
★★★★✰ The fewer the speeches, the better the gala – this universal truth seems to have bypassed the organizers at American Ballet Theatre...
★★★★✰ On the penultimate day of the fall season, I managed to catch a performance of New York City Ballet’s revival of Merce Cunningham’s Summerspace. The 1958 piece, which had its City Ballet premiere in 1966, was last performed here in 2000.
★★★✰✰ Robbins’ response to Chopin (in Dances at a Gathering) is also extraordinary: sensitive, simple, vulnerable, direct, un-fussy.
★★★✰✰ Kudos to Lovette for really going out on a limb... The Shaded Line feels truly her own, and it’s clear that she has much to say about her chosen profession...
★★★★✰ It makes a noticeable difference when Litton, music director of the company, is in the pit; the orchestra has presence and sings, providing a convincing counterpart for the dancing.
★★★★✰ Starwise, Bejart's Wayfarer bumps this program from two stars to four.
★★★★✰ You can tell the Danes are in town by the fact that the Joyce Theater has been packed night after night this week.
★★★★✰ In her 'all at once', Tanowitz seems to have taken Taylor's 'Junction' as her starting point. Like that work, it is a paean to awkwardness...
★★★★✰ For Balanchine, Shakespeare’s characters are two-dimensional types, exemplary but wholly unreal. They are shadows in a shadow-play, representing this or that quality...
★★★★✰ There’s a reason why New York City Ballet doesn’t do George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony very often. It’s a strangely disjointed ballet...