★★★★★ ...a satisfying film in which dance is treated as a work of art, like a painting or a sculpture that moves. New York City Ballet’s virtual spring gala is the most successful version of this approach I’ve seen.
Tag - Spring Gala
★★★✰✰ In Bartók Ballet, which coexists but does not comment on the music, the dancers explore a huge range of steps and quotations...
★★★★✰ It isn’t often that a gala program proves satisfying, but this one was the exception.
★★★✰✰ It wouldn’t be spring without ballet galas. This week it was New York City Ballet’s turn. On the program were two new works, by Christopher Wheeldon and the relatively unknown Nicolas Blanc, the latter a veteran of the New York Choreographic Institute.
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.)
Symphony in C, a luminous outpouring of legs and arms, crisp geometries, bobbing rhythms, and articulate patter-like conversations for the feet, is a vivid reminder of why one goes to the ballet at all. Luminosity and classical logic, laced with wit and intelligence.
But 'A Place for Us' (new Wheeldon) feels like a bauble, not quite a jewel.
I think it's safe to say that neither of the new works knocked the planet off its axis...