It was a program that harkened back to the big international Galas of previous years, as well as a nice reference to the company’s first years, when artists including Sonia Arova, Erik Bruhn, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev guest-starred.
Reviews
Reviews of Dance and Ballet Performances
The company danced Serenade well but the very simplicity in its choreography, created as it was initially for students, ironically makes it hard to produce a perfect performance...
Hong Kong Ballet presented a diverse and well-balanced mixed programme in early November, consisting of two premieres and a revival of a major work.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s diptych - hinged by the night - is a paean to medievalism which emphasises the crucial aspects of those times.
Someone who has embodied King's choreographic essence thoroughly in a few short years is Michael Montgomery. Everything he does feels completely natural, utterly effortless, like a child running freely, exploring his surroundings and his body without self-consciousness.
I can’t help but feel cheated at missing this day into dusk on a summer’s evening in Avignon and waking up to its counterpart the next morning.
After the urban angst of Infra, Fool’s Paradise concludes the evening on a sigh of pleasure. This triple bill is proof indeed that contemporary ballet is alive and thriving.
The Rodin Project suffers from the same structural problems as Maliphant’s expanded Afterlight. He’s poured his and his dancers’ creative energies into a superb solo or duet. Then...
...an outstanding production which deserves to be seen again.
This is a work that is dark and deep, like a bottomless black pool requiring forensic exploration.
This work has some powerful moments, such as when the dancers play amongst the fallen bags, sliding joyfully across the floor. However, Weather does not quite reach the heights of some of Guerin’s recent works, something that is sure to disappoint many of her fans.
That said, the company is still on top form. The corps de ballet is flawlessly unified technically, stylistically and musically down to their eyelashes.
It's always been clear that Millepied is a man of intelligence and taste.
The programme included works both old and new but it was not an altogether successful mixture. The dancers looked most at home, and at their most sleek and impressive, in Faster, a work made on them this year by their Artistic Director, David Bintley, evoking the striving of competitors in the Olympics.
Jessica Lang's Lyric Pieces ...is light-as-a-feather work of the utmost good taste - in fact just plain gorgeous.
Ratmansky’s vision of Cinderella is bracingly fresh, and the ballet’s harsh, urban setting and grotesque choreography seem suitably attuned to Prokofiev’s darkly sardonic score. His concept, however, does not succeed completely.
The Cuban schooling of Hopuy is impressive and his variation was expertly danced, including the trademark Cuban flicking over of the take-off leg in a jeté en tournant...
An Act of Now is a violent production - physically, emotionally and conceptually. ...The material is challenging, both to watch and, no doubt, to perform.
Tonight’s premiere of Ratmansky's newest work for American Ballet Theatre, Symphony #9, was cause for celebration. In fact, it left me feeling almost lightheaded, and terribly eager to see it again, as soon as possible.
The highlight of the gala was the seventieth-anniversary performance of Agnes De Mille’s Rodeo, preceded by a short film describing its creation, with archival footage of the hilariously histrionic, diminutive choreographer.