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.
Tag - Amar Ramasar
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 joy to see a performance turn into a kind of rave, ...to feel the music overflow the boundaries of convention and habit and feel, well, intensely alive.
Creases revealed, once again, Just Peck’s ability to create strikingly imaginative patterns and formations onstage.
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.
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.
Sara Mearns has been New York City Ballet’s reigning Swan Queen since her breakout performance in 2006, when she was only nineteen years old and a member the corps de ballet. It was a performance of surprising intensity, edged with danger.
N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz is certainly not Robbins’ finest or most original work but perhaps because of its relative straightforwardness, it reveals much about what is so remarkable about this choreographer.
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.
What is there to say about Orpheus, except that it seems to slip deeper into the recesses of time? I’ve read that at the première, the critic and poet Edwin Denby was so moved by it that he sat dumbfounded during intermission, unable to stand. It is difficult to imagine such a reaction today.
In the second act, storytelling gives way to pure dance, the highpoint of which is one of the most delicate, poetic pas de deux ever made - an allegory of love, danced by an unidentified couple. It is a Balanchinean vision of absolute trust and partnership...
It’s becoming something of a New York City Ballet tradition to start off the season with, if not a whimper, then let’s say a less-than-stellar performance. Perhaps it’s a kind of exorcism, a ritual cleansing. Maybe that’s why the gala usually takes place a few days later...