★★★★✰ "Boy is it good to be in the presence of dancers and musicians again." concludes Marina Harss review of New York City Ballet’s fall season opening performance.
Tag - Ashley Bouder
★★★★★ ...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.
★★★✰✰ Program II of the Fall for Dance festival features premieres by Dormeshia and Kyle Abraham, plus excerpts of works by Balanchine and Lar Lubovitch...
★★★★✰ How is the company looking? ...the company looks good so far.
★★★✰✰ Robbins’ response to Chopin (in Dances at a Gathering) is also extraordinary: sensitive, simple, vulnerable, direct, un-fussy.
★★★✰✰ The vitality and drive of the troupe was palpable Wednesday night, as was a sense of collective energy to move forward – however rocky that movement might be.
★★★✰✰ Opus 19 feels at once nostalgic, mysterious and dreamy...
★★★✰✰ One of the earliest things I appreciated about Balanchine is that he made me feel okay about liking Tschaikovsky (as NYCB likes to spell it)...
★★★✰✰ It’s fascinating to see how Balanchinean charm and wit are interpreted by dancers for whom the Balanchine repertoire is more of a foreign language.
★★★✰✰ Bouder's pick-up ensemble of eight, which she refers to as an arts collaborative, reflects her ideals. It is racially diverse; the choreographers include both men and women. Not all the choreographers are white. This should be par for the course, but it’s not.
★★★★✰ After much tumult over the holidays, New York City Ballet has begun its first post-Peter Martins season. If you’re just catching up, the company’s “ballet master in chief” – ie artistic director – of over thirty years retired on New Years Day, in the midst of an investigation into allegations of physical abuse and sexual harassment.
★★★★✰ The oldest piece on the program is Wheeldon’s Polyphonia. Made in 2001, it has stood the test of time. Just last week it was performed at the Fall for Dance festival...
★★★✰✰ With only four works, no intermissions and a run time of less than two hours, New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala was short and to the point.
★★★★✰ I still remember my feelings during the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s Russian Seasons at NYCB in 2006. There was a shock of recognition: this was the thing I had been looking for...
★★★★✰ Sara Mearns, who made her name as Swan Queen at the age of nineteen, is still the most thrilling Odette around.
★★★★✰ Divertimento’s aura still shines; you want to see it again, to figure out its fluid, almost magical transitions. It’s a shame it will only be performed four times this season; it takes more than that for the audience, and the dancers, to really get to know it.
Jeux, has a distinctly adult atmosphere and a highly cinematic look. Actually, the look might be the most interesting thing about it...
Nobody surpasses New York City Ballet in sleekness and urbanity. The company is like a glistening skyscraper: sharp-edged, diamantine and, sometimes, a little cold...
Dancing alone, Beamish introduces his movement: silky smooth shifts, surprising twitches, lines of energy rolling through the body...
After a week of modernist works by Balanchine set mostly to Stravinsky, Hindemith, Webern, there’s no denying that a night of French music falls sweetly on the ear.