New York City Ballet – Serenade, Summerspace, Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 – New York
★★★★✰ 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.
New York City Ballet – Dances at a Gathering, Everywhere We Go – New York
★★★✰✰ Robbins’ response to Chopin (in Dances at a Gathering) is also extraordinary: sensitive, simple, vulnerable, direct, un-fussy.
New York City Ballet – Fall Fashion Gala with The Shaded Line, Lineage, Symphony in C – New York
★★★✰✰ 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…
New York City Ballet – Balanchine + Wheeldon bill & Jewels – New York
★★★★✰ 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.
RB, NBoC & ABT dancers at the Joyce Ballet Festival – Prog B, curated by Lauren Cuthbertson – New York
★★✰✰✰ I hadn’t seen much of the well-regarded Cuthbertson, so I was looking forward to this chance to get to know her (she appeared in four of five pieces), as well as the not-always-dubious introduction to new works by new choreographers…
Norwegian National Ballet 2 – ROH, Young Talent Festival, Quint Bill – London
★★★✰✰ Norwegian National Ballet 2 at the ROH Young Talent Festival with 5 works – Departures, Valse-Fantaisie, Pas de Sept from A Folk Tale, Some See Stages, Left from Write
Paul Taylor Dance Company – Brandenburgs, Rewilding, Cascade – New York
★★★★✰ One can only wish the Paul Taylor Company well in this period of change. The dancers, new and old, perform with a warmth and openness that is rare.
San Francisco Ballet – Alexei Ratmansky’s Shostakovich Trilogy – London
★★★★✰ A gleaming triptych of imaginative and remarkably demanding choreography. The production is textured in every aspect, plumbing deep wells of emotion and revelling in a multiplicity of tones, tempers and movement styles.
New York City Ballet – Balanchine, Robbins & Reisen quad bill – Washington
★★★✰✰ Opus 19 feels at once nostalgic, mysterious and dreamy…
Ivan Putrov on his latest night of ballet – Against the Stream
Ivan Putrov’s latest project, Against the Stream, gets its premiere on Sunday 7 April 2019 at the London Coliseum. Jann Parry finds out all about it…
New York City Ballet – Robbins bill: Interplay, In the Night, N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz – New York
★★★✰✰ There was virtually nothing to fault with “In the Night” on Saturday — each couple was well matched, and Robbins’ unique capacity to imbue classical form with the richness of human experience again seems unparalleled
Sadler’s Wells Sampled, 2019 – London
★★★✰✰ Once a year Sadler’s Wells puts on Sampled, a pick and mix of the types of dance you might see at the venue. The front stalls seats are taken out, and standing in that area is only a fiver, with cheap tickets in general.
New York City Ballet – Herman Schmerman, Principia (new Peck), The Runaway – New York
★★★✰✰ Major draws were the new Justin Peck and a revival of William Forsythe’s 1992 commission Herman Schmerman, not seen in full since the 90s…
Royal Ballet – The Unknown Soldier (premiere), Infra, Symphony in C – London
★★★✰✰ If The Unknown Soldier is dispiritingly low-key, Wayne McGregor’s Infra remains assertively bold…
Gallery – Royal Ballet in The Unknown Soldier, Infra, Symphony in C
Featuring Alastair Marriott’s new “The Unknown Soldier”, Wayne McGregor’s “Infra” and Balanchine’s “Symphony in C”. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou…
Staatsballett Berlin – La Bayadère (premiere of Ratmansky reconstruction) – Berlin
★★★★✰ In the last several years, the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky has developed a sideline to his main choreographic efforts: the reviving of ballets by Marius Petipa in a way that represents the original choreography with as much fidelity as possible…
City Center Balanchine Festival – Miami City Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet
★★★✰✰ 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.
New York City Ballet – Jewels & All Balanchine 4bill – New York
★★★★✰ The company seemed to be dancing with a special ferocity, as if to prove its worth and convince the world that this enterprise is, indeed, worth preserving and saving.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (Trocks) – Les Sylphides bill – London
★★★★✰ The curtain calls for Robert Carter’s “Dying Swan” are nearly as long as the ballet itself and just as funny.
Sarasota Ballet – Monotones I & II, Symphony of Sorrows, There Where She Loved – New York
★★✰✰✰ After viewing Ashton on a bill with works by Ricardo Graziano and Christopher Wheeldon, I’m not worried about Ashton’s relevance nor his resonance with a future audience. …Both the Graziano and Wheeldon posed some problems from what some might consider a “female” perspective.
