★★★★✰ There has been a generational shift at New York City Ballet, that much was clear last night in a program of Stravinsky ballets that included two major débuts and several smaller ones...
Tag - Chase Finlay
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ It was a good night for Afternoon of a Faun, in particular. Chase Finlay, débuting in the role of the young dancer sensually lolling about a ballet studio, brought back the eroticism this ballet often lacks.
★★✰✰✰ Last week, on Thursday night, with the exception of The Four Temperaments, the company’s thoughts appeared to be elsewhere...
★★★✰✰ Like Walker’s first work for the company "Dance Odyssey" shows a lot of promise. It has warmth and humor, a good grasp of stage geometry and a sensitive musicality.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★★ Alexei Ratmansky’s Odessa left me breathless. The dancing (I saw both casts) was phenomenal on all levels: assured, expressive, and thoroughly dramatic.
★★★✰✰ It’s a shame that the company didn’t choose to revive some Wheeldon rarities from its back catalogue...
★★★★✰ Sara Mearns, who made her name as Swan Queen at the age of nineteen, is still the most thrilling Odette around.
★★★★✰ The pleasure, above all, in watching this company is their fearless super-charge of energy and their commitment as the inheritors of Balanchine’s ballets.
★★★★✰ Vienna Waltzes is a sure-fire hit. It seduces on many fronts: the ridiculously flattering gowns by Karinska (her last for the company), the sumptuous music, the multitudes of dancers...
★★★★✰ New York is a good place to be in springtime.
30 dancers already confirmed include Natalia Osipova, Olga Smirnova, Semyon Chudin, Kim Kimin, Sarah Lamb, Xander Parish, Aline Cojocaru, Tamara Rojo, Marianela Nuňez and Thiago Soares.
In recent seasons New York City Ballet has gotten into the habit of starting things off with a week or two of Balanchine. It’s an excellent idea.
Year after year, I see Balanchine’s Nutcracker, and year after year I marvel at its perfection. This year it turns sixty.
"...it’s hard not to get the impression that New York City Ballet is on a roll."
One cannot help but be amazed by the number of exceptional women in the company, and by how differently they approach the steps, the music and the temperament of each ballet.
But 'A Place for Us' (new Wheeldon) feels like a bauble, not quite a jewel.
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.
Is there a ballet more deceptive than Balanchine’s Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée’? If so, I’m not aware of it.