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
Royal Ballet – Les Patineurs, Winter Dreams, The Concert – London
★★★★✰ Now that we are all one more Nutcracker nearer death, as weary critic Richard Buckle used to bemoan, the Royal Ballet has given us a wintry bonne bouche of ballets to savour.
Fall for Dance 2018, Program 1 – Boston Ballet, Sara Mearns, Caleb Teicher & Co, Cie Hervé Koubi – New York
★★★★✰ On the second night the program was offered, Mearns was stunning, but the remaining three pieces, by three different companies were, to varying degrees, engaging, although hers was a tough act to follow.
World Ballet Day, 2 October 2018 – an insight into what The Royal Ballet will be doing
Jann Parry talks to The Royal Ballet about what’s happening on World Ballet Day this year and just what it means for some of those involved… Kristen McNally, James Hay and Assistant director Anthoula Syndica-Drummond.
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.
Les Etés de la Danse, Paris – Jerome Robbins Homage, Programme 2 – Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Perm Opera Ballet
★★★★✰ It’s been a very enjoyable homage to Robbins’s versatility…
Les Etés de la Danse, Paris – Homage to Jerome Robbins, Programme 1 – New York City Ballet, Joffrey Ballet
★★★★✰ The programme, performed by two very different American ballet companies, displayed Robbins’s versatility while revealing the similarities in his approach to music.
Zurich Ballet – Swan Lake – Zurich
★★★✰✰ But, at least to my eye, the production’s triumph is its final lakeside act. There, the formations of swans, as originally choreographed by Lev Ivanov, become intricate, delicate, lyrical, and intensely moving.
Paul Taylor American Modern Dance – David H. Koch season – New York
★★★★✰ Even in stillness, Taylor dancers hold immense power in their bodies, the energy potential within them more nuclear than solar.
San Francisco Ballet – Robbins: Ballet & Broadway quad bill – San Francisco
★★★★✰ There’s nothing like watching a woman crush a man’s neck with her thighs to make you go hmm, maybe that whole #MeToo thing has legs.
American Ballet Theatre – Her Notes, Symphonic Variations, Other Dances, Serenade After Plato’s Symposium – New York
★★★✰✰ The program opened and closed with the most recent works: Jessica Lang’s Her Notes and Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium. Both premiered at ABT in 2016, and both are works whose inspiration largely comes from their scores.
Washington Ballet – Les Sylphides, Le Corsaire pdd, Bolero, Prodigal Son – Washington
★★★★✰ It was a pleasure to see this company in such a smart and wide-ranging program. It was even more rewarding to see the Washington Ballet dancers masterly navigating the numerous challenges…
Scottish Dance Theatre – TuTuMucky, Dreamers – London
★★★✰✰ Both are bold, engaging commissions – always welcome from a regional UK dance troupe.
Hamburg Ballet – Old Friends – New York
★✰✰✰✰ Dancers roam around the stage connecting, disconnecting, clinging and separating in a drifting non-specific haze of memories. Who are the exes, who are the friends? Who are the never-weres? Who knows.
Ardani 25 Dance Gala – Clay, Tristesse, Le Divertissement du Roi – New York
★★✰✰✰ So bravo for Danilian. All the dancing at the gala was very fine – who could expect any less from these dancers? One can (and should) question his taste but it’s clear that he’s willing to go out on a limb…
Gauthier Dance – NIJINSKI – Stuttgart
★★★✰✰ NIJINSKI neatly lassos this altogether using Goecke’s avant garde movement style …to give the Stuttgart audience an abstract impression of Nijinsky’s life and contribution to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.
Richard Alston Dance Company – An Italian in Madrid, Brisk Singing, Mazur, Stronghold – London
★★★★✰ All-in-all this was an outstanding programme of entertaining dance…
Company XIV – Snow White – New York
★★★✰✰ “But it turns out that the pleasures of excess are really not enough to hold one’s interest if the underlying material is thin.”
Daniil Simkin – INTENSIO – New York
Just before intermission Simkin included two film-and-performance works by Alexander Ekman. Simkin and the City, which went viral with the Internet-savvy dance crowd a couple of years ago, always gets a good chuckle.
