Paul Taylor American Modern Dance – Gala including new Kyle Abraham – New York
★★★★✰ As a special one-off, Michael Trusnovec, now a guest artist, danced the solo from George Balanchine’s spiky and ascetic Episodes which he made for Paul Taylor in 1959.
American Ballet Theatre – New Romantics: New American Romance, Garden Blue, A Time There Was – New York
★★★✰✰ The emphasis here was on new. This was a night to check in on the creative efforts of two emerging voices on the ballet scene – Gemma Bond and James Whiteside.
American Ballet Theatre – Balanchine, Bennett & The Beach Boys bill – New York
★★★★✰ In programs like this one, ABT really looks like an American company, steeped in American popular music and the relaxed attitude of popular dance. It’s a mode that suits the company well.
American Ballet Theatre – Fall Gala and The Masters bills – New York
★★★★✰ The fewer the speeches, the better the gala – this universal truth seems to have bypassed the organizers at American Ballet Theatre…
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.
New York City Ballet – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – New York
★★★★✰ For Balanchine, Shakespeare’s characters are two-dimensional types, exemplary but wholly unreal. They are shadows in a shadow-play, representing this or that quality…
New York City Ballet – All Balanchine quad bill including Scotch Symphony – New York
★★★★✰ There’s a reason why New York City Ballet doesn’t do George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony very often. It’s a strangely disjointed ballet…
New York City Ballet – Hallelujah Junction, Judah, The Exchange, Concerto DSCH – New York
★★★✰✰ 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.
New York City Ballet – Spring Gala: Bright, Bartók Ballet, Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 – New York
★★★✰✰ In Bartók Ballet, which coexists but does not comment on the music, the dancers explore a huge range of steps and quotations…
New York City Ballet – Pictures at an Exhibition, Oltremare, Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes – New York
★★★★✰ There is a palpable sense of hope among the dancers; again and again, they rise to the occasion. The opening-night program reflected this resilience and gave reason for hope.
New York City Ballet – Prodigal Son, Liebeslieder Walzer – New York
★★★✰✰ Liebeslieder Walzer is one of the most precious of all Balanchine’s ballets; within its fifty-minute span it seems to contain a world of emotion, both profound and infinitely civilized.
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
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…
New York City Ballet – Serenade, Mozartiana, Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 – New York
★★★✰✰ 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)…
New York City Ballet – Apollo, Orpheus, Agon – New York
★★★★✰ Nothing revives a repertory like new casting. So we can be grateful to the interim leadership at New York City Ballet for reconsidering who gets to dance some of the company’s most elemental repertory: Agon, Apollo, Serenade.
New York City Ballet – Apollo, Orpheus, Agon – New York
★★★★✰ 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…
New York City Ballet – The Nucracker – New York
★★★✰✰ Come hell or high water, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker will return to New York City Ballet, filling the theatre night after night. Balanchine made a ballet built to last, and it has not disappointed.
