
Natalia Osipova – Pure Dance – London
★★★✰✰ No trade description problems, here. This was exactly what it said on the tin: Natalia Osipova performing pure dance, enhanced only by recorded music and lighting designs varying from the merest of subtle tints to an explosion of floodlights…

American Ballet Theatre – 3 Bills: Giselle, Gala, Firebird/Afterite – New York
★★★★✰ After a week of Giselle, during which Natalia Osipova and David Hallberg had their much-awaited re-match, the company began its season in earnest on May 21, with a spring gala that included two new works and excerpts from a third…

American Ballet Theatre – Tchaikovsky Spectacular bills – New York
★★★✰✰ Ratmansky’s Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher turned out to be a mysterious little ballet, a double pas de deux that captures, …the complex history of a quartet of characters.

American Ballet Theatre – Onegin – New York
★★★✰✰ It is the melodrama that people remember and are drawn to in Onegin. But his kind of melodrama isn’t everyone’s cup of tea…

American Ballet Theatre – Whipped Cream – New York
★★★★✰ Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet for ABT, Whipped Cream, is like a Viennese confection: so layered and airy that it takes a moment to fully take in the flavor of its many ingredients.

American Ballet Theatre – Whipped Cream – Costa Mesa
★★★✰✰ Be careful what you wish for. The Boy in Alexei Ratmansky’s Whipped Cream wishes for unlimited sweets; overfulfillment sends him to the hospital with sugar hallucinations.

Youth America Grand Prix – Gala 2016 – New York
★★✰✰✰ Like all galas, this was quite a mixed bag. Over 200 students trooped on and offstage in a veritable tornado of activity before the veteran YAGP dancers stepped out for the showstopping stuff…

American Ballet Theatre – After You, Le Spectre de la Rose, Valse Fantaisie, The Green Table, Valse Fantaisie, Company B – New York
A highlight of the season is the return of Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table, made in 1932. This meditation on the folly of war in eight scenes has lost none of its punch…

Bolshoi Ballet – Swan Lake – New York
It is even more disappointing that the troupe should open its run with a Swan Lake so lackluster… It’s not the dancers’ fault. At every level, the Bolshoi dancers move with thrilling force and fullness.

American Ballet Theatre – The Dream, The Tempest – New York
Who but Frederick Ashton could turn a marital spat into one of the most delightful, touching works in the ballet repertoire? His 1964 The Dream is precisely that…

American Ballet Theatre – Giselle – New York
Few nineteenth-century story ballets are as satisfying as Giselle, with its simple and poetic plot, compact structure and starkly contrasting moods. This week I watched four Giselles, with four distinctly different casts…

Bolshoi Ballet – Giselle (Zakharova, Hallberg) – Washington
David Hallberg is a rarity in today’s classical ballet. Tall, lean and strikingly handsome, with pure classical line and impeccable dancing prowess, he is a genuine danseur noble.
![Lusymay Di Stefano and Claudio Coviello in [I]Giselle[/I].© Marco Brescia and Rudy Amisano, Teatro alla Scala. (Click image for larger version)](https://cvj1llwqcyay0evy-zippykid.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mb-giselle-lusymay-di-stefano-claudio-coviello-death_360-300x180.jpg)
Ballet at the Hong Kong Arts Festival 2014: La Scala Ballet in Giselle & Scottish Ballet in Highland Fling
The Festival kicked off with two classical ballet companies presenting very different versions of the oldest and most celebrated Romantic ballets in the repertoire: a classic rendering of Giselle and a radically different take on La Sylphide…

David Hallberg with Australian Ballet – Cinderella – Sydney
…Hallberg’s entrance drew gasps and shouts of ‘bravo’ from the audience. His magnificently stretched jetés soared through the air…