★★★★★ ...a satisfying film in which dance is treated as a work of art, like a painting or a sculpture that moves. New York City Ballet’s virtual spring gala is the most successful version of this approach I’ve seen.
Tag - Divertimento No 15
New York City Center is streaming some ballet master classes, curated and hosted by Alastair Macaulay, and involving Misty Copeland, Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck. The coaches/guests include Nina Ananiashvili, Merrill Ashley, Alessandra Ferri, Stephanie Saland and Pam Tanowitz.
★★★★✰ A triple bill joining George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, the San Francisco Ballet premiere of Benjamin Millepied’s Appassionata and Justin Peck’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★★ As artistic director of her own troupe, Farrell was able to take her devotion to Balanchine and her aspiration to promote and preserve his legacy to a new level. For nearly 20 years, Washington audiences have enjoyed an annual mini-festival of Balanchine’s works...
Robert Barnett joined New York City Ballet in 1949. In those early years he worked closely with Balanchine and Robbins particularly before going on to direct Atlanta Ballet. Now 91 he is still actively involved in dance and passing on all he knows...
★★★★✰ Divertimento’s aura still shines; you want to see it again, to figure out its fluid, almost magical transitions. It’s a shame it will only be performed four times this season; it takes more than that for the audience, and the dancers, to really get to know it.
The company premiere of The Prodigal Son was the centerpiece and highlight of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet’s second all-Balanchine program at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater - a program that also included Divertimento No. 15 and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.
When watching them perform one understands what dance critic Joan Acocella meant when she said: “Every single time Suzanne Farrell sets a Balanchine ballet – it rises from the dead.”
San Francisco’s second programme was better balanced than the first, with contrasting works created for the company within the past two years.
I loved the way the SFB dancers were so confident with the choreography (of Divertimento No 15), at ease after an understandably tense start.
36 pictures by Dave Morgan...
Muriel [Maffre] was an inspiration for me because she got so many great roles even though she was tall. After she retired I started to get some of her old parts.
Aimée Tsao, watching San Francisco Ballet for over 35 years now, with a general primer on the company and some thoughts on the repertoire they are bring to London in September 2012...
The sixty-five-year-old The Four Temperaments is now a senior citizen, but not even close to retiring...
True to style, San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director & Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson is showcasing his dancers in a highly varied programme of ten short works – no fewer than nine of them UK premieres – for their long-awaited return to the London stage.