★★★★★ ...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 - Duo Concertant
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ Balanchine himself once said that Serenade is “many things to many people.” If it is one thing to City Ballet, it is the single ballet which they are expected to do perfectly every time.
After a week of modernist works by Balanchine set mostly to Stravinsky, Hindemith, Webern, there’s no denying that a night of French music falls sweetly on the ear.
There were three débuts at New York City Ballet last night: Zachary Catazaro in Apollo, Russell Janzen in Duo Concertant, and Lauren King in the role I think of as the "jumping girl" in Symphony in Three Movements.
The New York City Ballet spring season is off to the races with a week devoted to George Balanchine, specifically the “black-and-white” ballets that for many have come to define his style.
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.
Watching these three ballets, made over a span of thirty-two years, one can see how Balanchine’s style evolved toward the hyper-stylization of Violin Concerto...
...offered a perfect Balanchine sampler, bringing together an assortment of ballets, full of unexpected juxtapositions, from very different periods of the choreographer’s long career.
Jeu de Cartes, by Peter Martins, is jaunty and busy, a cross between the pas de deux in Balanchine’s Rubies, the trios in Danses Concertantes, and the non-stop action of Martins’ Fearful Symmetries....
What most struck me on this particular evening was the transparency, and clarity of intention, that marked each work.
Creases revealed, once again, Just Peck’s ability to create strikingly imaginative patterns and formations onstage.
But 'A Place for Us' (new Wheeldon) feels like a bauble, not quite a jewel.
I’ve noticed two troubling trends this season at New York City Ballet. Perhaps they are connected. The first is the creeping tendency toward stolid tempi from the pit...