
Bolshoi Ballet – Giselle (Ratmansky premiere) – Moscow
★★★★✰ This is a Giselle that is both familiar and new. Watching it on opening night was like seeing a faded painting regain its colors.

Bolshoi Ballet – The Bright Stream – London
★★★★★ A wildly surreal comic turn involves a dog riding a bicycle, both cunningly choreographed. He’s actually a tractor driver in disguise, disrupting sexual assignations.

Bolshoi Ballet – Jewels: Emeralds, Rubies, Diamonds – Brisbane
★★★★★ As you would expect Diamonds was the highlight of the three part Jewels.

Bolshoi Ballet – The Taming of the Shrew – New York
★★★✰✰ It wouldn’t be a complete exaggeration to say that the Bolshoi’s U.S. premiere of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s The Taming of the Shrew set the Koch Theater on fire Wednesday night…

Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet – Jewels – New York, Lincoln Center Festival
★★★★✰ It’s not often that one gets to see three such companies side by side, or to experience a work as familiar as Jewels with new eyes…

Bolshoi Ballet – The Flames of Paris – London
★★★★✰ The great pleasure of Alexei Ratmansky’s version of Vasily Vainonen’s 1932 ballet is the cornucopia of steps to which both choreographers had access: danse d’école, folk and character dances, as well as expressive acting.

Bolshoi Ballet – The Taming of the Shrew – London
★★★✰✰ Maillot’s ballet… belongs to Krysanova and Lantratov, who succeed in conveying that Kate and Petruchio are wildly, equally in love, however crassly they treat each other…

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…

Bolshoi Ballet – The Sleeping Beauty – London
…but the production isn’t so interested in motivation, more in grand effects, and those were delivered. It was a glittering, ostentatious performance, though not one to catch the heart.