★★★✰✰ PNB kicked off their season in October with a gala that was the first performance on the McCaw Hall stage since February, a mixed programme that showcased an ensemble of excellent dancers in both classical and contemporary choreography...
Tag - George Balanchine
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.
★★★★★ Dormeshia’s And Still You Must Swing is the first online dance that made me want to write about it. I knew it would be good...
★★★✰✰ The Washington Ballet new program titled Balanchine + Ashton showcased four works by the two great choreographers, who “forever shaped our art form,” as the company’s artistic director, Julie Kent, put it in her opening remarks.
★★★★✰ ...undoubtedly one of the most visually stunning and dramatically meaningful Beauties you will ever find.
★★★✰✰ The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, the opening dance of the first program, is Forsythe burrowing into the neoclassical cannon and a nod to the style and traditions of George Balanchine.
I don’t really believe in lists, but it’s admittedly fun to look back over the year and reflect on moments that have stayed with me. So here they are, in no particular order…
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ The fewer the speeches, the better the gala – this universal truth seems to have bypassed the organizers at American Ballet Theatre...
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ You can tell the Danes are in town by the fact that the Joyce Theater has been packed night after night this week.
★★★★★ As you would expect Diamonds was the highlight of the three part Jewels.
★★★★✰ Three short but densely packed ballets infused with a strong Russian flavour were at the heart of the Royal Ballet’s last bill of the season.
★★★★✰ 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...
★★✰✰✰ The show at Wilton's Music Hall, produced and directed by former ballerina Viviana Durante, was originally billed as The Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht...
★★★★✰ 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...
★★★✰✰ In Bartók Ballet, which coexists but does not comment on the music, the dancers explore a huge range of steps and quotations...
★★★★✰ Putov brought together remarkable performers whom we long to see again, and left us wanting more...
★★★✰✰ Where the ballet takes off is when there are only two or three major characters on stage and then Marston clearly shows intentions and emotions and the dancing becomes rich and telling, clever and gorgeous.
★★★★✰ As if an Ashton rarity weren’t reason enough to catch this program, there was also the presence of Marcelo Gomes, former much-admired principal dancer from American Ballet Theatre, to recommend it.