From start to finish this Nutcracker ...is a true Christmas gift for children and adults alike – one of the most satisfying versions of the holiday classic I have ever seen.
Tag - George Balanchine
Now Is All There Is - Bodies in Motion, is an exhibition of 34 stylized images of Royal Ballet dancers taken by photographer Rick Guest.
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 something is beautifully made it never gets old. So it is with Balanchine’s Nutcracker, first performed by New York City Ballet in 1954 and honed to near-perfection over the years.
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.”
...I’m not certain in which direction the company is headed. There is so much potential to be realised that it would be disappointing to see it ebb away.
It was a program that harkened back to the big international Galas of previous years, as well as a nice reference to the company’s first years, when artists including Sonia Arova, Erik Bruhn, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev guest-starred.
The company danced Serenade well but the very simplicity in its choreography, created as it was initially for students, ironically makes it hard to produce a perfect performance...
Hong Kong Ballet presented a diverse and well-balanced mixed programme in early November, consisting of two premieres and a revival of a major work.
“It’s very special to dance. And it’s even more special to dance a Balanchine ballet” - Suzanne Farrell
There should be more nights like this at New York City Ballet.
Several times during the evening I wondered how much anyone who happened never to have seen Lund before would have understood about him from this performance. They would have learnt about his peerless Bournonville technique, and about his ability to get under the skin of the character he's playing...
Every Fall For Dance program is a bit of a pot luck, which is part of the festival’s charm. This year it has been expanded to twelve of performances (each costing $15, up from $10 last year)...
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...
The highlight of the program was the seldom-performed Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Fée”. It is a deceptively shadowy work, a fairy tale in the guise of a conventional divertissement.
What is there to say about Orpheus, except that it seems to slip deeper into the recesses of time? I’ve read that at the première, the critic and poet Edwin Denby was so moved by it that he sat dumbfounded during intermission, unable to stand. It is difficult to imagine such a reaction today.
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.
Who are your favorite choreographers? 1. "Christopher Wheeldon. He picked me for the first ballet I had created on me .. and I have worked with him on every single work he has done since I joined SFB."
...Bart's a gifted and discerning artist, with a deep understanding of the Opera's heritage and style. Rather than trying to "recreate" the long-forgotten original choreography by Arthur St. Leon, Bart's made a new work that feels old, as if it had long been a warhorse of the Opera's repertory, subject to over a century of vagaries in taste and technique, yet emerging today all the richer for the...