Last spring, live dance began its gradual return to New York City. The wait had been long, and the longing intense. I remember the first performance I saw in New York as if it were yesterday.
Tag - Gillian Murphy
★★★★✰ I caught four débuts in the lead roles of Giselle and Albrecht: Skylar Brandt with Herman Cornejo on Oct. 21, Thomas Forster alongside Gillian Murphy on Oct. 22, and both Cassandra Trenary and Calvin Royal III at the Oct. 22 matinee
★★★✰✰ The fall season is too brief, particularly because it always feels as though it takes the company a few days to warm itself up. The dancing at the gala on Oct. 17 was a little slapdash, but by Friday things had begun to settle.
★★★★✰ Harlequinade is pure entertainment, a work of art whose entire raison d’être rests on its charm and stylishness. If you require that your art contain deeper meanings, read no further...
★★★★✰ Roberto Bolle, who played his usual striking Albrecht, responded to Seo with nuance and subtlety. The same goes for how Seo revealed Giselle’s madness...
★★★✰✰ The program opened and closed with the most recent works: Jessica Lang’s Her Notes and Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium. Both premiered at ABT in 2016, and both are works whose inspiration largely comes from their scores.
American Ballet Theatre Giselle ★★★★✰ New York, Metropolitan Opera House 26,27 May 2017 www.abt.org Giselle Fever Like Swan Lake, Giselle is a centerpiece of the ballet repertoire; American Ballet Theatre performs it almost every spring season, for good reason. The company’s production is handsome and a bit shopworn, with sets by Gianni Quaranta that were originally designed for the 1987 film...
★★★★✰ Alexei Ratmansky’s new ballet for ABT, Whipped Cream, is like a Viennese confection: so layered and airy that it takes a moment to fully take in the flavor of its many ingredients.
★★★★✰ Making her debut in the role of Odette/Odile 28-year-old soloist Devon Teuscher emerged as a shining star in American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake at the Kennedy Center Opera House last week.
★★★★✰ Jessica Lang's Her Notes is a lovely and poetic work, though one with a slightly subdued effect. It is almost too tasteful.
★★★★✰ A second look at Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium confirms the impression formed last season. It is a fascinating work that represents a new direction for the choreographer.
★★★✰✰ Murphy is a sensual Odette, something made all the more effective by Stearns’ tenderness.
★★★★★ La Fille Mal Gardée is a ballet that glows from within, lighthearted, tender and bursting with happy ideas.
More from ABT's run of Ashton's "Sylvia" - the time Marina Harss reviews Maria Kochetkova and Herman Cornejo...
★★★★✰ Part of the secret to Sylvia is of course Léo Delibes’s score; like the story, it has its silly moments, but when it soars, it is utterly seductive...
José Manuel Carreño on being a great Cuban dancer, now director of Silicon Valley Ballet, and the strong relations developing between the USA and Cuba and what that means for ballet.
A highlight of the season is the return of Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table, made in 1932. This meditation on the folly of war in eight scenes has lost none of its punch...
ABT galas are more laid-back than City Ballet’s; they’re less “produced,” with fewer speeches or slick video presentations. For the most part, the company just gets on with the show, with minimum fuss.
But no end of fine, or even inspired, performances can breathe life into this tired production
Perhaps the most striking element in Alexei Ratmansky’s new Sleeping Beauty for American Ballet Theatre is its musicality, the way the steps, peppered with accents and breaths, unspool within the music.