Some Memorable Performances of 2019 – New York
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…
New York City Ballet – Dances at a Gathering, Everywhere We Go – New York
★★★✰✰ Robbins’ response to Chopin (in Dances at a Gathering) is also extraordinary: sensitive, simple, vulnerable, direct, un-fussy.
New York City Ballet – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – New York
★★★★✰ 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…
New York City Ballet – Balanchine, Robbins & Reisen quad bill – Washington
★★★✰✰ Opus 19 feels at once nostalgic, mysterious and dreamy…
New York City Ballet – Apollo, Orpheus, Agon – New York
★★★★✰ Nothing revives a repertory like new casting. So we can be grateful to the interim leadership at New York City Ballet for reconsidering who gets to dance some of the company’s most elemental repertory: Agon, Apollo, Serenade.
New York City Ballet – Apollo, Orpheus, Agon – New York
★★★★✰ There has been a generational shift at New York City Ballet, that much was clear last night in a program of Stravinsky ballets that included two major débuts and several smaller ones…
New York City Ballet – Fall Gala: new work by Schumacher, Reisen, Lovette, Peck – New York
★★★✰✰ At New York City Ballet, the fall fashion gala has become a showcase for work by young choreographers. Each one is paired up with a fashion designer and voilà, it’s an event.
New York City Ballet – American Rhapsody, The Four Temperaments, The Times Are Racing – Washington
★★★✰✰ To watch works created by the 29-year old Justin Peck, resident choreographer of New York City Ballet, is to experience what it feels like to be young.
New York City Ballet – HERE/NOW Festival No. 6 & 8 including Peck’s The Decalogue (premiere) – New York
★★★✰✰ With his latest, The Decalogue, which opened on May 12, Justin Peck seems to have turned a new page…
New York City Ballet – Apollo, The Four Temperaments, Duo Concertant, Symphony in Three Movements – Paris
★★★★✰ 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.
New York City Ballet – Ballo della Regina, Kammermusik No. 2, Vienna Waltzes – New York
★★★★✰ Vienna Waltzes is a sure-fire hit. It seduces on many fronts: the ridiculously flattering gowns by Karinska (her last for the company), the sumptuous music, the multitudes of dancers…
New York City Ballet – La Sylphide, Bournonville Divertissements – Washington
★★★✰✰ In his staging of La Sylphide, Martins not only removes the intermission, thus shortening the performance time, he also accelerates the pace of the events. It feels as if the story rushes at you with…
New York City Ballet – Walpurgisnacht Ballet, Sonatine, Mozartiana, Symphony in C – New York
★★★★✰ Some nights at the ballet you just get lucky: all the works are beautiful and the program is well balanced, and each of the casts is led by a ballerina who seems just right for the role.
New York City Ballet – Fall Gala, with 4 premieres – New York
Nobody surpasses New York City Ballet in sleekness and urbanity. The company is like a glistening skyscraper: sharp-edged, diamantine and, sometimes, a little cold…
Works and Process at the Guggenheim – Petipa, Balanchine and Harlequinade
The most recent Works & Process at the Guggenheim looked at Commedia dell’arte ballets from Petipa (“Les millions d’Arlequin”) and Balanchine: “Harlequinade”…
New York City Ballet – Walpurgisnacht Ballet, Sonatine, La Valse, Symphony in C – New York
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.
New York City Ballet – Symphonic Dances, Pictures at an Exhibition, This Bitter Earth, Everywhere We Go – Washington
New York City Ballet’s second bill in Washington was all about 21st-Century Choreographers, with works by Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck and Peter Martins.
New York City Ballet – Serenade, Agon and Symphony in C – Washington
Oksana Khadarina reviews the Serenade, Agon and Symphony in C bill – prepare for many happy adjectives and lots of history…
New York City Ballet – Hear The Dance: America bill – New York
The most obvious, and pleasurable aspect of New York City Ballet’s mixed bill Hear the Dance: America is its juxtaposition of two very different works by Jerome Robbins.
New York City Ballet – Square Dance, Harlequinade – New York
If Harlequinade is somewhat less than the sum of its parts, Square Dance (1957), which preceded it on the program, never fails to lift the heart.
