On Sunday, American Ballet Theatre’s two-week fall season draws to a close. By most measures, it’s been a success...
Tag - James Whiteside
Throughout the Bach Partita, Tharp’s movement is technical, precise, and highly articulated. As with Balanchine, the bodies are always distinct, framed in space.
Fashioning a ballet out of The Tempest is no small endeavor. How does one distill Shakespeare’s rather complex play into forty-six wordless minutes....
Because of the ephemeral nature of choreography, it’s unusual for a ballet that has lain dormant for decades to return to life. But this fall, it will...
I have to say that after seeing the Shostakovich Trilogy twice, and picking up many more details ...I found it very compelling indeed, especially the opening and closing ballets.
Symphony in C, a luminous outpouring of legs and arms, crisp geometries, bobbing rhythms, and articulate patter-like conversations for the feet, is a vivid reminder of why one goes to the ballet at all. Luminosity and classical logic, laced with wit and intelligence.
Chroma: Perhaps it’s meant as a kind of sherbet to clear the palate between the Balanchine pieces... In short, I found the ballet dazzling but soulless.
"I think for me the high point is that I don’t see Boston audiences as having any limitations. When I got here everybody was telling me what I couldn’t do and people warned me to play it safe. But I have found people extremely open and willing to explore and I’m really thrilled about that."
And I’ll close with more praise of Maina Gielgud. I’ve never seen a ballet she’s set that hasn’t been absolutely first-rate. Boston Ballet has performed her Giselle for many years now and it’s easily my favorite Giselle, just as this production is now my favorite Don Quixote.
But in Sharper, aggressively awkward movements are kept to a minimum: the ugly is reduced, and the residue now acts like a tonic of wit. And for the first time in Elo’s work, at least in my experience, we find a lyricism and beauty so profound they sometimes took my breath away.
Symphony in Three Movements: This collaboration of two of the giants of 20th century art (Balanchine, Stravinsky) was clearly a marriage made in heaven, and thanks to Boston Ballet’s newest production, we got to attend the nuptials.