★★★★✰ Jessica Lang's Her Notes is a lovely and poetic work, though one with a slightly subdued effect. It is almost too tasteful.
Tag - Jeffrey Cirio
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★✰✰ Le Corsaire, a ballet loosely based on Lord Byron’s poem about a chivalrous pirate, has more action than the latest Bond film. There are pirates! Abductions! Beautiful women in distress! The list goes on and on...
★★★★★ La Fille Mal Gardée is a ballet that glows from within, lighthearted, tender and bursting with happy ideas.
★★★✰✰ Shostakovich Trilogy is a rich work, containing too much to take in at a single sitting. It reveals some of its secrets, but not all.
★★★★✰ It isn’t often that a gala program proves satisfying, but this one was the exception.
"I feel as though now that I’m older, working smart is the best thing as a dancer and artist. It’s not about NOT trying as hard as when I was younger, but really thinking about things."
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.
Boston Ballet closed its season with a generous offering of four ballets spanning almost 70 years... and including a world premiere and two company premieres...
The evening was full of surprises, not least that two of the three choreographers were women and that Jorma Elo broke radically new ground in his Bach Cello Suites...
All three performances brought home the fact that this is a very strong company with the skills to perform any choreography that comes its way...
McBride joined the New York City Ballet in 1959, and two years later, at the age of 18, she was promoted to the rank of principal, becoming the youngest principal dancer in the troupe's history.
At my first performance, Ashley Ellis was a first-rate Odette/Odile, giving a nearly flawless performance. (I’m assuming that flawless performances transpire only in Heaven or some other extraterrestial locale.)
Like the best comedians, Ekman is as facetious as he is profound, leaving the viewer with plenty to ponder post-performance.
To close its 50th anniversary season Boston Ballet mounted a splendid production of Balanchine’s 1967 masterpiece Jewels.
The evening ended with Alexander Ekman’s Cacti, one of the most wildly original, hilarious dances I’ve ever seen. If the Keystone Cops had taken up ballet, this is what they’d have looked like.
Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella is one of the great ballets of the 20th century and a triumph of his career.
As for the whole ballet, it’s a 19th century expression of the racist Orientalist view that says India is a land of groveling slaves and despotic rajahs, unbridled lust and pervasive corruption, abundant opium and yielding odalisques. ...Once past all that, however, it’s a lavish and thrilling spectacle with abundant pleasures for eye and ear.
Boston audiences were very lucky in their first two Swanildas. Opening night, Misa Kuranaga was a vision of loveliness...
The opening night Aurora and Désiré were danced by Misa Kuranaga and Jeffrey Cirio, a superbly matched couple who have become a standard in the company.