★★★★✰ "It’s not often that I’ve seen a Nutcracker receive a standing ovation, but as the curtain fell and Clara ran to greet her mother, there was nothing to do but stand and applaud."
Tag - Joseph Walsh
★★★✰✰ All three pieces (by Alexei Ratmansky, Danielle Rowe and Yuri Possokhov) were strong, though the program itself felt a bit curious.
★★★★✰ 'Spellbound' delivered in every regard – opulent grandeur, terrific people watching and above all, marvelous dance.
★★★★✰ the overall impression was of the wholly American spirit of the company – peppy, vivacious, determined and running at full-tilt.
Alexei Ratmansky's Shostakovich Trilogy comprises Symphony #9, Chamber Symphony and Piano Concerto #1. Gallery by Foteini Christofilopoulou...
★★★✰✰ The choreography in Shostakovich Trilogy, which was co-commissioned by SFB and ABT and premiered in 2014, is as frustratingly capricious as the music.
★★★✰✰ Liam Scarlett has great taste in dancers. For the 29 March world premiere of Die Toteninsel, his fourth commission for San Francisco Ballet, the British choreographer chose the lyrical and athletic principal Joseph Walsh and soloist Lauren Strongin...
★★★✰✰ Program 5, titled Lyric Voices, welcomed back Trey McIntyre’s Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem and Christopher Wheeldon’s Bound To and the new work came from Yuri Possokhov...
★★★✰✰ The performance was thrilling ...because it marked the Aurora debut of soloist Wona Park, whose Kitri debut in the season-opening Don Quixote got loads of buzz. At just 19, she dances with an ease beyond her years...
San Francisco Ballet – Trio, Ghost in the Machine (premiere), Within the Golden Hour – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Myles Thatcher is an inventive young talent...
★★★✰✰ The soloists and principals of San Francisco Ballet brought unique interpretations to George Balanchine classics for the company’s fourth program of the season, a varied survey of Balanchine’s oeuvre.
★★★✰✰ It was a dark and stormy night – San Francisco Ballet couldn’t have designed a more apt and ominous atmosphere for the opening of Liam Scarlett’s Frankenstein.
★★✰✰✰ The trouble with Program 2 is its centerpiece, choreographer-in-residence Yuri Possokhov’s new work 'Optimistic Tragedy'.
★★★★✰ The company’s first regular-season commission from Czech choreographer Jiří Bubeníček, "Fragile Vessels", is a 40-minute meditation on love, loss and reconciliation.
★★★✰✰ Yet for all its narrative surprises and witty designs, this Cinderella is a curiously underwhelming work when it comes to the choreography.
★★★★✰ San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet and Houston Ballet have come together in LA to celebrate William Forsythe probably the most influential ballet choreographer of his generation. Claudia Bauer reports on a fine night...
★★★★✰ San Francisco Ballet (SFB) saved the best for its last mixed bill of the 2016 season.
★★★✰✰ "But despite his high concept, Scarlett seemed to lose the thread halfway through, resorting to lascivious theatrics to complete the work..."
★★★★✰ "....that is what is marvelous about Forsythe's Pas/Parts. Would that more choreographers would offer that kind of brisk and bracing slap in the face."
★★★✰✰ By way of a défilé, the evening opened with the “Waltz of the Hours” from Balanchine and Danilova’s Coppélia ...Soloist Jennifer Stahl led two dozen girls from the SFB School, adorable in cotton-candy tutus.