Carlos Acosta – Dancer, Directer, Choreographer: ‘I am a man on a mission – I always have been’
“That’s what it’s always been about for me – the necessity to connect with an audience and express myself.”
New York City Ballet – Jewels & All Balanchine 4bill – New York
★★★★✰ The company seemed to be dancing with a special ferocity, as if to prove its worth and convince the world that this enterprise is, indeed, worth preserving and saving.
Co.Lab Dance – Seen by Two, Almost Ritual, The Bright Motion, Sketches – New York
★★★✰✰ What will Co.Lab become? I look forward to finding out. Meanwhile, it’s simply encouraging to see these dancers and emerging choreographers create something of their own.
New York City Ballet – All Robbins No. 2 and Tribute to Robbins bills – New York
★★★★✰ The centenary celebration bills are more than enough to give a sense of Robbins’ breadth, theatrical savvy, stylistic curiosities, and, perhaps most unique of all, his ability to present dancers as human beings onstage.
New York City Ballet – Concerto Barocco, Agon, The Four Temperaments – New York
★★✰✰✰ Last week, on Thursday night, with the exception of The Four Temperaments, the company’s thoughts appeared to be elsewhere…
Interview – Annabelle Lopez Ochoa on creating Guernica for SF Ballet’s Unbound Festival
“I don’t know if we can make the world a better place, but we can definitely have the audience think about it.”
San Francisco Ballet – Unbound Festival Program A: works by Alonzo King, Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck – San Francisco
★★★★✰ If Helgi Tomasson was hoping that Unbound: A Festival of New Works would generate heated debate on the state of ballet today, his wish has already been fulfilled just one night into the massive festival…
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel (choreography by Justin Peck) – New York
★★★★✰ One of the most attractive things about the production is the way it brings together various worlds: ballet, Broadway, and opera.
San Francisco Ballet – Serenade, The Chairman Dances, Rodeo – San Francisco
★★★✰✰ Not all, but many pas de deuxs have a romantic subtext, whether intentional or not. But in Rodeo Peck has crafted a pas de deux celebrating introductions and the process of getting to know another person.
New York City Ballet – All Balanchine No. 1 & 2, 21st Century Choreographers bills – New York
★★★★✰ After much tumult over the holidays, New York City Ballet has begun its first post-Peter Martins season. If you’re just catching up, the company’s “ballet master in chief” – ie artistic director – of over thirty years retired on New Years Day, in the midst of an investigation into allegations of physical abuse and sexual harassment.
New York City Ballet – Liturgy, Polyphonia, Odessa, The Times are Racing – New York
★★★★✰ The oldest piece on the program is Wheeldon’s Polyphonia. Made in 2001, it has stood the test of time. Just last week it was performed at the Fall for Dance festival…
Acosta Danza – Debut bill – London
★★★✰✰ Belles-Lettres – a piece by NYCB’s Justin Peck, reworked for Acosta Danza – is a sweepingly pretty pieces for nine dancers, all floaty, gorgeous frocks and increasingly impassioned duets…
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 – Stars & Stripes, Fearful Symmetries, The Times Are Racing – Saratoga Springs
★★★✰✰ Stars and Stripes premiered in 1958, and the Russian emigree demonstrates his affection for the quintessential writer of om-pah music in his adopted country by subverting the common association that marching is all about knee action.
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 – Square Dance, Tarantella, Odessa, Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes – Washington
★★★★★ Alexei Ratmansky’s Odessa left me breathless. The dancing (I saw both casts) was phenomenal on all levels: assured, expressive, and thoroughly dramatic.
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 – HERE/NOW Festival, Justin Peck Quad bill – New York
★★★✰✰ Justin Peck is the it-boy at New York City Ballet, and it’s not hard to see why. At only 29, he has racked up an impressive number of ballets…
New York City Ballet – HERE/NOW Festival, Wheeldon Quad bill – New York
★★★✰✰ It’s a shame that the company didn’t choose to revive some Wheeldon rarities from its back catalogue…
Ballet Across America – Opening Night Celebration 2017 – Washington
★★★★✰ Ballet Across America – a festival that showcases the stylistic, creative and geographical diversity of American ballet – returned to the Kennedy Center this month…
