Two young NYCB choreographers have been out talking and showing what they do: Justin Peck at the Guggenheim and Troy Schumacher at the 92nd Street Y. Marina Harss on why they are so worth tracking...
Tag - Justin Peck
Watching these three ballets, made over a span of thirty-two years, one can see how Balanchine’s style evolved toward the hyper-stylization of Violin Concerto...
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories this last year...
So Reflections could have a lot resting on it, if the eventual tryptich is to be a 21st century equivalent of Balanchine’s Jewels...
What most struck me on this particular evening was the transparency, and clarity of intention, that marked each work.
Amid all the fuss about the costumes, the choreogaphy paled... What a joy, then, to see a section of Western Symphony, with those marvelous frou-frou tutus by Karinska and that euphoric outpouring of Balanchine’s’ crisp, witty steps.
The Ballet v6.0 Festival has just been on at New York's Joyce Theater and Marina Harss was there for. So where are young choreographers taking contemporary ballet...?
Creases revealed, once again, Just Peck’s ability to create strikingly imaginative patterns and formations onstage.
Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon is currently at the San Francisco Ballet preparing for the American premiere of his Cinderella. He has a rehearsal in forty-five minutes so we quickly set off to discuss his latest full-length ballet and many other things...
Teresa Reichlen - known as Tess by friends and colleagues - is an immediately striking dancer: tall, pale, preternaturally serene. She could be a Madonna in a painting by Botticelli.
Sara Mearns has been New York City Ballet’s reigning Swan Queen since her breakout performance in 2006, when she was only nineteen years old and a member the corps de ballet. It was a performance of surprising intensity, edged with danger.
It’s a good thing indeed when a visit to the ballet turns out to be a night full of surprises, all of them good.
Dance is a difficult thing to experience outside of the theatre, but for the sustainability of the artform it has to find a way to make itself more widely available.
There should be more nights like this at New York City Ballet.
"It’s very lonely out there... I mean, it would be nice to have some sort of mentorship with regard to what it takes to be a choreographer."
What is there to say about Orpheus, except that it seems to slip deeper into the recesses of time? I’ve read that at the première, the critic and poet Edwin Denby was so moved by it that he sat dumbfounded during intermission, unable to stand. It is difficult to imagine such a reaction today.
After the dreary bombast of Alexei Ratmansky's recent Firebird for American Ballet Theatre, the Balanchine/Robbins version, with its blessedly shorter score (Stravinsky's Firebird Suite), heavenly Chagall designs and the great Ashley Bouder in one of her first great roles, was a welcome palliative.
Equal parts free spirit and self-disciplinarian, Emery LeCrone manages to make the creative life look easy.
Fortunately, Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story Suite, the final dance of the evening, was anything but tedious. One of the greatest entertainers in ballet, Robbins knew how to keep his audiences awake, engaged, and excited.