I was told my body type wasn’t really ideal, and during high school I had ballet teachers who said that maybe I should consider pursuing college because my body wasn’t suitable for classical ballet...
Tag - Kathleen Breen Combes
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...
...the dancers seem able to handle whatever comes their way. It’s a quality that will serve them well in their travels.
To close its 50th anniversary season Boston Ballet mounted a splendid production of Balanchine’s 1967 masterpiece Jewels.
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.
The first bravo for the Boston Ballet's return to London must go to artistic director Mikko Nissinen, for his clever and highly successful programming for opening night.
Boston audiences were very lucky in their first two Swanildas. Opening night, Misa Kuranaga was a vision of loveliness...
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.
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.
And together, Kuranaga and Cirio make a superb couple, performing with such sensitive musicality and balanced unison that it sometimes seems you’re watching a single composite creature.
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.