★★★★✰ Marina Harss with thoughts/observations on La Valse, Other Dances, After the Rain pas de deux, Agon, Monumentum Pro Gesualdo, Movements for Piano and Orchestra and Chaconne.
Tag - Lauren King
★★★★✰ "Boy is it good to be in the presence of dancers and musicians again." concludes Marina Harss review of New York City Ballet’s fall season opening performance.
There was a rush of emotion at seeing these extraordinary dancers doing the thing they do best. Their energy, precision, and drive, the way they change the space around them, is inspiring...
★★★✰✰ Robbins’ response to Chopin (in Dances at a Gathering) is also extraordinary: sensitive, simple, vulnerable, direct, un-fussy.
★★★★✰ It makes a noticeable difference when Litton, music director of the company, is in the pit; the orchestra has presence and sings, providing a convincing counterpart for the dancing.
★★★★✰ For Balanchine, Shakespeare’s characters are two-dimensional types, exemplary but wholly unreal. They are shadows in a shadow-play, representing this or that quality...
★★★★✰ There is a palpable sense of hope among the dancers; again and again, they rise to the occasion. The opening-night program reflected this resilience and gave reason for hope.
★★★✰✰ One of the earliest things I appreciated about Balanchine is that he made me feel okay about liking Tschaikovsky (as NYCB likes to spell it)...
★★★✰✰ It’s fascinating to see how Balanchinean charm and wit are interpreted by dancers for whom the Balanchine repertoire is more of a foreign language.
★★★✰✰ In his staging of La Sylphide, Martins not only removes the intermission, thus shortening the performance time, he also accelerates the pace of the events. It feels as if the story rushes at you with...
There were three débuts at New York City Ballet last night: Zachary Catazaro in Apollo, Russell Janzen in Duo Concertant, and Lauren King in the role I think of as the "jumping girl" in Symphony in Three Movements.
If Harlequinade is somewhat less than the sum of its parts, Square Dance (1957), which preceded it on the program, never fails to lift the heart.
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...?