New York City Ballet – Dances at a Gathering, Everywhere We Go – New York
★★★✰✰ Robbins’ response to Chopin (in Dances at a Gathering) is also extraordinary: sensitive, simple, vulnerable, direct, un-fussy.
New York City Ballet – Balanchine + Wheeldon bill & Jewels – New York
★★★★✰ 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.
New York City Ballet – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – New York
★★★★✰ 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…
New York City Ballet – All Balanchine quad bill including Scotch Symphony – New York
★★★★✰ There’s a reason why New York City Ballet doesn’t do George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony very often. It’s a strangely disjointed ballet…
New York City Ballet – Balanchine, Robbins & Reisen quad bill – Washington
★★★✰✰ Opus 19 feels at once nostalgic, mysterious and dreamy…
New York City Ballet – Apollo, Orpheus, Agon – New York
★★★★✰ Nothing revives a repertory like new casting. So we can be grateful to the interim leadership at New York City Ballet for reconsidering who gets to dance some of the company’s most elemental repertory: Agon, Apollo, Serenade.
New York City Ballet – Apollo, Orpheus, Agon – New York
★★★★✰ There has been a generational shift at New York City Ballet, that much was clear last night in a program of Stravinsky ballets that included two major débuts and several smaller ones…
New York City Ballet – All Robbins No. 4 bill – New York
★★★★✰ It was a good night for Afternoon of a Faun, in particular. Chase Finlay, débuting in the role of the young dancer sensually lolling about a ballet studio, brought back the eroticism this ballet often lacks.
New York City Ballet – All Robbins No. 1 – Bernstein Collaborations bill – New York
★★★✰✰ One of Robbins’ great talents was sniffing out the style of his time, but this inevitably places a date stamp on his work.
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…
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 – Spring Gala with Odessa, Ratmansky premiere – New York
★★★✰✰ With only four works, no intermissions and a run time of less than two hours, New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala was short and to the point.
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…
New York City Ballet – The Times are Racing, The Shimmering Asphalt, Fearful Symmetries – New York
★★★✰✰ More than anything, Peck’s “The Times are Racing” reminded me of the movie Rebel Without a Cause. These kids are uneasy, but what is the object of their unease?
New York City Ballet – Stravinsky x Five bill – New York
★★★✰✰ Alongside George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, one could argue that the third most important voice at New York City Ballet in the twentieth century was that of Igor Stravinsky.
New York City Ballet – La Sonnambula, Prodigal Son, Firebird, Allegro Brillante, Swan Lake, Four Temperaments – New York
★★★★✰ Sara Mearns, who made her name as Swan Queen at the age of nineteen, is still the most thrilling Odette around.
New York City Ballet – Divertimento No. 15, Episodes, Vienna Waltzes – New York
★★★★✰ Divertimento’s aura still shines; you want to see it again, to figure out its fluid, almost magical transitions. It’s a shame it will only be performed four times this season; it takes more than that for the audience, and the dancers, to really get to know it.
New York City Ballet – Fall Gala 2016 – New York
★★★✰✰ The pattern is set: the company commissions works from three or four choreographers, often quite young, and pairs them with prominent designers. The works are short, and are introduced by filmlets…
New York City Ballet – Apollo, The Four Temperaments, Duo Concertant, Symphony in Three Movements – Paris
★★★★✰ The pleasure, above all, in watching this company is their fearless super-charge of energy and their commitment as the inheritors of Balanchine’s ballets.
New York City Ballet – Serenade, Hallelujah Junction, Duo Concertant, Western Symphony – New York
★★★★✰ Balanchine himself once said that Serenade is “many things to many people.” If it is one thing to City Ballet, it is the single ballet which they are expected to do perfectly every time.
