★★★★✰ 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.
Tag - Sterling Hyltin
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ 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.
★★★★✰ Vienna Waltzes is a sure-fire hit. It seduces on many fronts: the ridiculously flattering gowns by Karinska (her last for the company), the sumptuous music, the multitudes of dancers...
★★★✰✰ What do you do with a problem like Jewels? This 1967 blockbuster by George Balanchine is a hard one to pull off...
★★★★✰ New York is a good place to be in springtime.
★★★✰✰ 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...
★★★✰✰ The first of two mixed programs that New York City Ballet presented at the Kennedy Center Opera House in March offered a wide variety of works...
★★★✰✰ Handsome to look at, with its film-noir lighting and flattering black 1940’s style dresses (by Marc Happel), Jeux nevertheless proves to be rather thin...
★★★✰✰ "Incredible is Peck’s first narrative, and this fact was obvious Tuesday night, particularly in the opening scenes which lacked clarity..."
★★★★✰ Some nights at the ballet you just get lucky: all the works are beautiful and the program is well balanced, and each of the casts is led by a ballerina who seems just right for the role.
★★★✰✰ Lauren Gallagher at New York City Ballet's Winter Season Opening where they introduced their new music director, Andrew Litton, in some style by naming the bill "Music Director's Choice"...
Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker... has been described as a “symphony of childhood”; it is that, and more.
Jeux, has a distinctly adult atmosphere and a highly cinematic look. Actually, the look might be the most interesting thing about it...
A great Liebeslieder is like a short story, a complete world in fifty minutes of dancing; this Liebeslieder is still a work in progress.
Nobody surpasses New York City Ballet in sleekness and urbanity. The company is like a glistening skyscraper: sharp-edged, diamantine and, sometimes, a little cold...
George Balanchine’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is really two ballets, layered one upon the other.
After a week of modernist works by Balanchine set mostly to Stravinsky, Hindemith, Webern, there’s no denying that a night of French music falls sweetly on the ear.
At first glance, it’s hard to think of two choreographers more unalike than August Bournonville and Balanchine...