Love Letter to Mother Nature
Ballet X gave a performance of “The Four Seasons Reimagined” on June 11, 2026, at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in a premiere week that began at its home base in Philadelphia’s Highmark Mann.
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World-class review of ballet and dance.
As I watched this evening of works made by 13 choreographers who grew up in the NYC-based after school dance program run by Ellen Robbins, I couldn’t help but think of a heated debate the dance community took up sometime in the aughts over the question, can choreography be taught? Peter Martins, then director of New York City Ballet, claimed it could not. Nearly everyone else disagreed. Surely this Dances By Very Young Choreographers alumni concert erases any lingering doubt. Robbins, now in her 41st year of teaching, produces a public show every year of the remarkable creations of her young makers, ages six to eighteen. One can assume many now populate arts audiences everywhere. And then there are those featured in this alumni concert at New York Live Arts, who go on to dance degrees and performance careers of their own.
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“Switchbacks” by Saskia Globig and Michael Ipsen, part of Dances by Very Young Choreographers Alumni Concert. Photograph by Alice Chacon
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Ballet X gave a performance of “The Four Seasons Reimagined” on June 11, 2026, at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in a premiere week that began at its home base in Philadelphia’s Highmark Mann.
PlusSprinkled throughout Liz Lerman’s most recent book, Shape and Momentum, are references to witches. They are our companions and guides, and they come bearing spells and poetry culled from Lerman’s 10-year choreographic project, “Wicked Bodies.”
PlusScottish Ballet’s artistic director Christopher Hampson CBE has long been a champion of storytelling from a completely unique perspective. So too, with These Violent Delights: the first feature-length film from the company.
PlusThe theme driving Misty Copeland’s curation of the Joyce Theater’s Ballet Festival was “to center Black, Brown, and Queer artists.”
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