So Far So Good
The School of American Ballet is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. So is George Balanchine’s iconic “Serenade”—the first piece he made in America in 1934, choreographed on students from his brand-new academy.
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Sacramento Ballet executive and artistic director Anthony Krutzkamp dresses sharp and gives a memorable pre-curtain speech. The way he tells it, the Central California company was in rehearsals for “Swan Lake” last year when he realized he faced an enviable problem: the dancers were too good for the ballets he’d programmed under a five-year plan. So Krutzkamp scrapped that plan and got on the phone, securing a commission from the internationally rising South African choreographer Andrea Schermoly. He then asked San Francisco-based Val Caniparoli for the rights to his widely performed “Ibsen’s House,” and decided to round the program out with Balanchine’s “Apollo.” That last ballet, from 1928, was arguably the only really innovative work on a mixed-rep bill titled “Innovations”—but I’m not complaining. The best thing about this slate was that it proved Krutzkamp right about the dancers. They look like they can take on anything.
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The School of American Ballet is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. So is George Balanchine’s iconic “Serenade”—the first piece he made in America in 1934, choreographed on students from his brand-new academy.
PlusSometimes there’s not much you’re able to say analytically about a dance work, and yet you know you’ve just witnessed a blood-guts-and-soul offering from an artist of the keenest kinaesthetic intelligence. Such was the case with gizeh muñiz vengel’s “auiga,” second on a double bill finale for the ARC Edge residency at San Francisco’s CounterPulse.
PlusThe Australian Museum Mammalogy Collection holds ten specimens of the Bramble Cay Melomys collected from 1922–24, when they were in abundance. One hundred years later, a familiar photo of a wide-eyed, mosaic-tailed Melomys, the first native mammal to become extinct due to the impacts of climate change, greets me as I enter the Arts House foyer.
FREE ARTICLEPre-pandemic, queerness and ballet were two terms not often put together. So, when choreographer Adriana Pierce started bringing a community of queer-identifying people together on Zoom—cis women, trans people of all genders, and nonbinary dancers—it felt like a watershed moment for many of them.
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That’s the beauty of Balanchine, isn’t it? The works can withstand almost any casting with their essences intact, but every dancer who passes through them alters the tenor of each piece too. As do the stagers. Wish I could’ve seen this group, but thank you Rachel for the lovely reporting!