A Journey of Healing
Across North Africa, the all-night music-dance-trance ritual called lila (pronounced lee-lah) is celebrated as a means for spiritual healing.
FREE ARTICLEWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
The New York City Ballet’s excellent 2023 Fall Season featured only the works of founding choreographer George Balanchine. This winter, eight choreographers are being showcased as the company’s 75th anniversary celebration continues. But on paper, the most well-conceived program is another all-Balanchine one: the combination of “The Four Temperaments” and “Liebeslieder Walzer.” These ballets present both sides of the Balanchine coin: his stark coolness as well as his lush romanticism. On Tuesday night, however, a wan “4Ts” and a somewhat miscast “Liebeslieder” failed to make this contrast pop, though there were some thrilling individual performances in both pieces that hinted at this bill’s latent potency.
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Across North Africa, the all-night music-dance-trance ritual called lila (pronounced lee-lah) is celebrated as a means for spiritual healing.
FREE ARTICLEThe Fall for Dance Festival programming formula runs roughly thus: feature a new troupe, include a pet (or vanity) project of a big NYC star, and end with a feel-good group showcase.
PlusHe is the love of your life. You are his one-and-only. The pair of you is doomed: Obligations to the social order make your relationship impossible. The only way out—double suicide. Actually, this being eighteenth-century Japan, you let him literally do it all; still, you are his forever and there is no turning back.
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Oh, thank you Mindy!
Good points here; the production and performances are sharply observed. We see the stage events in a welcomely fresh way. One note: Balanchine went on record as saying that the setting for Liebeslieder he had in mind was not based on anything in Vienna but rather on a rococo building in Munich—the Amalienburg Park palace.
https://www.schloss-nymphenburg.de/englisch/p-palaces/amalien.htm
A delightful reading of performances I missed while recovering at home from surgery. The review had me visualizing the ballets as if sitting in the theater.