A Parisian Dream
A participatory eagerness, a desire to be part of something sweet and beautiful, suffused the return of George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to San Francisco Ballet on the cusp of spring.
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Frederick Ashton’s much-loved “Rhapsody” is perhaps epitomised by the scene in which six male dancers hold the lead aloft and parade him around like a king, a ring of glittering ballerinas encircling the reverent display. The plotless ballet, created as a birthday present for the Queen Mother in 1980 and presented here as part of a double bill celebrating the Royal Ballet’s founding choreographer, is all about spectacle—in fact, Ashton specifically enlisted Mikhail Baryshnikov, Russian virtuoso extraordinaire, for the starring role to ensure the piece had a central spark powerful enough to ignite the blaze of majesty he envisioned.
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Francesca Hayward and James Hay in Frederick Ashton's “Rhapsody.” Photograph by Helen Maybanks
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A participatory eagerness, a desire to be part of something sweet and beautiful, suffused the return of George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to San Francisco Ballet on the cusp of spring.
Continue ReadingEntering his 10th year as artistic director of Philadelphia Ballet, Ángel Corella put his artists through a ring of fire in their early spring concert at the Academy of Music.
Continue ReadingIn her 1951 autobiography Dance to the Piper, Agnes de Mille spends seven pages describing in colorful detail what it was like to be on the road with the Ballets Russes.
FREE ARTICLESix dancers enter from stage left and position themselves along the rear wall, their backs to the audience. Today, the light through a row of windows casts them in silhouette.
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