World-class review of ballet and dance.
On February 27th, at a matinee performance, New York City Ballet’s Gonzalo García retired after fifteen years at the company, following ten at San Francisco Ballet. He’s 42—a respectable retirement age for a dancer, and he surely has his share of aches and pains. His retirement comes just as three young men in the company have been promoted to principal status. A wave of change has arrived at City Ballet.
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As we blink from the stupor of the near-hibernation of New Year and slowly come around to (supposedly) changing seasons, Northern Ballet have provided some incredible work on film to watch as storms batter the United Kingdom. Here is a round up of some of the most interesting ones to catch online. The artistry is superb, inventive and all have completely distinct visions in their ouevre.
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Principal dancer Teresa Reichlen bade the New York City Ballet adieu last weekend after 22 years. She had been slated to retire with Peter Martins’s full-length “Swan Lake,” but thanks to the Omicron variant of Covid she had to settle for Balanchine’s one-act “Swan Lake” instead. At 37 years old, she did not exactly retire young. But physically, her departure seemed premature. The fact that she was planning to dance the full-length “SL” speaks for itself. Most principals exit long past their ability to get through that gauntlet. But Reichlen was always something of an outlier.
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“There is only the dance” T.S. Eliot wrote in 1936 in “Burnt Norton,” the first poem in his seminal late work, Four Quartets. Yet there has only been an actual dance set to this quartet since 2018, when choreographer Pam Tanowitz became the first person granted permission by the Eliot estate to choreograph to the text. The resulting work had its NYC premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last week. The Four Quartets really speak to dance lovers, as was evidenced by the large crowd of balletomanes at BAM. (I confess they among my favorite poems.) Dramaturge Gideon Lester...
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San Francisco Ballet topped international dance news lately with the announcement that Tamara Rojo will take over as artistic director next year, succeeding New York City Ballet star Helgi Tomasson after his 37-year tenure. What has San Francisco Ballet, once a second-tier West Coast company, become under Tomasson’s leadership? Well, in institutional size SFB is now second only to New York City Ballet among US companies, with an annual budget of $52 million. In repertory, it counts ballets by most of the major international talents, many of these commissioned in massive new works festivals.
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This was supposed to be the week New York City Ballet was to dance Peter Martins’s full-length version of “Swan Lake.” Because the rapid spread of Omicron forced the company to shorten its rehearsal period, that production was replaced with George Balanchine’s one-act version, which has been combined with other repertory ballets. No regrets—Martins’ “Swan” is a cold, bleak affair—but some of the resulting programs have been a bit of a grab-bag. Consider the one on February 15th, which included the high-modernist 1946 work “The Four Temperaments,” combined with the breezy pas de deux “Sonatine,” followed by a stand-alone “Black...
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Thankfully, no further Covid disruptions have marred the company’s winter season, though fear-of-Omicron has kept the houses less than full. A shame, since the company is dancing so well. This week and next, Balanchine’s one-act “Swan Lake” has been added to the mix, in place of the originally-scheduled full evening production by Peter Martins. Even “Swan Lake” has not been enough to fill the house, though it was noticeably more populated on the evening of February 11 than it had been a few days earlier.
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New York City Ballet’s Visionary Voices program featured one world premiere, Jamar Roberts’s “Emanon—In Two Movements,” and two recent additions to the repertory: Pam Tanowitz’s “Bartók Ballet” from 2019 and Kyle Abraham’s “The Runaway” from 2018. It was a surprise that the newest piece felt like it was the oldest, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Rather, it was delightfully unexpected that the most overt Balanchine ode I’ve seen in a while came from the resident choreographer of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
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Philadelphia Ballet premiered three commissions in a program called New Works for a New World last weekend in the intimate Perelman Theater. Also part of the Kimmel Cultural Campus, the company will continue to mount its large classical ballets at the Academy of Music, including artistic director Ángel Corella’s choreographed “Swan Lake” in March. The Perelman is now the designated venue for contemporary works.
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It’s been a busy week of débuts at New York City Ballet. With several departures last season, and more to come (including Teresa Reichlen in less than two weeks, and Gonzalo García at the end of the month), the company is going through something of a generational shift. The impression is magnified by the fact that some of the principal dancers are out with injuries, leaving the lion’s share of performances to younger principals or rising soloists, dancers like Indiana Woodward, Unity Phelan, Mira Nadon, Jovani Furlan, Roman Mejía, Chun Wai Chan (making a major mark after just a season...
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At last, the highly anticipated Ballet International Gala (BIG) premiered to a very eager audience. Organised by Queensport Arts—a newly formed promotional company, headed by dancer/actor Joel Burke, and associates Beck Phillips, and Kahlid Tarabay—it showcased some of the most in-demand talent from across the globe live on the mainstage. Seeing the list of dancers slated to perform was quite astounding; not least because covid travel restrictions have, up until this point, have limited international access to the state. Skylar Brandt and Aran Bell from American Ballet Theatre; Shugyla Adepkhan and Bakhtiyar Adamzhan from Astana Opera; Alexander Campbell from the...
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There is a lovely egalitarian spirit in Go Dance, the mini-festival at Theatre Royal. It features dancers of all abilities, age groups, backgrounds and body types. Tonight though, it's mainly focused on emerging dancers, with the exception of established company Inspire (more of whom, later.) Rescheduled due to the pandemic, it's great to see its return. With family members cheering on their offspring, and dance fans also in attendance, it's hard not to get swept up in the obvious bonhomie.
Continue ReadingWatching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...
Continue ReadingThe choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
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Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.
Continue ReadingAfter a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.
Continue ReadingAn “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
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