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REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

À la Française

Why program George Balanchine’s 1968 ballet “La Source” with Alexei Ratmansky’s 2010 “Namouna, A Grand Divertissement,” as New York City Ballet has done this season? The thing that binds the two ballets together is a similar spirit, born of their common origin: the Paris Opéra. Both are set to lustrous music composed by 19th century French composers (Léo Delibes and Édouard Lalo) for grandiose ballets filled with adventure and set in magical locales. Both Balanchine and Ratmansky have dispensed with their original plots, to differing degrees—Ratmansky keeps the whiff of a story and the notion of characters with specific traits,...

INTERVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

The Daisy Age: Dominique Larose

Northern Ballet's critically-acclaimed adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” now in its tenth year, is back on May 16th at Sadler's Wells. With superb choreography from David Nixon CBE, audiences are sure to be dazzled by their highly visual, pulse-raising production, which promises to go deep into the scandals, decadence, wild parties and heart-rending tragedies. Above all, the piece will explore the huge moral ambiguity at the heart of the classic Jazz Age drama.

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Fabulously Dismantled

In Bobbi Jene Smith’s “Broken Theater,” 12 performers play artists unmoored and unraveling in a dark theater. The New York premiere of this work at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre last Saturday evening, as part of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival in association with American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), immersed the audience in a raucous dance theater work that reckoned with temporal and terminal themes. Layers of text, live music, and movement, built to an intensity that eventually stripped the production bare, exposing the trembling gap between artifice and reality.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Victory Lap

Dance Theatre of Harlem kicked off its final season under the artistic directorship of Virginia Johnson with a superb program at City Center that surveyed the troupe’s history. The bill went in chronological order, beginning with Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante,” choreographed in 1956 and first danced by DTH in 1975. (Arthur Mitchell, DTH’s founder, was the first Black principal dancer with the New York City Ballet; Balanchine helped him to start his own company in 1969.)

REVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

Shape and Story

For many, the movement of the human body is something that can be innately understood. The shapes we make with our limbs have the power to share stories. And the meaning we find in these shapes—and in the dances we make when we combine them—is something that so easily speaks to the soul. Ballet West’s season closer triple bill, “The Wedding,” draws out each of these elements of dance’s ethos.

INTERVIEWS | By Chava Pearl Lansky

Dance from the Archives

In 2014, five years before writer Toni Morrison passed away, Princeton University acquired a collection of the luminary’s personal papers, letters, and manuscripts. The goal behind the collection (known as the Toni Morrison Papers) is to inspire original creations across genres; a more forward-thinking approach than simply cultivating research on Morrison and her work.

REVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

Dances for Utah

It’s unlikely that when José Limón choreographed “The Winged” in 1966 he had the 200 different species of migratory birds that rely on Utah’s Great Salt Lake at the top of mind. And when Donald McKayle created “I’ve Known Rivers” in 2005, he was inspired by Langston Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and by Pearl Primus and Janet Collins, not the many river drainages that are being diverted from the Salt Lake. But, what’s wonderful about great art is that it’s timeless—it can conjure many things depending on who is watching and where they come from.

REVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Ballet for Life

Kyiv-born Iana Salenko, a principal dancer at the Staatsballett Berlin, together with Oleksandr Shpak created their second benefit gala to support humanitarian projects in Ukraine, especially for children. “We'll keep at it,” Salenko had promised after the overwhelming success of the first “Ballet for Life” in 2022. “The suffering and death in Ukraine continue, day after day, night after night. Again and again, children are the victims of war, and the numbers are growing,” says Salenko.

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Tapping into History

We hear the dancers before we see them, and that's the point: “Not to watch, but to listen to,” the recorded voice of “Baby” Laurence Jackson instructs. We hear fluttering then see furious tapping as the curtain rises on “Hoofer's Memory Lab,” which opened New York City Center's latest “Artists at the Center” program curated by Ayodele Casel.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Starry Night

As someone who did time in the jazz and tap competition circuit and then Regional Dance America festivals, I was curious to see the Gala performance for the Youth American Grand Prix, which has become one of the biggest dance competitions in the world. The YAGP, in its 24th year, holds annual events in 30 American cities and 15 international ones, giving out half a million dollars in scholarships. I’ve recently covered the more conventional pathways to a dance career: junior troupes and institutional workshops. The YAGP provides yet another route to professional employment, particularly for students who reside outside...

REVIEWS | By Madelyn Coupe

An Intimate Ballet Blanc

Adapting to unforeseen circumstances has become a common occurrence for Queensland Ballet in recent years. Not only has the pandemic tested the company’s ability to adjust to change, but so too has extreme and catastrophic weather. “Giselle” was slated to return to the stage last year, for the first time in a decade. Yet, a few weeks out from opening night, a devastating announcement came—Queensland Ballet had to cancel their season due to the damages inflicted by recent floods, and the company’s ability to perform “Giselle” was swiftly washed down the storm drain. Thankfully, however, there was a silver lining....

OPINION | By Lea Marshall

What does feminism in ballet look like?

I would like to speak about power. Not the power of a choreographer (famous or not) in the dance studio, which has been analyzed and discussed exhaustively and to useful effect here and here and here, among many other places, but the power of a respected critic in America’s leading newspaper. As the New York Times’s dance critic, Gia Kourlas writes about dance evocatively, skillfully, and yet, in the case of her April 5 Critic’s Notebook, “Finding Freedom and Feminism in Ballet. (It’s Possible.),” with a bias so profound that the piece reads as if we are living in the upside-down....

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Rebecca Deczynski

Firebird Rising

Long before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

Rare Birds

It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

Lord of the Dance

The Spring is Blooming festival, by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, now in its fifth year, has become a highlight of the spring dance circuit.

REVIEWS | Eoin Fenton

Jack of Hearts

As the audience come to their feet at the end of this ballet there is a noted difference to be seen on stage. Three women stand with joined hands, taking their call as the romantic leads of a loud and proud lesbian ballet.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

School Report

One of San Francisco Ballet’s greatest assets is its home venue, the Beaux-Arts style War Memorial Opera House, with four rings of seating that require performers to project their energies practically to the exosphere.