American Ballet Theatre / Metropolitan Opera House, NYC / May 18-July 11, 2009
Nina Ananiashvili in Alexei Ratmansky’s Waltz Masquerade
Photo: Rosalie O’Conner
Always an exceedingly star-conscious company, American Ballet Theatre opened its annual spring season (May 18-July 11, at the Metropolitan Opera House) with a pair that would be hard to beat: Caroline Kennedy and America’s new First Lady, Michelle Obama, two of the gala event’s Honorary Chairmen. Both made carefully prepared, mercifully brief, but urgently timely speeches emphasizing the fact the arts are not merely commercially important to America but absolutely essential to its culture. They said it like they meant it.
The full article appeared in Voice of Dance (http://www.voiceofdance.org) on May 23, 2009. To read it, click here.
The only word I’d quibble with here, in a review I enjoyed as I do all of yours, is the first one. When I was first seeing ABT, from 1950-57, it had its own principals who could certainly be called stars — Alonso, Kaye, Moylan, Youskevitch, Bruhn and Kriza.There could be guest artists, often for a full season, as when Babilee and Philippart came, or in Chicago in 1952 Markova rejoined them briefly, along with occasional others, but their own dancers were the principal “draws,” and even in the 60s, when I reconnected with the company, it was primarily the company that built its own stars. It was later that the imported guests became the rule rather than the exception. So it has long been “exceedingly star-conscious”, but not “always”!