If you can’t see a production of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a woodland setting during a long June twilight, as I once did, you can be enthralled by a different sort of magic conjured up by the Bard’s plot. George Balanchine’s 1962 ballet of the same name ended its week in the New York City Ballet’s season before American Ballet Theatre hit the solstice dead on with Frederick … [Read more...]
Flaming Magic and Goofy Girls
One of the most surprising things about American Ballet Theatre’s new Firebird is how Russian it isn’t. When Serge Diaghilev commissioned 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky to write his first ballet score, one of the impresario’s continuing aims was to acquaint Paris with Russian music and culture. L’Oiseau de Feu premiered in 1910 with a wandering Tsarevitch as its hero and a magic bird as its … [Read more...]
Love and Death in an Imagined India
People interested in ballet history can entertain themselves with unlikely questions. What, for instance, would Marius Petipa think of the production of his 1877 La Bayadère that the great ballerina Natalia Makarova constructed for American Ballet Theatre in 1980? If he were sitting in a seat at the Metropolitan Opera House during ABT’s current season of classics and new works, how much of the … [Read more...]
New York City Ballet: The New and the Refurbished
Have you noticed that many new ballets look like older ballets? Either that, or they introduce kinks that take them far outside the classical vocabulary. The best ballet choreographers have a way of making steps that every advanced student dancer does many times a day look newly expressive, or interweave with the music in deeply satisfying ways. I can’t say that Peter Martins’s new work for … [Read more...]
One Good Thing About Arizona. . .
Ib Andersen didn’t move to Phoenix in 2000 to become artistic director of the Arizona Ballet. According to a recent interview, when he took on the job he was already in Arizona—loving the clear light, open sky, and sere landscape, and painting in his spare time. He may not have much spare time these days. During his tenure, the company debt has been erased, the board has labored to raise money, … [Read more...]
It’s All Wheeldon
Trying to trace Christopher Wheeldon’s career, you might decide he has a vagabond streak that tugs against a now-and-then yen for stability. As a young dancer and choreographer-in-waiting, he left Britain’s Royal Ballet for the New York City Ballet, became NYCB’s resident choreographer from 2000 to 2008, started Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company while still affiliated with NYCB, pulled out of that in … [Read more...]
November Potpourri
Seeing American Ballet Theatre during its too-brief season at City Center (nine works and eight performances in five days) could give spectators who devour the company’s spring shows at the Metropolitan Opera a new slant on the dancers. No tutus or tiaras on view, no see-me-ace-this displays of virtuosity, no hordes of elaborately costumed courtiers standing around watching some princess do what … [Read more...]
Two Companies: East from Houston, North from D.C.
In successive October weeks, two ballet companies with very dissimilar identities and agendas appeared at the Joyce Theater. The Houston Ballet is composed of over 50 dancers. It also boasts a handsome, beyond-spacious new building in its hometown (price: a surprisingly modest $46,600,00) that’s connected by a bridge to the Wortham Theater Center, where the company and the Houston Grand Opera … [Read more...]
At Sea
Here’s a fairy tale for 2011. Once upon a time, a very important knight—one of the great musicians of the late 20thcentury—joined forces with an adept ruler-choreographer (also a knight) who had inherited a powerful kingdom of dance. They set out together on a quest to find the true grail—a beautiful ballet that would further ennoble them both and maybe even bring in money. As far as we know, they … [Read more...]
Sharing the Wealth
Of late, I’ve been having a recurring daydream—probably prompted by the Mariinsky Ballet’s recent season at the Metropolitan Opera House (July 11 through 16), as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Ballet companies square off like kids on the playground. “Nyah, nyah! I’ve got more Ratmanskys than you do!” “You do not!” “Do so!” “Well I’ve got the best Ratmanskys.” “Take that back or I … [Read more...]