American Ballet Theater mounts Alexei Ratmansky's The Golden Cockerel. It occasionally happens that a ballet from another era comes to us tangled in its own history, even as it tries to make sense of it. American Ballet Theatre’s production of The Golden Cockerel as re-imagined by Alexei Ratmansky is just such a work—gorgeous to look at, often comical, often perplexing. At the end of the … [Read more...]
Love Finds a Way
American Ballet Theatre revives its production of Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée. If I had been able to write about American Ballet Theatre’s production of Frederick Ashton’s La Fille Mal Gardée before the company’s performances of it ended on May 30, I would have said, “if you’re having a bad day, go see this ballet.” So fragrant, so tender is its depiction of love, innocence, … [Read more...]
Dancing Love and Love of Dancing
American Ballet Theatre’s new production of Frederick Ashton’s “A Month in the Country” on a program with Mark Morris’s “Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes” and George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.” Metropolitan Opera House, May 21-23. Frederick Ashton’s A Month in the Country distills the five acts of Ivan Turgenev’s eponymous play and the passage of several weeks into 40 minutes of dancing, … [Read more...]