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[dirac]

Judith Mackrell's New York dance diary.

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Guest stars are a reliably useful asset at the box office, but the effect they have on the stage isn't always simple to predict. The dancers of ABT are collectively famous for their energy and attack, for the element of Broadway razzle-dazzle that they can bring to a show. Yet on Friday night, when Osipova headed the company's production of Coppelia, she managed to make almost everyone around her look half-asleep. From her very first entrance as Swanilda, she was a glinting, mocking force of nature. Her dancing seemed to access unlimited energy, not just in the swaggering height of her jumps and the speed of her pirouettes but in the snap and clarity of her little linking steps, the incisiveness of her rhythm.

[dirac]

Ballet Philippines will celebrate the centennial of International Women's Day in its new season.

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BP, the resident company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, will kick off its 42nd season with "Encantada", a full-length modern dance choreographed by Agnes Locsin to the music of Joey Ayala.

Set during the Spanish colonial era, "Encantada" is about man's destruction of nature and its aftermath. The last time it was performed was in 1998, and it has been toured in the Philippines and Japan. It will go onstage on August 12-14.

[dirac]

The Liaoning Ballet visits Australia with'The Last Emperor.'

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Cavallari says he was inspired to create the ballet after seeing the Bertolucci film of the same name in the late 1980s while a dancer and choreographer with the Stuttgart Ballet. Further inspired by a visit to China, and having read a biography of Puyi, Cavallari determined that he would find a company that would help him realise his dream of bringing the ballet to life.

Through a Chinese agent in Stuttgart, Cavallari was put in touch with the Liaoning Ballet, which had already developed a reputation for adapting renowned traditional ballets such as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Cinderella and Giselle for Chinese audiences.

[dirac]

A review of American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Danish Ballet by Robert Gottlieb in The New York Observer.

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All in all, this has been a good season for A.B.T., if you forget about Lady of the Camellias, Cinderella and the upcoming Swan Lake. Most important, with The Bright Stream A.B.T. has taken another step toward looking like a company rather than just a bunch of dancers. Ratmansky, who’s recently signed a new 10-year contract as Artist in Residence, is the best thing that’s happened to A.B.T. in decades. Please: Give him his head, give him everything he wants and needs and stand back. He’s not only the best ballet choreographer in the world, he’s a company man in every possible good way.

The Royal Danes, on their first visit to New York since 1988, managed to put their worst feet forward with their lugubrious first program. They brought their “modernized” new versions of two great Bournonville ballets—Napoli and A Folk Tale—to the Kennedy Center, but apparently the Koch stage isn’t large enough to accommodate them. Instead, they gave us an evening of such tedium and misjudgment that it’s hard to believe it was the brainchild of their new artistic director, Nikolaj Hübbe, who was a much-loved star at City Ballet for 15 years—and presumably knows New York.

[dirac]

A review of both companies by Marina Harss in The Faster Times.

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Watching back-to-back performances of “La Sylphide” and “Coppélia,” performed over the weekend by the Royal Danish Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, I was struck by the many similarities between two ballets. True, it feels odd to compare them—the tragic story of a man undone by his love for a wood-nymph, and a charming comedy about a girl whose fiancé is in love with a doll—but the similarities are there and, actually, not so surprising....

[dirac]

A video interview with Sarah Lane.

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We'll never truly know exactly who did what, although I do believe being a dancer myself that I would recognize my own body's movement and dancing, but one thing was clear - Sarah grabbed my attention!