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[dirac]

TheaterJones gives away tickets to the Joffrey Ballet, performing in Texas.

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You have until 11:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 17 to enter. We'll notify the winner first thing Friday morning, so be sure and check your email by 10 a.m. Friday if you played.

[dirac]

Nicholas Lezard takes the family to "The Nutcracker."

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It is, seen from a distance, quite amusing to monitor the degrees of contempt and boredom displayed by adolescent boys when confronted by ballet. Did you know it was possible to lean back and stare aggressively at the ceiling? The 12-year-old managed it, despite my whispering fiercely into his ear just before curtain-up that any disciplinary failures on his or his elder brother’s part would be met with punishments whose severity it was beyond even my scope to imagine.

[dirac]

Makaila Wallace celebrates her tenth annivesary with Ballet B.C.

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Then–artistic director John Alleyne evidently saw the exquisite technique and strength Wallace could bring to Ballet B.C. at the time. And she credits him with introducing her to a whole new world of movement. Wallace remembers clearly an early session in the studio when he wanted her to forcefully push a male dancer down on the floor. “I wanted to do it this way,” she says, laughing, demonstrating a graceful nudge, with her toes classically turned out. “I had no experience of floor work and how to dance ‘turned in’. I couldn’t access my most natural pedestrian movement.”

[dirac]

A review of New York City Ballet by Apollinaire Scherr in The Financial Times.

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In his fealty to the music’s spirit, Balanchine reordered movements. It is fine for Tchaikovsky to circle back to pomp after elegy, but the human element in dance discourages such a severe reversal of fortune. After death or misfortune, why would anyone be leaping around?

Which is the puzzle of the otherwise ravishing Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 (aka Ballet Imperial). The queen abandons her beloved – Ashley Bouder limpidly demonstrating the stages of her disillusionment over the wooden Jonathan Stafford – only to make a grand appearance with him in the finale. I’d call that a non-sequitur, not a mystery.