abatt

Hopefully they will fill in the TBA slots on or before March 23.

My understanding is that subscriber exchange week begins on March 23. Does anyone know for sure? I have not received my subscription tickets yet.

Wow, those are some creative pastry chefs. Thanks for posting that. They are beautiful to look at, but how do they taste?

The Museum of Modern Art is selling a "Sara Mearns Dessert Plate". The perfect gift for all NYCB fans. Only problem: The person on the plate really doesn't look like Mearns, in my opinion. http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/ProductDisplay?purpose=crawl&catalogId=10451&categoryId=11502&productId=175580&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=26715&keyWord=Alex+Katz+Sara+Mearns+Dessert+Plate&storeId=10001

There would be some seriouis Constitutional issues with such a ban. I don't think any artistic director would want to get involved with exploring that legal mess in court. Also, NYCB is making considerable efforts to attract young, hipsters as audience members. Young people seem to like getting tattoos. The last thing NYCB would want is publicity that they are firing dancers with tattoos.

I attended last night's performance. Lauren Lovette had a stellar debut in the soloist role of Walspurgisnacht. Her technique was perfect and her stage presence is remarkable. She is a brilliant dancer and a great asset to the company. Adrain D-W's role in relatively small, but he was impressive in his debut in this ballet as well. There were some minor glitches in the partering of Sara Mearns, but I'm sure it will be completely smoothed out by the second performance. Mearns was a whirling force of nature as she moved with incredible speed and fearlessness. The costumes for Walspurgisnacht looked a little different from what I remember. Does anyone know if the old costumes were recently replaced. Hall and Taylor sizzled in Faun. A very fine performance.. Even though I have not seen La Valse in years, I was bored. Not Balanchine at his best. If Janie can't draw me into it, I doubt anyone else could. I missed Acheron. Hope to see it on Saturday.

It is very sad. She was always friendly whenever I ran into her at the Koch or the Met at a ballet performance. My deepest sympathy to her family.

I hope Murphy and Gomes get the opening night for this. Of course, this is a long way off. It's a shame that so much money was spent on the old production (which isn't really very old) but it turned out so badly. I think a lot of the blame can be attributed to the "reworking" of the story by Gelsey's husband. It was more Disney than ballet. Also the destruction of so many important portions of the wedding scene (precious metal dances) was inexplicable. Good thing David Koch has so much money to throw around. If memory serves, he paid for most of the cost of the last SB production too.

ABT is finally getting rid of the current (bad) production of Sleeping Beauty. Let's hope the new one, made by Ratmansky, is a winner. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/new-sleeping-beauty-to-mark-american-ballet-theaters-75th-anniversary/?ref=arts

On US television, I guess they assume that average viewers are too dumb to enjoy ballet. The camera work frequently went to shots of athletes in the stand watching the performance instead of the performance itself. Also, during the opening ceremonies the announcers identified some of the lead dancers by name. No such info was provided in the closing ceremony. Well, hopefully these ceremonies inspired someone out there to go to the ballet or see a dance performance live.

Ulbricht and Bouder from NYCB performed Balanchine's Tarantella. (Photo in the above link.)

You can only choose your own seat on exchange if you go in person to the box office to do the exchange.

Can anyone identify the lead dancers from the closing ceremony?

A word about last night's Opus 19 the Dreamer. R Fairchild and T Peck were excellent. Robbie performed the role with technical strength and dramatic flair. He has been doing this role for a few years and has always been good in it, but the combo w. Tiler Peck as his dream/nightmare made the performace even more exciting than in the past Tiler Peck, in her debut, danced with attack and technical brilliance. Her jumps were huge. She covered vast amounts of distance with every jump Her characterization was mysterious and fierce. She dominated the action whenever she was on stage. A fantastic debut.

FYI, Chloe Malle is the daughter of Candice Bergen and the late French director Louis Malle.

Yes, the ticket prices for this, like so many other cultural events, have risen quite a bit over the past few years.

A very high percentage of the performers are from companies based in New York and/or regularly perform here (Kochetkova). I think they used to present more stars from European companies. I wish they would spend less money on hiring choreographers for new works that will immediately fade into oblivion when the curtain falls and spend more on hiring important foreign dancers. Thrilled to see the Bolshoi's Smirnova on the list of performers. Nobody from the Royal or the Mariinsky?

I attended last night's performance. While watching Opus 19 the Dreamer w. Taylor and Garcia, I kept thinking back to all the past great performances I had seen of this ballet by Wendy Whelan, Damian Woetzel and Peter Boal. Instead of a Dreamer, I thought Garcia looked more like a sleepwalker at times. There was no sense of urgency in his performance, which was sometimes too lethargic and underpowered. I liked Janie Taylor's performance and will miss her when she retires, but she doesn't have the forceful technical brilliance or wild abandon that I recall from Whelan's performances. Mearns and Jared Angle were brilliant in Barber Violin Concerto. Absolutely riveting every second. Bouder was funny in her manic pdd w. LaCour, but the choreography of that section gets tiresome pretty fast. Excellent cast for the Stravinsky Violin Concerto, but I especially loved the intensity of Robbie Fairchild. At the intermission I saw Yo Yo Ma and Damian Woetzel taking photos together while leaning over the wonderful JR art installation on the Promenade. (I think Ma and Woetzel serve together on the an arts council appointed by Obama.) The house looked well sold.

I saw Sunday's matinee of Coppelia. Veyette seemed fine. T. Peck was marvelous. She is the most musical dancer of all the current NYCB ballerinas. I also liked Lovette and Ashley Isaacs in the last act. I recall when they threw Isaacs into the role of one of the muses in Apollo a few years ago. She really wasn't ready at that time for such a sophisticated and difficult part. However, since then then they have given her more appropriate demi soloist roles in which she has done very well. She seems like someone who will move up to bigger and better things in due time.

The Mariinsky has a multi year deal with the Kennedy Center, so you can count on them being in Washington DC. every season for the next few years.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/zachary-catazaro-named-a-soloist-at-new-york-city-ballet/?ref=arts Well deserved.

The Met Opera has announced their 2014-15 season. http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/season/index.aspx?type=next&sn=st

I attended last night's performance. I'm skipping over Bal de Couture.because there isn't much left to say about it. The "second" cast took over DGV. Mearns and R Fairchild were exquisite as the first couple. M. Fairchild and G. Garcia replaced Bouder and DeLuz as the second couple. The anticipated debut was Lauren Lovette w. Craig Hall as the third couple w. the long pdd. I thought Lovette was miscast. She is so short that the stretched out positions and elongated lines that are important components of the choreography are completely lost. Hall was a strong and intense partner for Lovette. I thought Britanny Pollack and Amar Ramasar were very, very good as the fourth couple. This kind of modern choreography suits Ramasar's style. In the Four Season, Tiler Peck was breathtaking in her musicality and timing in Fall. Veyette was pushing a bit too hard in Fall, and ended up flubbing a landing by landing on both knees instead of one knee. Hyltin and T. Angle were a breath of springtime air in Spring. I find Summer goes on too long, but Reichlin and Adrian D-W were sultry. Forgot to add that I'm pretty sure the casting notice in the lobby indicated that Bouder will replace M. Fairchild tonight in Barber. Seems fair since Megan is doing 2 Copeilia's this weekend. Surely there will be tons of empty seats tonight because the weather here is brutal and getting worse.

I would have had a better reaction to Spectral Evidence if R. Fairchild's lip sync solo had been deleted. That was the part where I really started to roll my eyes at the pretentiousness. It seemed to go on forever.

I'm having a hard time getting excited about the Boston Ballet visit. The rep is disappointing. To add to mussel's list with some modern dance entries, Alvin Ailey will be coming to the Koch Theater in June 2014, and Paul Taylor will be there in March 2014. If you want to see Chroma (Wayne McGregor), it will be performed by the Ailey company during the Koch engagement. I liked Chroma much better than any other McGregor ballets I've seen.