Monday, February 10

[dirac]

A look at the influence and power of "Swan Lake."

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“Tschaikovsky wrote from the heart,” [Andrew] Litton continues. “This is what speaks to us, even all these decades later. It’s such passionate music, such romantic music.” Ask Litton what he views as the score’s emotional climax, and the answer is enthusiastic: “I think the most extraordinary measures that Tschaikovsky ever wrote occur at the very end of the ballet when the Prince returns. The music is two seven-bar phrases, which is very unusual. He only repeats that melody once. So you hear this fantastic, passionate outpouring twice, and that’s it. It disappears and never comes back. It’s not previewed beforehand. It’s an extraordinary bit of music, and my biggest frustration with Tschaikovsky is that he didn’t turn it into a symphony. It’s got soaring string lines, incredibly gut-wrenching harmonies, and it’s cumulative at that point in the story. What’s left to happen? The Prince has got to come back, and he comes back with the greatest entrance music of all time.”

 

[dirac]

A review of the Dutch National Ballet in "Frida" by Sarah Batschelet for Bachtrack.

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Accompanied by the beating, sometimes thunderous tones of an original score by Peter Salem – the ballet orchestra under the direction of conductor Matthew Rowe – Ochoa’s ballet is full of flavour and rich with metaphor. A troupe of skeletons launch the dance by crouching on and around a huge cube, one that, thereafter, shifts position and serves symbolically to house a life, a love, and the various losses suffered by our protagonist. The skeletons consistently allude to the looming deaths in Frida’s life, first of the foetus that Frida miscarries and, later, of marital trust and fidelity, and finally, her own demise.

Graham Watts' review for DanceTabs.

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If ever there was a case of biting off more ballet than a choreographer can chew then that happened during Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s making of Broken Wings for English National Ballet, back in 2016. Her subject was Frida Kahlo and the Belgian/Columbian choreographer quickly realised that she had way more ideas than could be accommodated in that one-act contribution to the She Said programme.

 

[dirac]

A review of New York City Ballet by Leigh Witchel for dancelog.nyc.

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Peck’s technique is at a level where she can be conversational, shading steps to give different meanings. She stroked the notes instead of hitting them, moving in tight bourrées or hesitating with a slight breath before coming forward out of an extension. The big ballerina moment – the unsupported pirouettes – is right in her wheelhouse. She made double to double and double to triple as smooth as machinery.

Mary Cargill reviews the company for danceviewtimes.

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But the 1993 performances also showed that it ["Haieff Divertimento"] is a fine work and too good to lose. Wendy Whelan danced the lead in 1993 and possibly we have her to thank for the current revival.  The serene and leggy Unity Phelan (a debut) was, to my mind, even more successful that Whelan in conveying the dreamy, languid atmosphere, as she hovered just out of the reach of Harrison Ball (also a debut).  Ball was equally impressive, moving with an understated nobility as he bowed to his invisible partner; like so man of Balanchine's poets, he ends up alone.

 

[dirac]

A review of New York City Ballet by Wesley Doucette for Broadway World.

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The final work of the evening is Ratmansky's Voices, and is one of the most fascinating pieces of dance I have seen on the Koch stage. The work is set to the voices of six women, with Stephen Gosling masterfully mimicking the tonality of the speakers on piano, as composed by Peter Ablinger. The New York City Ballet put its best foot forward with the cast, with many of the company's best sharing the stage. What results is a collision of visions that, rather than obscuring the power of a single artist, makes their intensity reverberate.