Friday, October 21

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Julie Kent is leaving Washington Ballet next year.

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The board has begun an international search for her successor, the Washington Ballet said in a news release. Pendoley said she did not know whether Barbee, who is also leaving the Washington Ballet at the end of this season and moving to Houston with Kent, will have a role with Houston Ballet.

 

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A review of Ballet Black by Graham Watts for Bachtrack.

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The 20th anniversary of Ballet Black is celebrated by a double bill that is, in many ways, a summation of the company’s difficult and inspirational journey. Vocal text is key to both works and in Say it Loud a dancer’s recorded voiceover says that both the fascination and challenge of performing the company’s repertoire is that “no two ballets are the same”. Given that Ballet Black has commissioned over 50 ballets by 37 choreographers it is a bold claim but, on the evidence of this latest pair, not a fanciful one.

 

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A review of the Royal Ballet and Ballet Black by Roslyn Sulcas in the "Critic's Notebook" for The New York Times.

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“Flight Pattern,” set to the first part of Henryk Gorecki’s mournful Symphony No. 3, “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,” was the Royal Ballet’s first main-stage commission from a female choreographer in 18 years when it was created in 2017, and it was greeted with near-universal acclaim. Now it makes up the first section of Pite’s “Light of Passage,” a full-length ballet that had its premiere on Tuesday night, and uses the remaining two sections of the Gorecki score to form an equally crowd-pleasing and equally simplistic narrative about the passage through life toward death.

 

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A review of Orlando Ballet by Matthew J. Palm in The Orlando Sentinel.

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In the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts’ Steinmetz Hall, “Dracula” looks better than ever. Lez Brotherston’s versatile set is delightfully effective as a creepy sanitarium, a creepy crypt, a creepy castle … well, you get the picture. But it also magically transforms into a stately hotel and busy train station. And Brotherston’s costumes have the expected period feel.

 

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 An appraisal of New York City Ballet's season by Gia Kourlas for the NYT's "Critic's Notebook."

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That gala evening, nothing really matched the delight that filled me the second I zoned in on a new apprentice, Olivia Bell, in the corps de ballet of “Symphony in C.” A standout at this year’s workshop performances, she is, in a word, radiant; I couldn’t stop smiling because she couldn’t stop smiling.

 

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A review of the Royal Ballet by Jenny Gilbert for The Arts Desk.

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She now returns with a full-evening extension of that material, adding two new sections that address equally big subjects, not least the rights of children to life and safety. This, along with a final section dealing with what Pite calls “the ultimate border crossing”, makes sense of the work’s over-arching title, Light of Passage, though its suggestion of a verbal pun is, I feel, slightly misplaced. This is serious, thought-provoking work that dares you to suppose that ballet could ever be anything less than serious. Yet it also delivers eyefuls of glorious synchronised movement that leave you simultaneously wrung out and uplifted.

 

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 Alonzo King's LINES Ballet performs in Detroit.

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Detroit Opera is opening its 2022-23 dance series this weekend with its debut presentation of Alonzo King Lines Ballet. The San Francisco-based contemporary ballet company will be performing “Deep River,” a soulful new work fused with Black spirituals created in celebration of the company’s 40th anniversary.