Tuesday, April 25

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New York City Ballet celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary.

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As part of the 2023 fall season, the company will stage more than 60 ballets over more than 25 weeks of performances, including 18 ballets by Balanchine. They will also recreate the inaugural NYCB performance, which took place on October 11, 1948 at the City Center for Music and Drama.

 

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Grand Rapids Ballet presents "Ballet + Broadway."

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And with their latest program, “Ballet+Broadway”, they offer a marvelous range of works, from the classic of the classics to new narrative-driven choreography that’s inclusive in its accessibility, yet nothing like a storybook ballet, and just might do something no other iteration of storytelling has done before. 

Grand Rapids Ballet resident choreographer Penny Saunders has brought exciting new works to the company for years, drawing the best of the company members’ expressivity through movement as well as acting chops. However, what they achieve in her new work “Jump Cut”, originally created in 2020 on Oklahoma City Ballet but never performed because of the pandemic, is utterly bold, artful, and cinematic, an inventive period piece that speaks volumes about our current cultural climate, and brings the dancers to new artistic heights.

 

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Ballet 5:8 presents "BareFace."

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Bare Face is inspired by C.S. Lewis’s last book Till We Have Faces, which explored faith, identity, and self-worth through the use of myths. There are similarities with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey—similarities that allowed me to reach an understanding of this performance.

This story of Cupid and Psyche is told from the view of the older sister Oural in a land called Glome. If you know the story, Cupid (James Wainright) and Psyche (Elizabeth Marlin) are in love and living in a magical kingdom outside of Glome. Oural is bitter about her station in life as the left-behind daughter of the cruel King Trom.