dirac Posted May 21, 2023 Share Posted May 21, 2023 A two-part review of Jennifer Homans' new biography of Balanchine by Joan Acocella in The New York Review of Books. (May 25 and June 8 issues) From Russia, With Love Quote This is the platform Balanchine’s dancers danced on: strength and virtuosity. From there, they ascended to art. For spectators versed in ballet and music, the hallmark of Balanchine’s work was musicality. He was an expert musician. He was conservatory-trained (while he was being ballet-trained), but his musicianship didn’t stop at expertise. He coached the dancers to listen to the music and make their emphases respond to it. No aspect of dancing was more important to him than phrasing. With phrasing alone, he seems to have felt, he could make a dance as dramatic as it needed to be. In other words, he was an abstractionist—a quality that did not endear him to everyone. 'The Real World is Not Here' Quote In other circumstances, too, she is an excellent writer, with expert pacing. A Philosophy 101 section will be followed by a shovelful of hot gossip (Kirstein went to bed with his brother? Say it ain’t so!) and by a bundle of good quotes. Balanchine’s political opinions are always bluntly stated. For the USSR, he expressed an unstinting hatred from the day he left in 1924—before, actually—to the end of his life. For the tsarist regime that preceded it, he felt an ill-placed nostalgia, one that supported his half-political, half-religious idealization of what he saw as the “real world” standing behind his suffering homeland. Indeed, he was said to have modeled New York City Ballet on it: “One man, one rule.” Link to comment
dirac Posted May 21, 2023 Author Share Posted May 21, 2023 The Pennsylvania Youth Ballet presents "Cinderella." Quote The spring performance will feature close to 100 ballet dancers set to the music of classical composer Sergei Prokofiev and choreographed by Ballet Guild of the Lehigh Valley’s artistic director Karen Kroninger Knerr. Link to comment
dirac Posted May 21, 2023 Author Share Posted May 21, 2023 A preview of Houston Ballet's final performance of the season. Quote Houston Ballet plans to close its 2022-23 season on a local note. "Divergence," playing at Wortham Theater Center May 25 through June 4, is one of three ballets from choreographers Aszure Barton, Stanton Welch and Justin Peck that pays special homage to Space City. Link to comment
dirac Posted May 21, 2023 Author Share Posted May 21, 2023 This year's Telstra Ballet Awards are presented. Quote Ballet dancer Lilla Harvey has described winning the Telstra Rising Star Award as "amazing" and validation for years of hard work honing her craft. The 21-year-old was named the winner of the Rising Star Award at the 2023 Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards held at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday evening. Link to comment
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