Friday, October 20

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A review of American Contemporary Ballet by Julia Friedman in The New Criterion.

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The Balanchine Woman returns in a new production of the Los Angeles–based American Contemporary Ballet (ACB), which just opened its twelfth season. The inaugural performance, succinctly titled The Rite (running through October 28), is an inspired homage to both Balanchine and the composer Igor Stravinsky. The score is that of the Ballets Russes’ Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), which premiered in Paris’s newly built Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on May 29, 1913. That night, Stravinsky’s dissonant music and the experimental choreography by the company’s star, Vaslav Nijinsky, proved too much for the audience.......

Lincoln Jones talks about his view of ballet for the same publication.

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I’m now the director of my own ballet company, American Contemporary Ballet, which is based in Los Angeles. But I came late to the art, seeing it as an adult before ever doing it myself. At the time, I didn’t quite get it. I thought it was a strange mix of the beautiful, mysterious, boring, and awkward, yet I was compelled to do it myself and to try making it. To do that, I realized I had to figure out something I didn’t yet know: what ballet is. So I thought an interesting place to start would be with that fundamental question: what is ballet?

 

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An interview with Brandon Ragland, the new artistic director of Dayton Ballet.

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Later, Ragland moved on to the Louisville Ballet. He aspired to lead roles there. But when the new artistic director Robert Curran asked Ragland about his goals, he listed all the imperfections of his body.

“He’s just looking at me so puzzled," Ragland remembered. “He looks at me, and he says, “There’s nothing wrong with your body. And maybe I was looking for approval from my white counterparts, but I think I let out a deep sigh because no one had ever told me that.”

 

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Mayara Magri talks about taking on the lead role in the Royal Ballet's "The Cellist."

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Magri had, of course, heard about MS, but had not met any sufferers, so she read a lot about the illness in preparation for The Cellist.

‘That’s one of the things I like about new creations, because it does make us read about things. These works are much more raw than the classics, and that’s one of things I like about this company, that we do portray lots of human roles.’

 

[dirac]

PBS will stream and broadcast "Great Performances: New York City Ballet in Madrid" on October 27.

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Captured during the Company’s first-ever appearance in Madrid and its first international appearance since 2018, “Great Performances: New York City Ballet in Madrid” features NYCB’s dancers in three of its signature works, accompanied by the Orchestra of the Teatro Real.