Monday, September 23

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Houston Ballet presents a new ballet inspired by C.S. Lewis' "The Four Loves."

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Farley, a retired dancer with the New York City Ballet, is close friends with composer Werner. They met at church in New York City. Though the collaborators want everyone to be able to connect with Four Loves no matter their background, the ballet does depict their Christian artistic vision. As the curtain rises, three dancers are already spinning in a circle, representing the Trinitarian love of God that was active before time began. 

 

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Members of the original cast of Balanchine's "Coppelia" remember the making of the ballet.

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Patricia McBride:

Madame Danilova and Balanchine would keep going all day long, moving from one scene to the next, talking together. It was like seeing history, the two of them in the room together. Mr. B never interfered with her staging. I think he really respected her knowledge and memory.

Sometimes I would feel quite choked up to think of their lives and history together. They were both in their 70s, but they had so much energy and vitality and love, and they had a lot of fun together. They were so young in spirit. I felt so fortunate to work with them, and to see their respect for each other and their love of dance.

 

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A review of New York City Ballet by Gia Kourlas for the "Critic's Notebook" in The New York Times.

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And Woodward, the most effervescent dancer in the company — and possibly its best actress — is always full of subtle details. In “Baiser,” it’s how her buoyancy can slip into sorrow with the shift of the shoulders, a turn of the head, a glance. In one of the ballet’s most charged moments, Woodward rushed across the stage to clasp Gabriel’s waist, throwing back her head and torso as she balanced on two legs, one stretched in front and the other bent underneath her. She arched deeply, exposing not her chest but her heart. Her anguish was exquisite.

 

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A review of the Ural Opera Ballet by Ilona Landgraf in her blog, "Landgraf on Dance."

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Last week, the Ural Opera Ballet’s joint production, Tales of Perrault, returned to the stage. It combines four fairy tales by Perrault—Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, and Little Thumb—that are newly interpreted by three choreographers. Two of them, Konstantin Khlebnikov and Alexandr Merkushev, are junior choreographers from the company’s ranks of dancers; the third, Maksim Petrov, choreographed for the Mariinsky Ballet before succeeding the Ural Opera Ballet’s then-artistic director, Vyacheslav Samodurov, in August 2023.

 

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A review of the second program of "Fall for Dance" by Carla Escoda for Bachtrack.

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Boston Ballet on the other hand inexplicably fished out an old duet, Ein von Viel, from its back catalog – not old as in ‘classic,’ just old. The piece was fueled by a few choice Goldberg Variations impeccably whipped off by Sienna Tabron at the piano and impeccably if pointlessly danced by Jeffrey Cirio and Yue Shi in white because that seems to be the default colour when dancing to Bach. Just to remind us that this is a ballet company, choreographer Sabrina Matthews threw some random beaten jumps and grands pirouettes into a thicket of tics and tiresome windscreen-wiper arms. A vapid calling card for a company with a distinguished 60+ year history.

 

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The Györ Ballet Company of Hungary visits Turkey.

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The program was hosted by Hungary’s Ambassador to Ankara Viktor Matis at the Ankara State Opera and Ballet Theater. The ambassador said that the performance constituted the 96th event of the 2024 Hungarian-Turkish cultural year – a celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of the signing of the friendship agreement between Ankara and Budapest.