New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. TheaterScene.net has featured New York City Ballet in 6 articles since 2014, including “BAAND Together Dance Festival 2022 at Lincoln Center” and “Twyla Now”. Read TheaterScene.net reviews, interviews and features about New York City Ballet.
MasterVoices concluded its 2022-23 season with a lovely concert staging performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s rarely seen comic opera "Iolanthe (or The Peer and the Peri)" staged and conducted by artistic director Ted Sperling. The cast was mainly made up of Tony Award winners (Christine Ebersole and Santino Fontana) and Broadway regulars (David Garrison, Jason Danieley and Phillip Boykin) with some fast rising young opera singers (Ashley Fabian and Schyler Vargas) and a principal ballerina from the New York City Ballet (Tiler Peck). All seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their Carnegie Hall outing. The 120-member Master Voices chorus and orchestra gave a glorious rendition of the 141 year old score. [more]
The dancers were attired in puffy white tutus and black tights, the men bare-chested—chic costumes by the choreographer. They pranced, undulated their torsos, tossed each other around and vogued in lineups that spread across the stage. If there is one word to describe "One for All," it’s sassy. Despite steam room like temperatures, the cast was exuberant and daring, considering Lopez Ochoa had just finished staging it that afternoon! It was led by a sexy, spritely Chalvar Monteiro of the Ailey Company. [more]
By far, the audience favorite was the world premiere “Time Spell,” an entertaining attempt at a hybrid of tap dancing (choreographed by Michelle Dorrance and Jillian Meyers) and ballet (choreographed by Peck) with the assistance of Byron Tittle. The musicians Aaron Marcellus and Penelope Wendtlandt provided witty a cappella close harmony vocal accompaniment, even occasionally joining in the dancing. The alternating of tap dancing and ballet began slowly with the two dance forms not combining easily, but as the speed picked up so did the similarities until the ballet dancers were tapping in their toe shoes and the tappers were bourrée-ing in their tap shoes. The large cast included Dorrance, Meyers, Peck, Lovette and Mejia. [more]
After a pause, there was the world premiere of "Second Duet." It was the most dramatic and emotional dance of the program. Wearing sneakers and casual sportswear, Cassandra Trenary and Aran Bell of American Ballet Theatre were the handsome couple whose tempestuous and turbulent relationship ranged from argumentative to violent to clinging and physically dependent. Tharp’s choreography included complicated partnering in which elements of the relationship were uncomfortable and disturbing, or sometimes amusing (as an example, Trenary stood solidly and dared Bell to just try and pick her up). Without an actual story line, the dance was emotionally charged, revealing and riveting. Trenary and Bell gorgeously performed the complex choreography. Looking more like members of a modern dance troupe than classical ballet dancers, they brought emotional depth as well as physical ability to this taxing piece of work. A modern music mix by Thomas Larcher and Aztec Camera played by the musicians Stephen Gosling (piano) and Gabriel Gabezas (cello) was sometimes as appropriately discordant as the relationship. [more]
It’s unlikely that New York City will ever see these five troupes sharing a stage again. This was a festive occasion despite being uneven in tone and not particularly representative of at least two of the large dance companies. Pretentious program notes were fortunately only available online so that they couldn’t mar the visceral enjoyment of several of these works in Program One. ... Each evening of the BAAND Together Dance Festival will feature a different program with contributions from each of these five wonderful dance companies. [more]
The second part of the program was a bonanza of Bournonville excerpts, danced to not particularly memorable scores, that worked well even without colorful scenery. The beautiful, colorful costumes, arranged by Katharina Neergaard certainly helped, particularly in “The Jockey Dance” from From Siberia to Moscow danced exuberantly by Marcin Kupinski and Alexander Bozinoff dressed in brilliant red jockey duds. The only criticism: they might have looked less glum in their facial expressions. [more]
A lot has been made of the parallels between the original 1938 production of "I Married an Angel" for which George Balanchine choreographed the dances for his soon-to-be wife, the glamorous Norwegian ballerina Vera Zorina and the New York City Center Encores! production for which its choreographer/director Joshua Bergasse staged the dances for his wife, the New York City Ballet star Sara Mearns. This is great publicity and drew the public, including myself, to this staging of one of Rodgers and Hart’s more charming musicals known mostly through a Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy film. The original choreography is evidenced only via some silent film snippets taken of the original production. [more]
The three-part ballet is considered Balanchine’s tribute to the three major artistic influences in his professional life: the French school, the Russian school and, of course, his own American style of classical ballet as taught in his School of American Ballet in Lincoln Center. Therefore, it was not just logical, but inspired, that the Paris Opera troupe would dance the dreamy “Emeralds” to Gabriel Fauré, the New York City Ballet, the fresh and jazzy “Rubies” to Igor Stravinsky, and the Russian troupe the very classical “Diamonds” to Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. [more]
I’ve always liked Andrew Keenan-Bolger's work. He was a memorable child actor, playing leads on Broadway in shows like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Seussical," when he was around 13 or 14 years old. I admired his sunny, open-hearted work then. And he's even more successful today (at age 31) as an adult--not every child actor can make such a transition. He conveys the same sort of buoyant spirit on stage now as he did when I first saw him in those shows he did so well as a youth.. (His whole family is talented. He and his sisters, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Maggie Keenan-Bolger, are all making their contributions to the arts.) [more]
The four works on the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s program revealed a troupe that loves to entertain and show off but one that also hasn’t quite reached a secure level of technical achievement. Fervor and personality can take a dance company only so far. Nevertheless, this is definitely a ballet company with most works featuring solid point work. [more]
it’s significant that Steve Martin has won five Grammy Awards for albums he’s made–two in the category of “comedy,” and three in the category of “music.” He loves to play the banjo (an instrument, incidentally, that has a prominent role, along with the fiddle, in the music we hear in “Bright Star.”) He’s collaborated with Edie Brickell on two albums. And their ongoing musical collaboration has provided the foundation and inspiration for this engrossing musical play. [more]
The second Balanchine masterpiece was “Prodigal Son,” the final work that the great impresario Serge Diaghilev commissioned. Prokofiev’s moody, rough-hewn score and colorful, scenery and costumes by Georges Rouault which evoke a fanciful, ancient biblical era give Balanchine’s story heft. The clever scenery includes wildly colorful backdrops and features a large wooden structure that ingeniously becomes a pathway away from the Prodigal’s home, a dining table, a stage and even a poignant place of crucifixion as the Prodigal writhes against it. [more]
Man! There’s nothing more exciting than seeing a brand new musical that works. I was enthralled from beginning to an end by A Bronx Tale–currently getting its world-premiere production at the Paper Mill Playhouse. From the very first moments, it simply had the feel of a winner. And I was engrossed. It’s rare, and memorable, when that happens. [more]
Dance historian Doug Fullington of the Pacific Northwest Ballet was the expert who, using slides and excerpts from both the Balanchine and Petipa versions, showed how each choreographer envisioned the interactions of such Commedia stalwart characters as Harlequin, Colombine, Pierrot, Pierrette, the Doctor and Pantalone, each with their own idiosyncratic personality quirks and historically recognizable costumes. Commedia dell’Arte has had enormous influence on painters (Watteau, Picasso), theater and even films (Chaplin, the Marx Brothers) with its pratfalls and slapstick and colorful personalities. [more]
On April 27, Symphony Space and Words on Dance presented “Christopher Wheeldon in Conversation with Rita Moreno: From Ballet to Broadway,” a delightful romp through the dancing career of one of Broadway’s brightest choreographers. The lecture was moderated and led by Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Grammy winning actor-singer-dancer Rita Moreno. Moreno’s conversation with Wheeldon was prompted by a series of film clips featuring him as a young dancer as well as brief segments of his past choreographic work with the New York City Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Royal Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, the Wheeldon Company, and his most current work in the new Broadway production of "An American In Paris" where he serves as both director and choreographer. It is the fusion of his classical European ballet training, his love for American music, American dance stars, and American dance that Wheeldon has established himself as a leading force in the world of dance. [more]
The City Center Encores production of Jonathan Larson's tick, tick...BOOM! (directed by Oliver Butler) is the best show I've seen anywhere in a good while. And Lin-Manuel Miranda, in the leading role--as the Jonathan Larson surrogate--was a revelation. [more]
I sure felt the spirit of the late Jonathan Larson strongly at the Trumbull (Connecticut) High School's production of his musical Rent. This was the school, you may recall, where the principal tried to cancel the students' production of Rent, and the students protested successfully for weeks until they won the right to do the show. Perhaps the fact that they had to fight so hard to do the show gave them an extra investment in it. But they pulled it off well. [more]
