The December 5, 2021 Saturday matinee performance featured Noelani Pantastico as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Christopher D’Ariano as her cavalier. Michael Jinsoo Lin provided the expert solo violin. D’Ariano’s been given a lot of opportunities in the past year, and it’s easy to see why—he’s a skilled dancer and a sensitive…
Category: Finding Balance blog
BEYOND BALLET—PNB REVIEW
Ulysses Dove’s Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven features Arvo Pärt’s music—the bell ringing is chilling. The overhead lighting is ominous, and the dancers, in sleek unitards, greys and whites, are conspicuous, exposed. Dove’s dance, complete with motifs, such as weight shifts in second position, or rapid leg extensions, is exciting to watch. Although…
New York City Ballet’s La Valse, and more
NYCB fall program
Innovators and Icons
Review of NYCB’s stunning fall program
Robbins Bigonzetti Ratmansky
The September 25 evening program of the New York City Ballet’s fall season opened with Opus 19/The Dreamer, set to Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, the composer’s first violin concerto and often referred to as “music in technicolor.” So, too, Jerome Robbins’ colorful dance, with lead couple Tiler Peck and Gonzalo Garcia, and a…
New York City Ballet stuns with fall program
NYCB stuns in fall opening program
PNB’s Wonderfully Diverse Rep
Pacific Northwest Ballet is a master in programming—variety, diversity, complexity. Case in point: Two very different PNB programs, one, all new choreography (Rep 4) and then the other, one of classical ballet’s greatest comedies, Coppélia (Rep 5). My cursory notes suggest a whole lot of great dancing. Highlights for me are below. … Rep (Program)…
Olivier Wevers’ “This Is Not the Little Prince”
Olivier Wevers’ This Is Not the Little Prince is a captivating and emotional work. It is demanding on the dancers for the challenging movement and ensemble psyche Wevers asks them to create onstage. The piece is both playful and dramatic, a tour de force of surrealism. As I wrote in Dance Magazine, “[the piece]…
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Fall dance programs—Digital triumph, critical success
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Fall dance programs were both digital triumph and critical success. Kudos to artistic director Peter Boal and his administrative and artistic staff for presenting such stunning and sensitive dance to the world. Reviews, in brief Rep I (streamed in October). PNB’s Rep I featured George Balanchine’s Jewels, but all the pieces on…
Bravo! Mark Morris Dance Group performs!
See here for details—40 years of lyrical joy: Mark Morris Dance Group performs. Image/credit: https://markmorrisdancegroup.org/digital-access/