Nutcracker—PNB REVIEW

      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…

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…

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…

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]…