Balanchine’s Apollo. Pictured here, Chun Wai Chan and Mira Nadon. Photo Credit: Erin Baiano October 7 matinee In its 75th anniversary season this fall, NYCB offered a matinee performance of the company’s foundational work with Balanchine’s Apollo, La Sonnambula, and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2—allegorical, mysterious, and glorious looks, respectively, into the prolific creativity of…
Category: Finding Balance blog
Copland Dance Episodes at Saratoga Springs
The Company in Justin Peck’s Copland Dance Episodes. Photo credit: Erin Baiano Saturday, July 22nd at 7:30pm There’s much to like about Justin Peck’s Copland Dance Episodes. Peck is the resident choreographer and artistic adviser of New York City Ballet. A masterful choreographer, he creates pieces for large ensembles on stage just as easily as…
NYCB Saratoga 2023 performances, July 18-22 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center: Swan Lake, Fancy Free, and Firebird
Daniel Ulbricht, Joseph Gordon and Jovani Furlan in Jerome Robbins’Fancy Free.Photo credit: Erin Baiano The NYCB Saturday matinee program of Balanchine/Robbins classics was sheer delight. Focusing on the dancers, the Act II of Balanchine’s Swan Lake demands and embodies exquisite dancing—and the dancers deliver. Standouts were the agile Megan LeCrone, a quick-spotting and precise turner,…
PNB’s Worlds to Come
“Worlds to Come,” PNB’s last set of performances for its 50th Anniversary Season, streamed digitally June 15-19. The program, with its two world premieres and a live performance premiere, was one of the best I’ve seen at Pacific Northwest Ballet. All three choreographers are extraordinary storytellers—Edward Liang, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and Kiyon Ross—Liang and Ochoa…
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Season Encore
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Season Encore June 11-15, 2023 celebrating principal dancer Lesley Rausch’s career as a dancer was indeed bittersweet. But, with eight separate pieces (many, excerpts) on the program, it was indeed a reveling in Rausch’s rich career as a dancer. The first four pieces of the program featured huge talents—Elle Macy in Penny…
“Interesting” Dancers: commentary on a 2019 PNB Midsummer Night’s Dream (having just reviewed the 2023 rendition)
Common wisdom/practice among arts critics is to avoid the adjective “interesting” – probably because it is so vague and ambiguous. Meaning everything, it means nothing. Maybe. I think if we take it to mean “singularly worth watching,” “a different sort of dancer worth watching,” or “a dancer you have to watch”…meaning, your attention is immediately…
Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Seattle
Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with delightful music from Felix Mendelssohn, is a crowd pleaser for sure. The choreographer himself must have had fond memories of when he performed, as PNB artistic director notes in his April 12, 2011 post in “Director’s Notebook,” as an eight-year-old bug in a St. Petersburg production. With staging by…
PNB presents “Boundless”
Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Boundless” program featured choreographers Alejandro Cerrudo, Jessica Lang, and Penny Saunders. This review is of a film made opening night, March 17, 2023. In Penny Saunders’ Wonderland, Michael Wall supplies original music and adapts others. Divided into five sections, we hear strains of Jean-Philippe Goude, Hugues Le Bars, Erik Satie, Camille Saint-Saëns,…
PNB’s Giselle
PNB presented one of classical ballet’s greatest tragedies, Giselle, on its February program this year. The ballet is a giant to mount, and PNB’s artistic director Peter Boal first staged it for the 2010-2011 season. Some 19th century French sources added to the authenticity of the production: a mid-century Parisian rehearsal score, a full notation…
Fighting for Ukraine with Classical Ballet
On the West Coast in fall, 2022, Pacific Northwest Ballet premiered a moving work by world renowned choreographer Alexei Ratmansky—Wartime Elegy. It is his first ballet since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Critics call it not so much a political ballet, as a tribute to perseverance over struggles and emotions. Reportedly, during the opening night…