Musical America Blogs

Another event that featured music as much as dance was the September 17 Alice Tully Hall performance of the Simón Bolivar National Youth Choir and the José Limón Dance Company. The highlight of the one-night only occasion, celebrating Venezuala’s El Sistema, was Missa Brevis.

Have you ever wondered what it would take to partner a female ballet dancer? The May 6 matinee at New York City Ballet was an excellent primer for any one considering that question. In each of the four works from the All (Jerome) Robbins program, at the former New York State Theater, the male lead rarely left the side of his female partner.

There is nothing like a good ballet spoof. At New York City Ballet’s January 21 matinee performance, the company danced at Lincoln Center Jerome Robbins’ “The Concert” (1956). Whether you get the inside jokes regarding specific ballets, Robbins’s jabs at ballet traditions—the good, bad and the ugly—directly communicate.

New York City Ballet’s new staging of “The Seven Deadly Sins ,” which had its premiere at the company’s spring gala on May 11, puts Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s dark, sinister “ballet chanté” of 1933 into a new context: a tinsel-town soundstage, complete with unison hoofers in the grand finale. Choreographer Lynn Taylor-Corbett, whose credits include Broadway’s “Swing,” has essentially created a Cliff Notes version of this irony-laced yarn, dragging principal dancer Wendy Whelan and guest artist Patti Lapone through seven shallow scenes of human transgression and stripping the work of its brooding soul.

There is no better way to anoint a rising male ballet star than to award him the title role in George Balanchine’s “Apollo.” On May 5 at David R. Koch Theater, New York City Ballet corps dancer Chase Finlay hit the big time with “Apollo,” receiving three curt

By Rachel Straus May 1-2 Guggenheim Museum The popular Works + Process series presents “American Ballet Theatre on to Act II.” Current ABT dancers will perform excerpts from their upcoming Metropolitan Opera House season. ABT alumni will discuss the challenges dancers face in the second act of their careers.  You can watch the event each [...]

By Rachel Straus  March 29 – April 9 Eiko & Koma The Japanese avant-garde artists, whose home has been the U.S. since 1976, present the New York premiere of Naked at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. They will be intermittently naked, but what will stand out are their glacially slow movement tableaus that change one’s perception [...]

By Rachel Straus February 4 and 5 @ 8:00 p.m. Miro Magloire’s New Chamber Ballet at City Center Magloire’s choreographic inspiration is music. Lately, the German-born, composer-choreographer has been inviting emerging dance makers to his evenings at City Center’s studio. The program will include three world premieres: Constantine Baecher’s Sketches Of A Woman Remembering (a [...]

By Rachel Straus If you’re a ballet lover, you know her name. Sara Mearns. New York Times senior dance critic Alastair MacAulay recently called her “the greatest American ballerina of our time.” On January 21, she performed in Jerome Robbins’s Dances at a Gathering (1969) and Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH (2008) with the New York [...]

“To the greatest dancers on earth,” said New York City Ballet’s Master in Chief Peter Martins. On September 14 the Danish-born master of ceremonies pronounced this while making his annual, launch-the-season vodka toast. I don’t think Martins knew that his grand words echoed those of America’s most influential circus impresario. P.T. Barnum’s “greatest show on [...]