-
New Combinations
NEW COMBINATIONS is a program of three stylistically similar ballets, one just premiered, another that was new last fall, and a third dating from 2000. They work remarkably well in juxtaposition, with their emphasis on historical allusion and reconsideration, a marked sensitivity to the interaction of color and choreography, and a deep appropriateness for a…
-
Midsummer Night’s Dream
George Balanchine’s balletic rendering of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (1962), in revival at the New York City Ballet, captures less the Shakespeare of the popular theater, and the modern nostalgia for it, than the Shakespeare of the court, the one associated with Blackfriars, Ben Jonson, and the masques of Inigo Jones. There is a great…
-
Jewels
Last week at the New York City Ballet I saw George Balanchine’s JEWELS, a full-length ballet in three parts, “Emeralds,” “Rubies” and “Diamonds”, created in 1967. There is a sense in which, when we see a Balanchine at the NYCB, which he co-founded, we are seeing a work “from the repertory”, and another in which…
-
Balanchine Short Stories
Of the multifarious branches of the theater that I have followed, and now and then even practiced, it is probably the classical ballet of which I have been the most neglectful. This is not as it ought to have been, particularly here in New York, where the ballet achieves an amplitude matched in few if…