You may have noticed that Jerome Robbins is being celebrated all over the place. And why not? He’s worth celebrating. But why now? Because it’s about to be his 90th birthday? We usually organize these things (as we did for Balanchine) for the centenary. Why this case of premature celebration?  read more »

The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn’t always know what to do with them. The dancers—here for a three-week season, just ended, at the City Center—were under a handicap: The stage is so much smaller than their own, in St. Petersburg, that the company’s classical works in particular looked cramped and unhappy.  read more »

The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was Swan Lake. The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning. As I remember it, our secretary of state and the Russian ambassador were sitting in the center box with their dinner jackets off, trying to look dignified as they melted, and the curtain was extremely late—Zubkovskaya, we later heard, was fainting from the heat backstage.  read more »

Every year at this time Paul Taylor arrives at the City Center to make us happy. There are the new pieces (two this season, as usual). There are the recent works being given a second or third exposure. There are the classics: Aureole, Arden Court and of course Esplanade. There aren’t the great dances that are on temporary leave of absence: Sunset, Big Bertha, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rehearsal), Last Look, Company B, Syzygy.  read more »

One of the givens about Mark Morris is that he’s especially musical. And certainly he’s shown an unusually broad and knowledgeable appreciation of music in his choice of scores. Just as important, he’s trained his dancers to inhabit the music fully and sensitively. (He himself was deeply musical as a dancer.) So what to make of his version of Henry Purcell’s semi-opera, semi-masque King Arthur, now at the New York City Opera?  read more »

Roads paved with good intentions don’t always lead to Hell—often they go straight to BAM.  read more »

Why would the world’s foremost classical ballerina choose to turn up in New York leading a small company performing three works newly choreographed on and for her? Idealism? Vanity? Artistic ambition? Chutzpah? Her program was called “Beauty in Motion,” a real misnomer. How about “Vishneva Goes Contempo”? Or “A Long Night at the City Center”?  read more »

I’ve been seeing Balanchine’s Jewels for more than 40 years, and that’s a lot of jewelry. In the beginning it seemed to many of us unique in its ambitions and its splendor; to others it seemed gaudy—paste. But no one thought it would ever travel. Too expensive, too many styles to absorb and what company other than New York City Ballet could produce a Verdy, a McBride and Villella, a Farrell?  read more »

The story at Alvin Ailey is always the same: the dancers. But having been away during the opening weeks of the company’s annual City Center lovefest, just ended, I have a new take on them. Seeing a number of second- and third-cast performances, I was more exposed than critics usually are to the company’s depth of talent.  read more »

Count your blessings, all ye New Yorkers who every Christmas can rejoice in George Balanchine’s masterpiece The Nutcracker. Never have I appreciated it more than in Paris this year, when the Opéra Ballet gave us Rudolf Nureyev’s 1985 version. (For unfathomable reasons, it’s seen frequently in Paris and for years it held the stage in London as well.)

Not even Nureyev’s greatest admirers acclaim him as a great choreographer.  read more »