Rubinald Pronk, Maria Kowroski, and Edwaard Liang rehearsing Monotones II, photograph by Yaniv Schulman Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company concluded its second season at City Center on Sunday afternoon. I wrote about both programs here and here, but decided to post some more rehearsal photos from Monotones II and two surprisingly good videos of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s [...]

Adrian Danchig-Waring, Wendy Whelan, and Tyler Angle rehearsing Monotones II photo by Yaniv Schulman The second Morphoses program was not only more varied than the first, but more complete as a whole. Three short pieces were bookended by Wheeldon works, with the new Commedia opening the program and Fools’ Paradise closing it. I wrote at length about [...]

Last year, Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company tried to prove that “Ballet=Sexy” in an attempt to overturn the belief that ballet is all about tutus and dying swans. After watching Wednesday evening’s gala performance at City Center, it was unclear if that’s still Christopher Wheeldon’s goal for the company. True, there were no swans [...]

Designed by NYCB soloist Craig Hall The New York State Theater was packed on Friday night, and not just with the typical crowd of New York City Ballet devotees. Young people, too, had flocked to Lincoln Center to see the Dancers’ Choice program, a benefit for the Dancers’ Emergency Fund. Principal dancer Jonathan Stafford [...]

NYCB dancers in the final pose from Robbins’ Glass Pieces, photo by Paul Kolnik Tuesday’s evenings program at New York City Ballet took the audience on a musical journey from Bach’s solo piano and solo cello pieces, to an early twentieth century violin concerto by Alban Berg, to Philip Glass’s minimalist music of the 1980s.  The [...]

Christopher Wheeldon’s Rococo Variations - photo by Paul Kolnik “Here and Now” was a fitting title for a program that featured four contemporary works - the oldest premiered in 1998 - by some of the most sought-after choreographers in ballet today. But I was swept far away from the here and the now, traveling to [...]

Rachel Rutherford and Craig Hall in N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz, photo by Paul Kolnik The Jerome Robbins Celebration is well underway at NYCB, now in its fourth week of the spring season.  Although I’ve already seen several Robbins ballets since the start of the season, Wednesday evening’s “Baroque to Jazz” program was the first one that [...]

New York City Ballet’s “Seasons” program presented two distinctly different works that exemplified the choreographic breadth of Jerome Robbins. The dark, meditative Watermill uses the seasons to convey the passing of time and the different stages in a man’s life, while The Four Seasons is a spirited personification of winter, spring, summer, and fall. Before seeing [...]

Last night I attended New York City Ballet’s “Four by Four” program, which presents pieces from four choreographers inspired by four different composers. Reflecting on the program, I realized how diverse the ballets were, not only because of the different “voices” in each ballet, but also because of the varied settings - ranging from [...]