Ashley Bouder and Benjamin Millepied
by
Gay Morris
Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz
by Michael Popkin
Sterling Hyltin and Jonathan Stafford
by Leigh Witchel
English National Ballet
"Alice in Wonderland" and "Giselle"
by John Percival
In an extended Christmas and New Year London season, English National Ballet followed the usual run of “Nutcracker” with two other ballets that had already been revived on tour. First came “Alice in Wonderland”, a work I remember not liking much when it was first given in 1995 — but I had forgotten quite how boring it is. The idea of putting Lewis Carroll's stories on stage has some immediate appeal until you remember how lacking in narrative it is. So we just get bits and pieces of action, unrelated to each other. This isn't helped by the score arranged from Tchaikovsky fragments by Carl Davis; my impression is that the music specially written by Joseph Horovitz for a previous production by the company in 1953 worked better, and certainly several other companies took it up. Sue Blane's designs are the best feature of the present staging, cleverly adapted from the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel. READ MORE
American Ballet Theatre at the Kennedy Center
Opening Triple Bill
by Alexandra Tomalonis
One of the few constants in American Ballet Theatre’s performances over the past few decades, and one of the most beautiful things about the company, is the respect with which the dancers perform Antony Tudor’s ballets. This was evident again at the company’s opening performance Tuesday night, when dancers too young to have met Tudor danced his “Dark Elegies” with a depth of emotion that made the work seem new. READ MORE
ABT's "Othello"
by George Jackson
Mucking up the classics is commonplace with contemporary choreographers. Not, though, with Lar Lubovitch. His “Othello” sticks to Shakespeare pretty much and keeps such things as action, characterizations, locations and period within bounds of the familiar*. Tediously familiar is what this three-act ballet seemed because neither the acting nor dancing was allowed to take flight. Lubovitch had been careful in blocking out parts and trying to make the movement apt. Even the pain of proud Othello, his writhing when he becomes Iago’s victim, seems calculated. So does Iago’s rigidity. I could have stood some mucking up if only the choreographer had gone mad with inspiration. READ MORE
Laura Peterson
"I Love Dan Flavin"
by Tom Phillips
Laura Peterson is a minimalist, but it’s a full-bodied minimalism, expressed not just in choreography but the creation of a whole artistic setting. Her original conception for “I Love Dan Flavin” was a dance in a gallery space — maybe an attempt to enliven the ideas that went into Flavin’s strange, baleful art, fashioned out of fluorescent tubes of light. The gallery idea hasn’t worked out yet, so the piece had its premiere in the converted living-room space of Dixon Place on the Bowery. It will probably go better in a gallery, where the audience can be installed in the weirdness of it all. But even across the fluorescent footlights, there was plenty to see. READ MORE