San Francisco Ballet's Opening Night Gala:
Shining Evening at the Ballet
by Paul Parish
For the last twenty years, since he took over the company, Helgi Tomasson has always started out the "real" ballet season with a gala opening night, an evening a la Versailles, with a dazzling series of star turns in the opera house following a massive fund-raiser dinner across the street at City Hall, followed by a ball back at City Hall. It serves to put a stopper on the sentimentality of "Nutcracker" season and launch the big ship of serious ballet. READ MORE
Royal Ballet of Flanders
Balanchine-Forsythe-Shimazaki
by Marc Haegeman
The Royal Ballet of Flanders’ first programme of the year brought a noteworthy triple bill, combining George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15 with William Forsythe’s New Sleep and a world-premiere, Eyes in the Sky by Toru Shimazaki. With this varied offering, artistic director Kathryn Bennetts proposed a generous and challenging evening, set above all to demonstrate the versatility of the company. All three pieces were new to the company. READ MORE
Tributes
by Leigh Witchel
New York City Ballet’s “Tribute to Kirstein” program honoring Lincoln Kirstein’s centennial is an odd mix, as are other things NYCB is programming this year in his honor — “Romeo and Juliet”? That has less to do with Kirstein than “Vienna Waltzes” — a ballet Kirstein spends much of his time in “Thirty Years at the New York City Ballet” justifying, mainly to himself, as being necessary for box office. With “Vienna Waltzes” as a finale, the company presented “Episodes” and the NYCB premiere of “Tribute,” a ballet by Christopher d’Amboise that pays homage to the aesthetic that Balanchine and Kirstein championed. READ MORE
The Exception
by Carol Parlo
This season, the New York City Ballet is testing pre-packaged mixed bills, rather than its traditional mix-and-match programming. If you want to see “Mozartiana” you’ll see it with “In Vento” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto” under the moniker “Tradition and Innovation” or not at all — and vice versa. What would a rule be without an exception, however, and this program was it. “Tarantella” appears on no other regular programming; the remaining three works otherwise appear on a different bill under a different slogan.
Presenting these four ballets together also went against the NYCB tradition of a good program, cohering and developing organically like a good meal. Here instead were two short pieces followed by two closers, one astringent, one wan. READ MORE
Please, Pass the Prozac
2007 Choreographer's Showcase
by Lisa Traiger
Not much dancing in the 24th installment of the choreographers’ Showcase, an annual event sponsored by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. Every year since the late Carolyn Tate instituted these evenings back in the 1980s at one-time movie theater now Cheverly, Maryland’s Publick Playhouse, a team of adjudicators has culled the best half-dozen dancers from tens of submissions. This year choreographers Janis Brenner and Jeanine Durning watched 60 works and selected seven. READ MORE