Word: ballets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...much beloved work in the Soviet Union, is virtually unknown here, except for a section called "Kingdom of the Shades," which is a distillation of Marius Petipa's pure classicism. The film The Turning Point made beautiful use of its opening sequence, in which the corps de ballet slowly descends a ramp, all the dancers doing the same graceful movement, based on an arabesque, so that the audience sees it from every angle and at the same time as a single image. The stage becomes a vision of harmony, symmetry and peace...
...this prism of bliss is a mere pause amid tumult, a respite in a plot-clogged saga of murder and revenge, which features, among a good many other things, poison asps, opium, the collapse into rubble of an entire Indian temple? With Natalia Makarova's direction, the American Ballet Theater has produced the full-length La Bayadére, at a cost of about $500,000. American balletgoers are not used to such a florid, densely populated drama. To appreciate it, one must be prepared for a very full, surprising experience. The evening has a slight aura of grand...
Makarova grew up on this ballet in Leningrad, dancing in it at the Kirov. For American audiences she has rearranged the work, adding and deleting portions. Most of the time she manages to keep the story line in focus. She is clearly skilled at staging Russian classics, but it requires either a more imaginative choreographer or a tougher critical judgment to translate the work completely from a secure tradition to a new aesthetic setting. In the first act, an hour and ten minutes long, melodramatic mime sequences and decorative dancing compete for the viewer's attention...
There was a more traditional celebration across Lincoln Center, at the Metropolitan Opera House, where the American Ballet Theater put on a 40th anniversary gala evening. A.B.T. does this sort of thing every five years or so for fun and fund raising, but this gathering had special meaning: it marked the 35th year that Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith have directed the troupe; in September Mikhail Baryshnikov will replace them...
...achievements of Chase and Smith at A.B.T. The company has kept alive the full-length classics, like Swan Lake, Giselle, The Sleeping Beauty. This season it will present Natalia Makarova's staging of the complete La Bayadere, one of Russian Choreographer Marius Petipa's influential creations, a ballet virtually unknown in the U.S. except for the famous last act. Similarly, the works of Fokine (Petrouchka, Les Sylphides, Firebird) are preserved in authentic stagings and style...