CriticalDance Forum

Dark Invader
by DEBORAH JOWITT for the Village Voice
published: February 6, 2007

Robbins was never happy with the ballet. He had pruned away most of the narrative devices he'd experimented with during rehearsals, along with many props. After the premiere, he took scenes out, then put them back. Finally, in 1980, he reduced Dybbuk to A Suite of Dances, excising the principal characters and all semblance of plot. When Kirstein wanted him to revive the original Dybbuk in 1986, he refused, saying Bernstein's music had turned out to be too dramatic for what he'd had in mind. The fact that Robbins was working in George Balanchine's company, where the prevailing aesthetic was to let music and dancing alone tell whatever stories a spectator might care to imagine, certainly affected him, and Kirstein's turn down 20 years earlier still rankled...

Visions Nostalgic and Utterly Fresh

By ROSLYN SULCAS
Published: February 12, 2007
NY Times

When applied to ballet, the word contemporary can mean anything from works created reasonably recently to more abstract notions of modernity. A range of those notions was on offer at the New York City Ballet’s first performance, on Friday night, of “Contemporary Quartet,” a program of four ballets from 1969 to 2006.

Adventures in Geometry and Color, as Well as Dancing

By ROSLYN SULCAS
NY Times
Published: February 16, 2007

Of all the titles that the New York City Ballet has come up with for its new fixed programs, “For the Fun of It” sounds the silliest. But as it turns out, this program, presented for the first time on Wednesday night, is one of the most persuasive groupings that the company has so far presented — and it makes a strong case for being able to see this particular set of works together again. (For those not following City Ballet’s policy decisions with bated breath, the company previously performed ever-changing combinations of ballets, rotating through about 40 works a season.)

Dancers, and Their Company, Held Down by Gravity

By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO
Published: February 15, 2007

New Yorkers are adept at running themselves ragged, so perhaps it’s only fitting that a company that bears the city’s name should put its dancers through such grueling paces. Still, while 38 different ballets over eight weeks may be impressive, wan dancers aren’t, and on Tuesday night the company looked exhausted.

This wasn’t so problematic at first: exhaustion actually suits Christopher Wheeldon’s “Klavier,” a dark exploration of the moment when opulence overripens to decadence. Set to the sensuous, disquieting Adagio Sostenuto from Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” piano sonata in B flat, Op. 106, which was performed by Susan Walters, the ballet unfolds (or perhaps collapses) in a destroyed ballroom, as conjured by Jean-Marc Puissant’s giant fallen chandelier.

A Pinch Hitter Reveals, and a Magnetic Pair Revel

By GIA KOURLAS
Published: February 19, 2007

New York City Ballet was full of surprises on Friday, but the most alarming involved the evening’s conductor, Maurice Kaplow, who suddenly fell ill before the final ballet on its new program, “A Banquet of Dance.” (A company spokesman said his illness did not appear to be serious.) With no one available to conduct “Evenfall,” Christopher Wheeldon’s ballet set to Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Cameron Grant played the entire composition on solo piano.

Mr. Grant’s fine performance shifted the mood of the ballet, a grand work for 18 corps dancers and two principals. It was as if the raw nerves of Mr. Wheeldon’s choreography were exposed, emphasizing the work’s faint hint at loss with quivering, somber fragility.