Reflecting beauty of music and form in ‘Swan Lake’
The power behind Boston Ballet’s thoroughly traditional yet finely tuned “Swan Lake” (2004) lies in the fact that it takes Tchaikovsky’s great cup-runneth-over score not just as its inspiration but as its thematic and structural guide. Choreographed by artistic director Mikko Nissinen after the 1895 version by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, this version of the popular four-act classic is all about musicality ....

Big pond, little pond - Swan Lake in Boston and Providence

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Boston Ballet ... aspires to, and has largely achieved, international status, but its Swan Lake, which opened last night, continues to evolve, sometimes in puzzling ways. .... . The 2008 production has new sets (courtesy of Ballet West), no second intermission (the transition from act three to act four being facilitated by the new sets), and a new ending in which Siegfried and Odette don’t throw themselves into the lake.

‘Dark Elegies’ shines brightest for Ballet
Boston Ballet’s “Three Masterpieces” program, which opened last night at the Wang Theatre, begins and ends with two radically different 20th-century classics: George Balanchine’s elegantly formal “Concerto Barocco” and Twyla Tharp’s exuberant, rowdy “In the Upper Room.”

Framed in the middle, however, was the quiet heart of the evening, Antony Tudor’s moving one-act ballet “Dark Elegies” in its company premiere. ... It is a superb addition to the company’s repertoire.

Mastering the masterpieces - Boston Ballet takes on Balanchine, Tudor, and Tharp

It’s not exactly a trip down Memory Lane, but this weekend Boston Ballet is revisiting some pieces and choreographers it hasn’t performed in the Mikko Nissinen era: George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, which it last did in 1988; Antony Tudor’s Dark Elegies, which I don’t believe it’s ever done (the company’s last Tudor work was Jardin aux lilas, in 1990); and Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, which it’s had on three programs, most recently in 1995.

Where the chips fell - Marjorie Morgan, Karl Cronin, Lucinda Childs, and Boston Ballet

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As later generations absorbed postmodernism, these instincts eventually proliferated again into ego, virtuosity, and excess. Boston Ballet’s final program of the season climaxed with Philip Glass & Twyla Tharp’s 1986 In the Upper Room, an example of minimalism gone backwards — into dazzling audience appeal.