As ye sow, so shall ye reap. When a ballet company spends a lot of money on gimmicky pieces, it’s stuck with them for a while—they have to earn their keep. Likewise, when it spends a lot of money on an arid version of a classic, it too has to serve again and again. In its current season, City Ballet is reaping what it sowed: Yet another go round for Peter Martins’s arid, antiromantic Romeo and Juliet, and exhumations of the awful Lynn Taylor-Corbett Seven Deadly Sins (gimmick: Patti LuPone singing—badly—the Kurt Weill/Lotte Lenya songs) and the awful Peter Martin Ocean’s Kingdom (gimmick: music by Paul McCartney). I can’t imagine any knowledgeable ballet-lover wanting to see any of these more than once. Read More