By Robert Gottlieb 6/19/12 5:59pm

Dance

Natalia Osipova in Alexei Ratmansky’s "The Firebird."

What Makes the Firebird Sing: At ABT, Alexei Ratmansky’s Action-Packed Version Has Energetic Bird, Engaging Maiden

This last week brought us, by coincidence, new versions—new concepts—of two of the canon’s most famous ballets: The Firebird and Swan Lake. One was wonderful, the other unwonderful. So it goes.

Alexei Ratmansky is generally considered today’s most talented classical choreographer. Within the last weeks we’ve seen his moving Russian Seasons at City Ballet and his entrancing The Bright Stream at ABT. His new work is everywhere—Paris, Toronto, Amsterdam, Miami, as well as New York. And what he does is extremely various. All you can be sure of with him is unremitting invention, garnished by respect and generosity to his dancers—they’re constantly being stretched but never being pushed. Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 6/12/12 6:26pm

Dance

Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes in "Onegin." (Courtesy ABT)

Dream On: At City Ballet, Shakespeare’s a Dependable Delight

ABT has completed the first half of its spring season at the Met. We’ve had the Giselles (and their sister Wilis), Bayadére’s Nikiyas (and their sister Shades). We’ve been lucky enough to have the population of the Bright Stream collective farm and the visiting artists who come to cheer them up—though they’re pretty cheerful already. And we’ve had a brand new production of John Cranko’s Onegin. Did we need it? Did we need Onegin at all? No, but ABT needed it. How can the company fill the huge Met without the full-evening costume dramas that keep the tourists coming? Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 11/21/11 5:46pm

Dance

"Gossamer Gallants" by Paul Taylor.

A Weekend of Song and Dance: Unflagging Invention in an All-Taylor Evening, and Ellington on Exhilirating Fast-Forward

Saturday
City Center
2:00 p.m.

The Encores! series and Jazz at Lincoln Center blasted off their new collaboration with a spectacular show called Cotton Club Parade—all-singing, all-dancing, all-Ellington. (Even the non-Ellington numbers sound like his.) Of course a big theater like the City Center can’t replicate the feeling of an intimate place like the Cotton Club—for one thing, they didn’t have miking back in the day. (Lucky them.) And presumably a show at the club was relaxed: pauses between numbers; waiters passing through with drinks clinking; customers coming and going. Whereas the Parade is a semi-Broadway show, and one of its strongest virtues is that it’s driven at breakneck speed through its 23 numbers—its energy is never allowed to falter; even segues are ultraminimal. And there’s no intermission. But authenticity of venue isn’t the point. You leave the performance with a real sense of the variety, the ingenuity, the sheer fun of what things must have been like up on 125th Street in the ’20s and ’30s. Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 11/15/11 5:55pm

Dance

Adrienne Schulte and Sean Stewart in Merce Cunningham’s "Duets."

Let’s Get It On: An Energetic Week of American Ballet Theatre

ABT nailed its contemporary colors to the mast for its recent one-week season at the City Center—no imported stars, no full-evening classics or faux-classics. Instead, Tharp (three pieces), Taylor (two), Cunningham, Ratmansky, Clarke (Martha) and Volpi (one each). Volpi? He’s the 25-year-old dancer from the Stuttgart Ballet, originally from Argentina, who was commissioned to create a new piece for the occasion. Read More

By Michael Miller 10/13/09 11:20pm

Iman in Karan, Emmy and Natalie Dis Photogs at Big Ballet Gala

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but when it’s as gusty as it was on Wednesday, Oct. 7, some kind of warning, or maybe a protective shield, might have helped. But the weather didn’t stop the stars from coming out to the American Ballet Theatre’s fall gala at Avery Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 10/13/09 8:36pm

ABT’s Three New Works at Avery Fisher

Because City Center was supposed to be undergoing major revamping (it didn’t happen), ABT switched its fall season to an unlikely venue: Avery Fisher Hall. It has no front curtain, no wings, no rake and no way to hang scenery, and the balcony is a zillion miles from the stage.

The season was also Read More

By Robert Gottlieb 7/10/09 2:18pm

Meet New ABT Phenom, Natalia Osipova

If ever we needed proof that the gods giveth even as they taketh away, it was to be found at ABT this season, when on successive evenings the company presented in the role of Giselle first Nina Ananiashvili, the greatly admired ballerina on the verge of retirement, then the very young and much heralded Bolshoi Read More