The Sleeping Beauty is the greatest, most challenging and most vulnerable of classical ballets. Everything can go wrong with it, and all too often, everything does. Most of us have an ideal Beauty in mind; for my generation, it’s the famous Sadler’s Wells version that we first saw in New York in 1949 and that Read More
The mystery of Christopher Wheeldon deepens. Yes, he’s the most talented of the younger ballet choreographers—indeed, where’s the competition? Yes, he’s particularly good at nurturing dancers and identifying their essential qualities. Yes, he’s always intelligent, almost always interesting and rarely vulgar—I would have said never vulgar, except that the memory of An American in Paris Read More
The Balanchine centenary celebrations at City Ballet lurch on-we’re now one-third of the way through a second season of hoopla. There’s been so much spin and so much P.R. that it’s hard to remember just what it is we’re celebrating. In these first few weeks we’ve had French Tribute night, German Tribute night, Austrian Tribute Read More
There’s light at the end of the tunnel. Every cloud has a silver lining. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Take your pick-all the old adages apply to the New York City Ballet in its current state of confusion. Let’s get the “darkest” over with, so we can move on toward the end of the Read More
