United Ukrainian Ballet visits the Kennedy Center with new "Giselle"

Christine Shevchenko and Oleksei Tiutiunnyk in the United Ukrainian Ballet's Giselle. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine almost one year ago, on February 24, 2022. In the wake of these barbaric attacks on cities and infrastructure, ballet dancers and ballet students fled Ukraine, along with many of their fellow citizens. Many of those dancers ended up in The Hague in the Netherlands, where they formed the United Ukrainian Ballet under the leadership of the Dutch dancer Igone de Jongh. (The male dancers joined later, since they were at first not allowed to leave Ukraine and avoid military service.) This ersatz company has toured the Netherlands and taken longer trips to London and Asia. They arrived at the Kennedy Center Opera House Wednesday night for a week-long run of the striking new version of Giselle choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, their first and so far only planned appearance in the United States.

This Giselle is the product of Ratmansky's historical research, the latest ballet to be given the choreographer's archival scouring treatment, and it emerges like a ceiling fresco with centuries of soot and grime removed. Ratmansky first premiered the new version at the Bolshoi in 2019, and now it has put him on the edges of the subsequent Russian conflict with Ukraine. (Ratmansky grew up partially in Ukraine and had already moved his family to New York: the Russian attack last year propelled him to cut all ties with Russian companies. In a related story, one of the stars of his Giselle at the Bolshoi, celebrated étoile Olga Smirnova, resigned from that company and went to the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam, making prominent public statements against the war.)

As detailed in the authoritative program notes for the Kennedy Center, by dance critic Alastair Macaulay, Ratmansky has gone back to as many historical sources as he could find to restore many details from the original 1841 production, although he also preserves some of the Petipa additions found in Russian productions. Some of the patches are sections of music and action that were excised over the years: the original opening of Act II, where a group of men are drinking in the forest, only to be scared away by the Wilis; and in the middle of Act II, he has restored a fugue, depicting the confusion of the Wilis when their target, Albert, hides by the cross over Giselle's grave.

By looking closely at early sources, Ratmansky's version makes important changes to many of the pantomimed scenes, shifting the nature of most of the characters. The Giselle of Odessa-born Christine Shevchenko, who comes from American Ballet Theater to join the Ukrainian company for this run at the Kennedy Center, seems less fragile and more girlish. The extraordinary Albert of Oleksei Tiutiunnyk, a tall dancer of immense strength and leaping height, seems more genuinely in love with Giselle. Significantly, in a more hopeful ending, he heeds Giselle's last command, as she sinks back into the earth, to wed the noblewoman to whom he was betrothed. Even his fiancée, Bathilde (Marta Zabirynnyk), and the hapless woodsman who also wants to marry Giselle, Hilarion (Sergii Kliachin), become more sympathetic.

Alexei Ratmansky (center) with United Ukrainian Ballet at Kennedy Center. Photo: Mena Brunette, XMB Photography

Ratmansky's research into the details of dance movement and even the tempos of the music also yield many surprises, especially in the movements of the corps de ballet in the more rustic Act I peasant dance, where Maria Shupilova and Vladislav Bondar made a favorable impression in the pas de deux. (The corps seemed a little rough and nervous on opening night, including one dancer who slipped and fell, but the personal situation these dancers face after fleeing their home country surely explains some of the agitation.) The addition of a "flying Wili," who floated by on wires at the back of the stage a couple times, was another surprise.

Sets and costumes, designed by Hayden Griffin and Peter Farmer (on loan to the Ukrainians from Birmingham Royal Ballet), were handsome, especially the purple-infused scene of the eerie night forest in Act II (lighting by Andrew Ellis). Elizaveta Gogidze, one of the Ukrainian stars (she will take the title role at the remaining evening performances), was a frigid fright as Myrtha, queen of the Wilis, assisted by fine performances from Veronika Hordina and Daria Manoilo. Viktor Oliynyk conducted the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra in the transformed score, with some misalignments that will likely be ironed out in the remaining performances.

Given the personal tragedy of these Ukrainian dancers and the public criticism of the Russian invasion made by Ratmansky, the curtain call was a stirring moment. The two lead dancers appeared with a Ukrainian flag. Ratmansky himself and other dancers brought on other flags. The Dutch company's artistic director, Igone de Jongh, took a bow but then left the stage before a rousing rendition from the orchestra of the Ukrainian national anthem. With the news that Russia is reportedly planning a new offensive in Ukraine, possibly coinciding with the February 24 anniversary, the message of support for Ukraine is all the more urgent.

Giselle runs through February 5. kennedy-center.org

American Ballet Theater's surreal 'Whipped Cream' at the Kennedy Center

Whipped Cream (Act I), American Ballet Theater (photo by Gene Schiavone)
American Ballet Theater's visit to the Kennedy Center this week put a spotlight on new works by its most promising choreographers. After a mixed program of short works, it was time for the local premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's revival of Richard Strauss's lost ballet score, Schlagobers, seen on Friday night at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Ratmansky has dubbed the work by the English translation of Whipped Cream, and like that confection it floats light and fluffy on the tongue, quickly melts away to nothing, and may rot your teeth and upset your stomach.

Strauss apparently had plans for a third phase of his career, after symphonic tone poems and operas, as a ballet composer. The extravagant expense of Schlagobers, so soon in the wake of World War I, led to the end of his brief tenure at the Vienna State Opera's ballet company. The score is a frothy delight of decadent waltzes and phantasmagorical effects, worth studying for both balletomanes and Strauss lovers, a work that deserves to be heard again. Ratmansky did everyone a favor by resurrecting it, but he has likely not made the best version of the work possible.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, American Ballet Theatre’s ‘Whipped Cream’: A fleeting sugar high (Washington Post, February 2, 2018) Alastair Macaulay, Review: Alexei Ratmansky’s Ballet ‘Whipped Cream’ Is a Candyland Triumph (New York Times, May 23, 2017) ---, Review: Ratmansky’s Confectionery Shop Also Serves Ballet Poetry (New York Times, March 16, 2017)

The staging goes big, full frilly and pink, with a panoply of hallucinogenic costumes for the sweets that come to life in the indigestion nightmares of a Boy who overindulges in the candy shop while celebrating his first communion. Dancers playing the children are normal-sized, while the dancers playing adults wear large heads, some even seeming lifted up higher by their footwear (sets and costumes by Mark Ryden). After a series of dessert divertissements, Act I ends with a scene for the corps de ballet in veiled white bodysuits fluttering through a surreal whipped cream landscape, many of them entering humorously on a slide -- in what seems like a spoof of the Kingdom of the Shades scene in La Bayadère.

Ratmansky's choreography is antic and jam-packed with cutesy action and movement, to a fault. Precious few delectable moments for dance materialize. In the first act there was a lovely pairing for the Princess Tea Flower of Hee Seo and Prince Coffee of Cory Stearns, accompanied by flute and violin solos as light as a feather, including a tender pas de deux. The two other solos in the divertissment, for Prince Cocoa and Don Zucchero (sugar), were more comic and not as memorable. The many crazy costumes -- from Dr. Seuss-like long-necked giraffalopes to delightful miniature bouncing cupcakes -- are an endless source of hilarity.


Act II takes a turn for the humorously nightmarish, as the Boy (an energetic Jonathan Klein) awakens in a hospital room, watched over by sinister eyes, right out of a Salvador Dalí painting. The appropriately carnival-time lesson on gluttony switches from sweets to liquor, as the alcoholic doctor takes nips from the bottle in his pocket. In his own set of hallucinations, three liquor bottles come to life for another series of comic dances. Rising dancer Cassandra Trenary's Princess Praline was pert and adorable as she welcomed the still-delusional Boy into her kingdom of sweets. Some more space in the choreography, some room to breathe, would have been welcome, and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra should probably have had a couple more rehearsal slots to pull this complex score together with more polish. Conductor Ormsby Wilkins's frantic gestures did not help at times, seeming to create more confusion among the musicians.

The next dance event at the Kennedy Center Opera House is the Washington Ballet's presentation of Romeo and Juliet, in the choreography of John Cranko made for Stuttgart Ballet, February 14 to 18.

American Ballet Theater: New Choreography at Kennedy Center

Blain Hoven and Daniil Simkin, Serenade after Plato's Symposium, American Ballet Theater (photo by Rosalie Connor)
American Ballet Theater has taken over the Kennedy Center Opera House this week, offering a smorgasbord of new ballets. The first program, seen on Wednesday night, was a combination of three choreographies from the last decade, plus a Jerome Robbins classic from 1976. The second night cast included some of the company's best dancers -- meaning that the usual vocal group of Misty Copeland followers was in the audience -- and some new discoveries.

The best part of the Leonard Bernstein anniversary celebrations, otherwise a seemingly endless sequence of celebrated mediocrities, arrived unexpectedly with Serenade after Plato's Symposium, perhaps Alexei Ratmansky's most important work to date, premiered by ABT in 2016. The music is Bernstein's, a rather gorgeous five-movement violin concerto premiered in Venice in 1954, setting to music the seven speakers of Plato's Symposium, invited to extol the virtues of love. Seven men, mostly from the group of rising soloists, brought this evening of conversation and intense philosophical argument to life, with Hee Seo taking the startling single female role, entering in a starkly lit rectangular opening in the rear curtain. Violin soloist Kobi Malkin struggled with intonation on the numerous double-stops of the solo part, but the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra supported him ably.

The Robbins piece, Other Dances, was originally a vehicle for Mikhail Baryshnikov, but it was the woman of the pairing, Sarah Lane, who most stood out for the grace and buoyancy of her movements. Emily Wong played the selection of Chopin pieces, four mazurkas and a concluding, spirited waltz, at a piano on stage.

Other Reviews: Alastair Macaulay, Review: In Gala, American Ballet Theater Is Open to Debate (New York Times, May 17, 2016) ---, A Big House, Big Names, New Twists (New York Times, May 25, 2011) Gia Kourlas, Review: At American Ballet Theater, Mostly Millepied (New York Times, October 26, 2017)

The most recent piece, premiered just last fall, was the spirited I Feel the Earth Move, with choreography by Benjamin Millepied set to music by Philip Glass. Stage hands cleared away all of the curtains and scrims from the stage, revealing the catwalks and bare walls, as well as the lighting instruments above. Danced to a rather loud recording, this ballet was hyperactive, seemingly in constant motion, perhaps an expression of individual freedom against repression, represented by the female corps, which appeared marching in step, bandannas over some of their faces.

Christopher Wheeldon's story ballets have not been my cup of tea for the most part, but this more abstract short choreography had greater appeal. Barbara Bilach took the solo part of Benjamin Britten's Diversions for Piano (left hand) and Orchestra, again conducted with abundant energy by Ormsby Wilkins. It was another beautiful score to discover, brought to life by dance, made better by it as the Bernstein had been earlier. The variations form worked elegantly for dance, as Wheeldon has crafted pairs, solos, and group numbers for each brief movement. Misty Copeland finally appeared on stage, for a time-stopping solo in the fourth variation ("Rubato"). Her pairing in the exquisite pas de deux for the tenth variation ("Adagio"), with Cory Stearns stepping in for Gray Davis, was the highlight of the evening, muscularity merged with poetry.

American Ballet Theater performs Whipped Cream, with a forgotten ballet score by Richard Strauss, tonight through February 4.

New York City Ballet: Balanchine, Ratmansky, Peck

Sterling Hyltin and Joaquin De Luz in Odessa, New York City Ballet (photo by Paul Kolnik)
New York City Ballet is back in town for a week-long run at the Kennedy Center Opera House. Its first program, seen on Tuesday night, represents the best the company has to offer, past and present. It is one of the most beautiful and diverting mixed programs seen in recent memory. With no sets, only glowing colors illuminating the side drops and back wall, this selection of choreography put all its attention, and ours, on the movement of bodies.

The evening began with two choreographies by George Balanchine, NYCB's founding ballet master. In Square Dance Balanchine made a brilliant connection between classical and folk dance styles. Selections of Baroque concertos by Vivaldi and Corelli (Concerto Grosso in B minor, Op. 3 no. 10, by the former, and Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, no. 12, by the latter), where American folk music traces some of its rhythmical, repetitive roots, offered striking contrasts of tempo and spirit. The musical performance, complete with actual harpsichord on the continuo part, was conducted sensitively by Andrews Sill.

In particular the alternation of refrain and solo episodes of different characters in ritornello movements worked beautifully for dancing. Six men and six women, costumed in white and gray dresses or T-shirts and shorts, made paired patterns that recalled the inward-facing format of square dancing. (Originally Balanchine had a caller on stage who yelled out the moves to the dancers, a more explicit reference to square dancing, wisely excised in later years.) Balanchine kept the movements mostly classical in style, with a few simplified steps as a nod toward the square dance. Two principal dancers, Megan Fairchild spirited and elegant paired with a slightly rough Chase Finlay, were an ardent duo in the pas de deux accompanied by lovely violin and other solos in the first plangent slow movement. Fairchild's series of slow pirouettes en pointe in the Vivaldi slow movement were exquisite.

Balanchine's Tarantella was the odd man out in this program, a cutesy but charming bagatelle included to feature two younger, non-principal dancers. Erica Pereira and Spartak Hoxha, in Neapolitan peasant costumes (designed by Karinska), burst onto the scene waving to the audience. The choreography is breathless, an almost constant movement of arms and legs, which the dancers pulled off with a smile. Hoxha was so enthusiastic with the tambourine he played at one point that he knocked two of the metal zills loose from it. The music, Louis Moreau Gottschalk's Grand Tarentelle for Piano and Orchestra, op. 67, is a semi-corny Romantic finger-buster, reconstructed and orchestrated by Broadway orchestrator Hershy Kay, Balanchine's favored arranger, which challenged guest pianist Susan Walters at times.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet’s knockout punch is delivered at Kennedy Center (Washington Post, June 7) Alastair Macaulay, For the Couples in This Alexei Ratmansky Ballet, Love Is Not Enough (New York Times, May 5) Apollinaire Scherr, Ratmansky premiere, Lincoln Center, New York — tremendous (Financial Times, May 5) Siobhan Burke, No More Gang Rape Scenes in Ballets, Please (New York Times, May 15)

The second half of the program featured new works by NYCB's most talented living choreographers. The company premiered Alexei Ratmansky's Odessa just last month, and it is one of the best new short ballets seen in recent years. Ratmanksy drew his score from the 1990 Soviet film Sunset, a set of tango- and klezmer-infused musical cues by Leonid Desyatnikov. The subject matter came from the same source, Isaac Babel's play about Jewish gangsters in Odessa after the Russian Revolution, in turn based on his collection of short stories The Odessa Tales. The ballet's story does not seem to line up with the play exactly, but the air of jealousy, abuse, and desperation does. Keso Dekker designed the colorful tango costumes, glowing like stained glass under Mark Stanley's lighting.

Ratmanksy follows three couples, who are first to enter the scene. One of them, danced here by Sterling Hyltin and Joaquin de Luz with tender grace, is not happy. Ratmanksy's choreography is generally busy and rife with ideas, and that profusion of ideas here obscures the story line, unclear even after going back on Wednesday night to see this program a second time. That impenetrability does not make the ballet any less powerful, and some of the tableaux are breath-taking in their originality and beauty. The male dancers at one point become like puppeteers, lifting Hyltin and de Luz into the air in their pas de deux (pictured above), which degenerates into a gang attack scene, accompanied to heart-sickening circus music. The score, dotted by charming solos for tuba, accordion, and the space-age sound of the flexatone, provides many delights.

Justin Peck showed a lot of chutzpah in taking on Aaron Copland's music for Rodeo, set originally to an evergreen choreography by Agnes de Mille, even if it was the symphonic version with the "Ranch House Party" movement excised. Rather than a single Cowgirl among a group of boisterous cowboys, Peck's mostly male dancers seem like a bunch of athletes, with costumes recalling gymnasts, racers, or soccer players. They line up at the start line on one side of the stage to open the ballet, running across the bare stage, and when not exercising together, they walk around casually, leaning on each other.

Into this all-male gymnasium setting comes the delightful Tiler Peck (no relation to the choreographer), a gymnast who seems to like physical activity as much as the men. One of them, danced by the choreographer himself, finally notices her, dancing with her to the "Saturday Night Waltz" music. Although touching, this duet somehow did not seem as tender or sincere as the dance for the five men of the blue-costumed "soccer team" in the "Corral Nocturne" that preceded it. Male and female worlds were reconciled in the concluding "Hoe-Down," a whirlwind of athletic activity given its start humorously by Justin Peck, who knelt down at the stage edge and pulled on a cord, like that of a lawnmower, which cued a drum roll.

This program repeats on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon at the Kennedy Center Opera House. We will review the second program offered by NYCB on Friday evening.

'Little Humpbacked Horse' hops its way around the Kennedy Center

Alexei Ratmansky's The Little Humpbacked Horse (At the Bottom of the Sea), Mariinsky Ballet (photo by Nastasha Razina)
Over the years the Mariinsky Ballet has brought many beautiful ballet productions for its annual visits to the Kennedy Center. Miss Ionarts has grown up watching these often marvelous performances: Diana Vishneva's Kitri and Aurora and Giselle, the Soviet transformations of Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet, reconstructions of Rite of Spring and The Firebird. In recent years, the repertory has turned a little more obscure, beginning with last year's Raymonda and, opening on Tuesday night, this year's performances of The Little Humpbacked Horse. As with other examples in Russian opera and ballet, this is one of those works few people outside of Russia have ever heard of, but that all Russians know.

The tale by Pyotr Yershov became a ballet in the 19th century, produced with a libretto by Arthur Saint-Léon and music by Cesare Pugni at the Bolshoi in 1864. Parts of the story are quite familiar, as the foolish youngest brother, Ivan, seizes the feather of a mysterious Fire Bird to help him win a bride. For a new version of the ballet in the mid-20th century, with a revised libretto by Maxim Isaev, Rodion Shchedrin composed a new score, during the performance of which he met his wife, ballerina Maya Plisetskaya. This is the version that the Mariinsky commissioned a new choreography for in 2009, directed by Alexei Ratmansky. With colorful, geometric, minimal sets and bright, abstract costumes (both designed by Maxim Isaev), Ratmansky has given the piece a modern twist, while keeping in touch with the folk dance elements, of which the original ballet was the first example in Russia.

Shchedrin opens the first scene in a flurry of activity, fanfare-like brass followed by tittering woodwinds, and much of the score remains busy, sometimes to a fault. In a note written for the 2009 premiere of the Ratmansky production, Shchedrin wrote of the music as "a very early work of mine," in which he sees "much naivety and imperfection." The comic aspects of the music seem to have put Ratmansky in a slapstick mood, and some extended sections of the score inspired too many repetitions of the same ideas in the choreography. How many times do the three brothers have to throw each other around and get knocked to the floor? A few judicious cuts, especially in the crowd scenes, could strengthen the dramatic effect, especially since the best musical moments are elsewhere: with the wild dancing of the horses, the magical swoosh accompanying the little humpbacked horse (a delightfully agile and antic Yaroslav Baibordin), the evocative trills of the flock of Fire Birds, and the pretty music for the Wet-Nurses.

Top marks go to Vladimir Shklyarov, who brought the same delicate whimsy to the role of Ivan the Fool as he did in Le Spectre de la Rose and Romeo and Juliet. It is not a grand Romantic role, as he wins the heart of the Tsarevna (a lovely Anastasia Matvienko) through a combination of clutzy charm and pulling her hair. (He accomplishes this with a charming flute solo in the original choreography by Alexander Radunsky.) Zlata Yalinich was a spirited Young Mare, paired with the high-leaping Horses of Alexander Romanchikov and Alexander Beloborodov, and an enigmatic presence as the princess at the bottom of the sea. Fine comic turns came from Dmitry Pykhachov's daft, childish Tsar and the sebaceous villainy of Yuri Smekalov's Gentlemen of the Bed Chamber. Alexei Repnikov conducted a good performance by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, with an especially busy night for the percussionists, whose sounds were perhaps overused by Shchedrin.

The Little Humpbacked Horse by the Mariinsky Ballet runs through February 5, at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Ratmansky Takes On 'The Sleeping Beauty'

Scene from The Sleeping Beauty, American Ballet Theater (photo by Gene Schiavone)
One of several revelations in Jennifer Homans's beautiful book Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet was the line drawn between the classical ballet of our age with the court ballet of the French ancien régime. In Russia that continuity lasted up to a work like Marius Petipa's choreography for Tchaikovsky's music of The Sleeping Beauty. Premiered in 1890 in St. Petersburg, the ballet is set in an absolutist court like Versailles, and it even featured an appearance by a dancer costumed as Louis XIV in its Act III apothéose, a tableau pairing him with Helios, the god of the sun. After the Russian Revolution, Soviet authorities quietly removed all such glorifications of aristocracy and royalty, while still presenting Petipa's ballets to the world as "authentic" recreations of his work. Alexei Ratmansky has finally given the world something much closer to Petipa's original vision, in his new restoration of The Sleeping Beauty, made for American Ballet Theater's 75th anniversary season, which the company brought to the Kennedy Center Opera House on Wednesday evening.

Tchaikovsky, The Sleeping Beauty, Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra (Košice), A. Mogrelia (Naxos, 1994)

This approach lies somewhere between preserving a moldering corpse, as in the Mariinsky Ballet's version with Diana Vishneva seen in 2010 and the Royal Ballet's adaptation by Frederick Ashton seen in 2006, and the radical updating of Matthew Bourne's vampire version with New Adventures seen in 2013. Ratmansky learned Stepanov notation, used in the 19th century to write down choreography, to get as close as he could to Marius Petipa's original steps, and Richard Hudson based his designs on the version of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes by Léon Bakst. The burden of a considerable budget, reportedly around $6 million, was shared with La Scala in Milan. Ratmansky has stated that his goal was not purely that of historical reconstruction -- the Sun-King does not appear at that musical fanfare in Act III -- but to reveal what Marius Petipa's ballet was really like. If you would like to find out, see one of the performances this week.

Other Reviews: Alastair Macaulay, Ratmansky’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ Has Premiere in California (New York Times, March 10, 2015) ---, ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ Reawakened by American Ballet Theater (New York Times, May 31, 2015) ---, ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ Spurs American Ballet Theater to Work on the Details (New York Times, June 15, 2015) Marina Harss, ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ Awakes to Vibrant Ballet Costumes (New York Times, May 28, 2015) Sarah L. Kaufman, ABT’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’: Amazingly, this fairy tale becomes a love story (Washington Post, January 29, 2016) Sadie Dingfelder, American Ballet Theatre brings a lush new ‘Sleeping Beauty’ to D.C. (Washington Post, January 28, 2016) Joan Acocella, Ratmansky's Beauty Wakes Up (The New Yorker, June 8, 2015) Judith Mackrell, Ratmansky's royal flush: the most authentic Sleeping Beauty I've seen (The Guardian, September 30, 2015)

Most of the choreography's broad shapes are familiar from other Petipa adaptations, like the fluttering, flute-playing hands of the Canary Fairy variation, but the details of the moves are sometimes quite different, especially in the extension of legs and amount of time spent en pointe. The overall effect is to link the movements more closely with the music, revealing connections to Tchaikovsky's score that are often muted in other versions. Isabella Boylston's Aurora was spunky and coy, if not always with the balanced stillness the choreography requires, and the Prince Désiré of Joseph Gorak was somewhat nondescript. Ratmansky has not changed his mind about the musical cuts he made to the score, removing most of the Sommeil scene, which makes Act II seem disappointingly short and robs the Lilac Fairy (a fine Stella Abrera stepping in for the indisposed Veronika Part) and Désiré of some dramatic weight, as the rescue of Aurora is now oddly instaneous. The most significant (and unexpected) star power came in the terrifying Carabosse of Marcelo Gomes, with his hooked nose and clawed gloves, the choreography now matching his cackles and menacing gestures with each musical motif.

Further down the cast were more delights, including the adorable Canary Fairy of Skylar Brandt in Act I, and the exquisite vertical alignment of Christine Shevchenko's Diamond Fairy in Act III, matched by the strongly unified Gold, Silver, and Sapphire trio of Brittany Degrofft, Lauren Post, and Melanie Hamrick. The comic parts of the Fairy Tale divertissement are given new humor and buzz, especially the White Cat and Puss-in-Boots of Elina Miettinen and Gabe Stone Shayer. Cassandra Trenary and Daniil Simkin were a virtuosic pair as Florine and the Bluebird, with Simkin's strength and grace causing a sensation. The corps showed exceptional unity and precision in the large numbers, especially the ballet blanc vision of Act II.

Richard Hudson's sets and costumes are a pastel Rococo blast, replete with towering wigs, broad plumed hats, boots and other foot-ware. If you have ever wondered what a ballet tutu would look like with a bustle in it, wonder no more. Ormsby Wilkins conducted a mostly good performance of the score by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, including excellent violin and cello solos but with some misses in the horn section.

This performance repeats through January 31, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

New York City Ballet, New and Newer

Pictures at an Exhibition, choreography by Alexei Ratmansky, New York City Ballet
The New York City Ballet is back at the Kennedy Center Opera House, in alternating programs this week featuring the giant of its past, George Balanchine, and its current choreographers. When you are dealing with new works of any kind, some will hit and some will miss, which was exactly the feeling experienced at the end of the selection billed as "21st-Century Choreographers" on Wednesday evening. It was a bit of a marathon, with four works adding up to almost three hours, and some of the works tried one's patience to the extreme.

The program opened with Symphonic Dances, by the company's current ballet master-in-chief, Peter Martins. Actually premiered in 1994, the work is set to Rachmaninoff's superb score of that name, op. 45, the composer's final work and a notable exception to my general aversion to Rachmaninoff's instrumental music. The Martins choreography is visually pleasing, but little about it stood out as remarkable over the course of forty minutes: without a story, the elegant vocabulary wears thin too quickly. In the solo female role, Teresa Reichlen, who hails from Fairfax County, was a wispy and altogether lovely presence, all long legs and lightness. The general appeal of the choreography was not helped by the mediocrity of the orchestral performance, here given by the company's own orchestra under interim music director Andrews Sill. The orchestra has been through a bit of a rocky period in the last few years, which the new tenure of conductor Andrew Litton, a Washington favorite with the National Symphony Orchestra, will hopefully help to stabilize, starting next season.

The undisputed high point of the evening was the delightful new choreography to Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, created last year by Alexei Ratmansky. The setting of an art museum is suggested by projections (designed by Wendell K. Harrington), based on Wassily Kandinsky's Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles, dating from 1913, abstract shapes in bright colors that are reflected in movement by the dancers' costumes (designed by Adeline Andre). Although the music runs almost as long as the Rachmaninoff, played capably here in Musorgsky's original piano version by Cameron Grant, Ratmansky's choreography is so varied, brimming with originality, that it never tired. Sterling Hyltin was raised by the strong Tyler Angle in soaring leaps in "The Old Castle" movement, and in a striking reversal, women playfully incarnated the heavy-footed oxen in "Bydlo" and men the antic birds in the "Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks." The "Catacomb" movement, for the entire cast, was bathed in shadows of red light.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, New York City Ballet’s life-affirming new works boost the spirit (Washington Post, April 10) ---, New York City Ballet sparkles and blurs in opening program (Washington Post, April 9) Alastair Macaulay, With Each Star Turn, a Feeling of a Collective Force Begins to Brew (New York Times, January 21) ---, The Art Gallery as Spinning Montage (New York Times, October 3, 2014) ---, Celebrating Old Times With New: A Premiere (New York Times, May 9, 2014) New York City Ballet on Ionarts: 2014 | 2013

Tiler Peck and Craig Hall made a beautiful pairing in Christopher Wheeldon's somewhat limited, repetitive This Bitter Earth, although it would have been just as visually pretty if it had been performed in silence, so little did it seem to have to do with the music, a recording from the soundtrack for Shutter Island. Both music and choreography felt endless in their over-repetition in Everywhere We Go, Justin Peck's abstract ballet to a suite of music by Sufjan Stevens (orchestrated by Michael P. Atkinson). Both choreographer and composer relied heavily on the copy-paste method, with some whole sections of the choreography simply repeated toward the end, not to mention a number of dancers who slipped and fell, for whatever reason.

The company's second program, seen on Thursday night but not for review, was worthwhile just to have a look at Balanchine's choreography for Agon, which was crucial in my making sense of Schoenberg's twelve-tone score for this work. Maria Kowroski was brilliant, almost superhuman, in the outrageous contortions of the Pas de Deux in the ballet's second part. Balanchine's vivacious choreography to Bizet's Symphony in C, last seen from American Ballet Theater in 2013, was also outstanding, especially the elegant extensions of Sara Mearns in the slow movement's pas de deux.

These programs are repeated through April 12, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

American Ballet Theater at the Kennedy Center

Marcelo Gomes and Julie Kent in The Moor's Pavane, American Ballet Theater (photo by Gene Schiavone)

American Ballet Theater is back in town for a week-long visit to the Kennedy Center Opera House, a company we last reviewed in their charming Nutcracker a couple years ago. The distinguished touring company, established to bring the best ballet to the citizens of the Unites States and once led by Mikhail Baryshnikov, is now under the artistic direction of Kevin McKenzie, with the talented, envelope-pushing choreographer Alexei Ratmansky serving as Artist in Residence. Its first program, a triple-bill of shorter, more abstract ballets, opened last night, with Anna-Marie Holmes's revision of the classic Marius Petipa choreography of Adolphe Adam's Le Corsaire to open tonight.

George Balanchine's choreography to the music of Georges Bizet's Symphony in C goes back to a 1947 production for the Paris Opera Ballet called Le Palais de Cristal. The more abstract version danced by ABT, premiered in 2001, has no set (staging by Merrill Ashley and Stacy Caddell, lighting by Mark Stanley), just a neutral gray screen as backdrop. The women, who open the work in a group of ten, are costumed in shiny white tutus, with the men in black, further enhancing the sense of a sort of abstract painting set in motion. Balanchine hewed closely to the music, bringing in his soloist in the first movement, here the lively Paloma Herrera, with the theme presented by the solo oboe, for example. She was paired with James Whiteside, who made her glide about elegantly in many lifts. The prettiest dancing was in the second movement, which begins with six women floating in en pointe, with Balanchine again delaying the entrance of his soloist (here Hee Seo) until the oboe solo. The six dancers stood motionless until the fugue, when the music activated them to follow the entrances of Bizet's contrapuntal subject. (For a student work, composed when the 17-year-old Bizet was studying with Gounod at the Conservatoire de Paris, it is a remarkably put-together piece.) Among the dancers Daniil Simkin, male soloist in the third movement, stood out for the height and ease of his leaps and turns and the overall litheness of his movement. The fluttery choreography of the fourth movement matches the agitation of the fourth movement's music, with a group of dancers appearing with each return of the rondo theme, ending up with a large corps at the conclusion.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, American Ballet Theatre works at Kennedy Center attest to a company in fine fettle (Washington Post, April 11) Alastair Macauley, Swirls and Shifts in a Kaleidoscope (New York Times, October 20, 2012) Brian Seibert, For the Love of Shostakovich, the Destroyer (New York Times, October 12, 2012)

José Limón's ballet The Moor's Pavane was next, loosely based on the story of Othello and using appropriately courtly music by Henry Purcell (including Abdelazer, The Gordion Knot Untied, plus a pavane). It is not exactly Shakespeare's Othello but quite similar, a story of a jealous moor like that in the play The Moor's Revenge, for which Purcell wrote the Abdelazer music. Again there is no set, and the overall atmosphere is dark, a black background against which the tall, brutal Moor of Marcelo Gomes, in a rich burgundy robe, is turned against his wife (the white-clad, innocent Julie Kent) by the poisonous friend (danced by Cory Stearns with an almost predatory, homoerotic twist), in a trick that does involve a stolen handkerchief. Ballet's roots in courtly dance, which was the origin of Purcell's music, is continuously evoked by Limón as the four characters more often face one another, in approximations of court dances, than the audience.

While the playing of the small ensemble, with harpsichord, for the Purcell selections was quite beautiful, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra sounded off-kilter in the Bizet symphony, with far too many splatted notes in the trumpets and horns especially. Perhaps more of the rehearsal time went to the closing work, Shostakovich's peppy ninth symphony, in a new choreography created for ABT by Alexei Ratmansky, which sounded forceful and fun. Shostakovich originally planned to write his ninth symphony as a celebration of Soviet victory in World War II, a work "about the greatness of the Russian people, about our Red Army liberating our native land from the enemy," as scholar Laurel Fay has quoted him. The struggle had been, he wrote, "a war of culture and light against darkness and obscurantism, a war of truth and humanism against the savage morality of murderers," but his plans for a massive work with chorus and solo singers were never realized. After the dreamed-of victory had actually been achieved, with official celebrations in Red Square in May 1945, Shostakovich abandoned what he had completed up to that point and produced a small-scale symphony -- five movements in 25 minutes -- "lacking all pretensions to gravity and majesty, [...] almost the antithesis of expectations," as Fay put it.

The very lightness of the work, its occasional grotesque turns, brought the composer all sorts of trouble from Soviet cultural authorities in the years after its premiere, but it is precisely that giddy wit that Ratmansky seized on in his striking choreography. He plans to integrate this choreography into a trilogy of Shostakovich ballets, to be premiered this spring in New York. Ratmansky told an interviewer that what draws him to Shostakovich is that "You can learn the history of the country from his music." This vigorous, often mysterious choreography, with its stark blacks and whites, its curious gestures -- dancers lying down and falling asleep mechanically, leaping and twisting, large groups in conflict -- holds great promise for the entire project.

The visit by American Ballet Theater continues this evening, with performances of Le Corsaire in the Kennedy Center Opera House, through April 14.

Cinderella in Manhattan

Unlike opera, the more traditional ballet is not updated or recontextualized as much by new choreographers -- with a few notable exceptions, like Alexei Ratmansky, formerly of the Bolshoi in Moscow and now of American Ballet Theater. In his choreography of Prokofiev's Cinderella, which the Mariinsky Theater brought back to the Kennedy Center Opera House last night (the troupe performed it here in 2005), Ratmansky has reconceived the classic Perrault fairy tale in modern Manhattan, centering the story on a benignly neglected, artistically sensitive kid bounced between an alcoholic, do-nothing father and a high-strung, fashion-obsessed stepmother -- in short, someone likely everyone in the audience knows, or perhaps is. The contemporary setting and more jagged, modern dance-influenced choreography suits Prokofiev's barbed score in many ways, but one waits a long time for some ballet itches to be properly scratched (the climaxes of both pas de deux are undermined, for example), and some never are, like a grand, satisfying scene for the corps de ballet.

As he did in his new Nutcracker for ABT, also heavy on pantomime and slapstick, Ratmansky turns back to the grotesquerie of early court ballet: the most memorable parts of the choreography are broadly comic. The erratic movements of Ekaterina Kondaurova's orange-wigged Stepmother are all sharp legs and elbows. The black-clad avant-garde dance teachers (Nadezhda Batoeva and Islom Baimuradov) are caricatures of arbiters of taste in trendy New York. The Four Seasons (Ilya Petrov, Alexey Popov, Maxim Zyuzin, and Andrey Solovyov) dart and peck in avian costumes and movements, and the fairy godmother is a hunched-over homeless woman on the street. On his search for Cinderella, the Prince -- a sort of nerd-in-chief who carries around the fallen glass slipper in a maroon fanny pack (a touch that got the loudest guffaws on Tuesday night) -- falls in with a squad of hard-talking prostitutes and a mincing crew of gay men in bright blue.

Other Reviews: Sarah Kaufman, Mariinsky’s ‘Cinderella’: A hard-edged fairy tale (Washington Post, October 18) Catherine Pawlick, American tours U.S. with Mariinsky Ballet (San Francisco Chronicle, October 9) Paul Hodgins, Perfection eludes Mariinsky in 'Swan Lake' (Orange County Register, October 3)

Minimal sets, designed by Ilia Utkin and Yevgeny Monakhov, give the impression of New York, its steel girters and fire escapes, its monochromatic skyline of faceless tall buildings on the screen that marked off the three acts (with two intermissions making for a long evening in the theater). The only moment of backdrop beauty, sort of, was the neoclassical grandeur of the prince's palace, like a museum, although the corps was given only herky-jerky movements for laughs at their pomposity. The lead role was entrusted to a younger dancer, second principal Maria Shirinkina, who was pleasingly naive and girlish, able to show the transition to dancerly grace of this otherwise awkward, shy young woman. Principal dancer Vladimir Shklyarov was forthright and earnest as the prince, in his spazzy white formal wear and fanny pack, although Ratmansky's play at classical ballet was curious, having the Prince do a series of classical leaps only to peter out in bemused exhaustion. The musical score is not that easy to put together, as shown by the occasionally discombobulated performance by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, not quite galvanized by Mariinsky conductor Mikhail Agrest. Traditional balletomanes looking for a big wedding-cake confection will likely be disappointed, as Miss Ionarts was just a bit, but for anyone wondering about ballet outside the boundaries, this is something to see.

This performance will be repeated through October 21, in the Kennedy Center Opera House.