City Ballet marks diamond jubilee with resplendent "Jewels"

Sara Mearns in "Diamonds," from Balanchine's Jewels, New York City Ballet. Photo: Erin Baiano

New York City Ballet celebrated its 75th anniversary by opening the season last fall with its blockbuster staging of George Balanchine's Jewels. A full-length abstract ballet, composed of three rather different acts, it is often described as having no plot. Watching this choreography in the Kennedy Center Opera House Tuesday night, for the first time in a decade, brought home the purely visual stories the work presents, matched ideally with the pulse of the music.

"Emeralds," Balanchine's opening tribute to French Romanticism, remains a graceful but melancholy affair. Set to Gabriel Fauré's incidental music for Pelléas et Mélisande and Shylock, the sense of profound tragedy pervaded the act, made more rueful by the lack of understanding of this unnamed pain from all those who see it. Indiana Woodward and Tyler Angle seemed graceful and settled in to the lead pairing in this part of Jewels, which they performed for the first time last fall. The delicate flute solo movement of the Pelléas music felt especially poignant, and the sadness of the group of men at the tableau's end, gazing up through the murky light to something unseen, felt funereal.

Balanchine's tribute to American dynamism in "Rubies" came across with delightful humor. Megan Fairchild and Anthony Huxley led the light-footed corps through the unorthodox steps and movements, timed with verve to Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, energized by the lively piano playing of Stephen Gosling. The red-costumed dancers flirted with all sorts of Americana: they were cowboys, they were flappers, they were the chorus line of the Rockettes. In the most openly sexual moment of the whole ballet, the tall, elegant Mira Nadon was moved about by four male dancers, positioning her like a doll.

After tragedy and mirth came a sense of Russian classicism that stopped time, in the concluding "Diamonds." Sara Mearns, one of the company's most celebrated dancers, brought a reserved nobility to the role that Balanchine created for his muse, Suzanne Farrell. Her partner, Chun Wai Chan, became City Ballet's first Chinese principal dancer two years ago, and he provided all of the athletic power of their scenes, lifting Mearns with effortless strength and leaping with remarkable balance and agility. Andrew Litton paced the movements (all but one) from Tchaikovsky's dance-infused Third Symphony ideally with the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, bringing to an end a grand tribute to Balanchine and the company he helped create.

Jewels runs through June 9. kennedy-center.org

ABT returns to the Kennedy Center with "Swan Lake"

Daniel Camargo and Isabella Boylston in Swan Lake with American Ballet Theatre. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor

American Ballet Theatre brought its gorgeous version of Swan Lake back to the Kennedy Center Opera House this week. Last presented here in 2017, when it also sold out, Kevin McKenzie's choreography has not not been substantially altered in the Susan Jaffe. The only thing that stood out was in the introductory scene, which took place behind a scrim, when the evil antagonist, von Rothbart, seduced Odile. This bit of filling in the back story, during the otherwise unrelated orchestral introduction, is on its own merits a bad idea. Having the villain emerge from the cave, where he has taken the young woman, pretend wrestling with a stuffed swan added an unneeded note of absurdity.

Fortunately, most of the other elements of the ballet were in good hands. Isabella Boylston, a principal dancer since 2014, brought experience and subtlety to the leading role. Her Odette, the fragile white swan, was strikingly less human, more wild animal than woman in many ways. The swoops of her head in the tragic pas de deux of Act II, with gorgeous violin and cello solos from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, seemed a little stiff and unnatural. She was much more striking in Act III, flashy and seductive as Odile, the supposed daughter of von Rothbart who tricks Prince Siegfried into betraying Odette. Her sequence of thirty-some fouetté turns was impressively virtuosic.

The triumph of the evening went to Daniel Camargo, the Brazilian dancer who joined ABT as a guest artist in the 2021-2022 season. (Alexei Ratmansky had worked with Camargo at Dutch National Ballet, a connection that led him to approach Camargo about coming to New York when ABT had some injuries to deal with.) Named a principal dancer in the summer of 2022, he was something to behold as Prince Siegfried: an athletic presence with amazing vertical lift in his leaps, and a steady, upright axis in spins. This role is in many ways the dramatic focus of this ballet, and Camargo's emotional range was worthy of the spotlight.

The ABT corps continues to impress with the improved unity of its movements, particularly the women as the flock of swans, crisply coordinated and elegant in style. The men, featured in the divertissements, were uniformly strong as well, with an energetic turn by young dancers Jake Roxander and Takumi Miyaki in the Neapolitan dance of Act III. McKenzie's decision to split the character of von Rothbart into two personas remains as ill advised as before, with the monster version, rather cartoonish and silly, undermining the character's menace. Jose Sebastian's sebaceous performance as the human von Rothbart was way over the top: he seduced every woman on the stage, even Siegfried's mother along with all four princesses, and then leapt playfully onto Siegfried's throne. One may or may not need comic diversion in a ballet like Swan Lake, but there it was.

Swan Lake runs through February 25. kennedy-center.org

City Ballet, Modern and Contemporary

Joseph Gordon and Unity Phelan performed in Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, New York City Ballet. Photo: Paul Kolnik

New York City Ballet returns to the Kennedy Center Opera House this week for its expected early summer visit. For the first of two programs, seen on Tuesday night, the company has revisited four short ballets by its celebrated founding choreographers, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. A second program features the work of more recent choreographers leading the way into a new era.

A theme emerged over the course of the evening, perhaps intended but perhaps not: reflections in a mirror. In two striking Balanchine works based on Baroque music, Square Dance and Concerto Barocco, ensemble and soloists are balanced, often dancing in symmetrical patterns. Balanchine attempted a cross between American folk dance and classical ballet in Square Dance, from 1957, even using a square dance caller originally, an innovation he wisely removed later. The music, concerto grosso movements by Vivaldi and dance pieces by Corelli, often features twinned melodic lines, which Balanchine interpreted visually in movement, with fine solo work here from Megan Fairchild and Joseph Gordon. The final movement, a spirited Giga by Corelli, even had something like the feel of square dance music.

This later ballet, although seen first, hearkened back to Concerto Barocco, from 1941, redone for NYCB in 1948. The music, Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D Minor, was even more explicitly about image and reflection in its twinned lines. Two groups of four women mirrored one another, echoed by two lead soloists, the graceful Isabella LaFreniere and Mira Nadon. In the gorgeous slow movement, a male soloist intruded, the long-armed Russell Janzen, upsetting the perfect symmetry of this world of female friendship and balance. Played without scenery and in stark lighting, designed by Mark Stanley, it was likely the first ballet Balanchine had danced in practice clothes rather than costumes, which became a signature of his updated style. The dancers welcomed violinists Oleg Rylatko and Ko Sugiyama to the stage for a well-deserved curtain call.

Tiler Peck performed in Balanchine's Donizetti Variations, New York City Ballet. Photo: Paul Kolnik

The evening's most striking work was the only choreography by Jerome Robbins on the program, the gorgeous and erotic Afternoon of a Faun, from 1953. Claude Debussy's rapturous score received a marvelous performance from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, conducted for the evening by Andrews Sills, down to the exotic touches of crotales and harps. Robbins devised a meta-updating of the infamous earlier choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky: the faun and nymphs here become a male and female dancer who meet in a ballet studio, indicated by the barre running around its edge.

The oneiric quality of the scene, suggested by the fact that Joseph Gordon is seen asleep on the floor and returns to sleep at the end, implied that the stunning Unity Phelan was a figment of the man's imagination. He (and she, to a degree) spend most of the time staring at the audience as if seeing their reflections in a mirror, even in their most intimate moments. This vain self-regard - two beautiful people watching themselves in the mirror - was sexually charged and, of course, an acknowledgment that this is what dancers spend some of their rehearsal time doing. The awkward kiss Gordon planted on Phelan's cheek, to which she pressed her hand as if it burned, the shock seeming to propel her out of the room, now brought to mind, at least to me, the charges of sexual abuse by female dancers against former NYCB artistic director Peter Martins. At the same time, the effortless surprise lift of Phelan by Gordon, as Debussy's music swept upwards, was strikingly beautiful.

After these three more serious works, it was good to end the evening with some low comedy in Balanchine's Donizetti Variations, a 1960 romp set to ballet music from Donizetti's French grand opera Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal. It's a ballet that is as silly as it is fun, and the pairing of the sassy veteran Tiler Peck with the vivacious Roman Mejia, a rising star, lifted the end of this meaty program with effervescence. The whimsical moment when a corps dancer thinks that a trumpet solo is her cue for an ill-advised leap into the spotlight garnered hearty laughter, and don't leave the theater before you hear the incredible solo turn by the orchestra's glockenspiel player.

Alexei Ratmansky's updated Pictures at an Exhibition, New York City Ballet. Photo: Erin Baiano

The highlight of the B program, featuring City Ballet's new crop of choreographers, was Alexei Ratmansky's surprising, varied Pictures at an Exhibition, last seen at the Kennedy Center in 2015. The piece remains light-hearted yet powerful, with an ensemble of ten dancers moving through the space of an art museum to the strains of Musorgsky's "Promenade" movements (original piano version played somewhat tentatively by Susan Walters). The dancers form smaller solos and ensembles for the intervening movements, representing artworks, their colorful costumes mimicking the bright circles of Kandinsky paintings projected on the screen at the rear of the stage. Ratmansky, who has publicly and strenuously criticized his native Russia's war in Ukraine, has made a significant addition to the final tableau of this ballet, the movement known as "The Great Gate of Kyiv": a large image of the Ukrainian flag, in the style of a Mark Rothko painting.

Justin Peck's first solo ballet, Solo, featured the lovely Naomi Corti making her debut in the role. String players from the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, under the direction of Tara Simoncic, gave an ardent rendition of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, often seeming only tangentially related to Corti's movements. The two most recent works disappointed by their length and repetition: Standard Deviation, choreographed by Alysa Pires to the pulsating, blues-saturated music of Australian composer Jack Frerer, and the robotic Love Letter (on shuffle), choreographed by Kyle Abraham and set to a (long, ear-piercing) prerecorded track by James Blake. Both pieces have some eye-catching moments, with long stretches in between.

New York City Ballet presents both programs in alternation through June 11. kennedy-center.org

Scottish Ballet's Gothic 'Crucible' lands at the Kennedy Center

Scottish Ballet's production of Helen Pickett's The Crucible. Photo: Andy Ross

Helen Pickett created her choreographed adaptation of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible for the Edinburgh Festival in 2019. The troupe that premiered it, the Scottish Ballet, is finally touring it in the United States. (The work's planned premiere at the Kennedy Center, in May 2020, was canceled for obvious reasons.) After its run at the Kennedy Center, which opened on Wednesday, the production will go to the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. The play's setting, the Salem Witch Trials, and the subtext of its premiere, the Red Scare led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, are both eras of American history we should not be wanting to repeat but may be doomed to do. Pickett's grim and grimy version, with its techno- and electronica-infused score by Peter Salem, seemed more timely than ever at the second performance, Thursday night, in the Eisenhower Theater.

Pickett's adaptation both telescopes the action of the play and fleshes out some of the characters by examining their motives. Act I opens with Abigail, the orphan girl whom the Proctor family has hired as a servant, dreaming of a happy family life. Elizabeth Proctor, burdened with a baby and perhaps suffering from post-partum depression, learns that her husband, John Proctor, has had an affair with the girl. Discovered dancing naked together in the forest, Abigail and a group of local girls accuse Tituba, an enslaved woman, of leading them into witchcraft. A council of churchmen, determined to root out the devil in their midst, solicit more accusations from the girls, leading to the eventual downfall of the Proctors.

Other Articles: Kyra Laubacher, Scottish Ballet Tours Helen Pickett’s The Crucible to the U.S., Bringing Miller’s Tale to Its Home Soil (Pointe, May 15) Elliot Lanes, Interview: Theatre Life with Peter Salem (Broadway World, May 25)

The Crucible is a mixture of theater and ballet, which deprives itself of the greatest strengths of both art forms. The accusing shrieks of the girls and even talking by some characters shatters the idea of a story told exclusively by movement, but the use of ballet like periodic arias partially undermines the potential realism of theater. The set pieces, designed by Emma Kingsbury and David Finn, float and tilt into different shapes, with occasional hanging pieces of fabric, all creating the sense of a drab industrial environment.

The most effective use of dance was in the church scenes, where unified movement became a metaphor for the group-think of religious conformity: the gray-swathed congregants moving in lockstep and imitating faithfully the movements of their pastors. The Men of God, whom the work's creators reportedly thought of "as a menacing flock of birds," leapt and spun with bravado and more than the occasional hint of Merce Cunningham's Preacher in Appalachian Spring. The duet between Kayla-Maree Tarantolo's needy Abigail and Bruno Micchiardi's conflicted John Proctor is striking for its overt sexuality, balanced by the latter's tender scenes with Bethany Kingsley-Garner's Elizabeth Proctor.

Salem's score is austere, with a bass-heavy string ensemble (two violins, one on a part, against three violas, three cellos, and two basses) providing drones and keening melodies, conducted by Daniel Parkinson. The instruments in the pit are all miked, and Salem has added reverb for atmospheric effect at times. In addition to live oboe, flute, bassoon, and trombone, two keyboards and electronic sample pads mix in other sounds. The score leaned most to the electronic side in the forest scene, with over-amplified thudding rhythm giving the nude dancing scene the air of a night club. Salem's next collaboration with Pickett is reportedly a new ballet based on Flaubert's Madame Bovary, planned for this November at the National Ballet of Canada.

The Crucible runs through May 28. kennedy-center.org

MacMillan "Romeo and Juliet" returns to the Kennedy Center at last

Herman Cornejo in Romeo and Juliet, American Ballet Theater. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor
Some fine versions of Sergei Prokofiev's beloved ballet Romeo and Juliet have appeared in Washington over the years: the Mariinsky Ballet in 2007, with Leonid Lavrovsky's Soviet-era choreography (also on DVD), and Julie Kent's revival of John Cranko's choreography for Washington Ballet in 2018, among others. Until this week's visit by American Ballet Theater, however, that company's classic staging by Kenneth MacMillan had eluded me. Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev premiered it for the Royal Ballet, and then American Ballet Theater took it up for the first time in 1985, here at the Kennedy Center. This handsome production is back after a twenty-year absence, and the Kennedy Center Opera House, for a short time spared from the onslaught of Broadway musicals that have infested it, was filled to the brim to see it Friday night.

Kevin McKenzie and Susan Jaffe

Any time that American Ballet Theater comes to Washington, they are worth seeing, especially since Miss Ionarts and I missed their most recent production, last year's Don Quixote. Even more so since this is their first visit under the company's new artistic director, former prima ballerina Susan Jaffe. The much-missed critic Sarah Kaufman first advocated for ABT to appoint Misty Copeland to that position but then admitted that Jaffe could be the one to bring the company into the 21st century. It is a homecoming for Jaffe, who hails from Bethesda and has recalled that her first performance at the Kennedy Center was "when I was a child for the New York City Ballet as a big bug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream."

As it turns out, dancing Juliet at the second performance of ABT's Romeo and Juliet at the Kennedy Center in 1985 was one Susan Jaffe, paired with none other than Kevin McKenzie, her predecessor as ABT artistic director. Critic Alan M. Kriegsman noted of Jaffe's performance "a wonderful spectral quality in the duet she reluctantly dances with Paris in the last act," which seemed to resonate in that scene this time around as well.

ABT is fielding different principal dancers for each performance this week, a tribute to the depth of their bench. Last night's Romeo, the veteran Argentinian dancer Herman Cornejo, brought vast experience and emotion to the character. MacMillan demands remarkable strength from the dancer in this role, and Cornejo provided it through many lifts, sword fights, and athletic moves, seeming to flag just slightly only once during a long overhead lift in the first act. The evening's Juliet, Georgia-born Cassandra Trenary, has made noteworthy supporting appearances since joining the company in 2011. Her appointment to principal dancer came in 2020, and she made her debut in this ballet's title role last summer. She ravished the eyes, bursting with teenage energy and leggy awkwardness, floating en pointe as she backed away from unwelcome encounters with the tall, handsome Paris of Andrii Ishchuk. Her athletic strength allowed her to remain fixed in place in her many elegant lifts, as if we were seeing her as she saw herself flying in her dreams.


The muscular Mercutio of rising dancer Tyler Maloney led the supporting cast, abetted in his stylish combats with Joo Won Ahn's haughty Tybalt by the equally comic Benvolio of Luis Ribagorda. MacMillan went for the full Renaissance treatment in this ballet, with the dancers' bodies often weighed down with tapestry-like costumes and the action unfolding before candelabrae and lanterns on the dark-hued set (all designed by Nicholas Georgiadis). The crowd scenes filled the stage, both the heavy-handed court dances of the Capulet ball and the jealousy-laced street scenes, in which the sassy three harlots of Luciana Paris, Erica Lall, and Hannah Marshall sizzled.

Principal conductor Charles Barker, who often took the podium for Washington Ballet in the late, lamented Julie Kent era, presided over a fine rendition of Prokofiev's electric score. If there were a few intonation lapses in the string sections, fine solo work came from the dueling mandolin players, Neil Gladd and David Evans, and tenor saxophonist Dana Booher, guest spots that add remarkable color to the orchestration. The violent slashes of the Dance of the Knights and the biting fortissimo crush of the loudest moments, like the death of Tybalt at the end of Act II, were thrilling.

Romeo and Juliet runs through February 19. kennedy-center.org

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

New York City Ballet Returns to the Kennedy Center

New York City Ballet performed Suspended Animation, choreography by Sidra Bell (photo: Erin Baiano)
New York City Ballet has been through a disastrous period in the last four years. In 2018, the company's long-time artistic director, Peter Martins, resigned in disgrace, following accusations of sexual abuse. NYCB scrambled to find a stable way forward, naming Jonathan Stafford as its new artistic adviser, but with Wendy Whelan as associate artistic director and Justin Peck as resident choreographer and artistic adviser. As the company founded by George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, and Jerome Robbins struggled to address its history of sidelining the contributions of women and people of color, the coronavirus shut all of its performances down. NYCB was finally able to present a season over the past year, a selection of which the company brought to Washington for its first appearance at the Kennedy Center since 2019.

Other Articles: Sarah L. Kaufman, In a terrible week, the much-needed balm of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Washington Post, June 10) Jason Fraley, New York City Ballet’s first Black female choreographer comes to Kennedy Center (WTOP, June 6) Gia Kourlas, A Farewell and the Promise of a New Future at City Ballet (New York Times, May 31) ---, City Ballet Gets a Modern Dance Fix (New York Times, February 4) ---, At City Ballet, Giving Voice to the Body, With Sneakers (New York Times, January 28) Marina Harss, At City Ballet, Jamar Roberts and Dancers Find a Common Language (New York Times, January 27) Roslyn Sulcas, Justin Peck and Collaborators Combine Gravitational Universes (New York Times, January 25) Madelyn Sutton, Sculptor Eva LeWitt on Designing the set for Justin Peck's Partita (Playbill, May 2) Jennifer Homans, Ballet Is Back, but All Is Not As It Was (The New Yorker, November 1, 2021)

The first two performances this week were devoted to three new choreographies, all premiered this season, seen on Tuesday evening. The first two were created by African-American choreographers, beginning with Emanon—in Two Movements by Jamar Roberts, resident choreographer of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The work, whose title is "no name" spelled backwards, is set to two pieces by jazz composer Wayne Shorter, “Pegasus” and “Prometheus Unbound.” The choreography was active but in many ways repetitive, aside from a striking solo moment for Jonathan Fahoury. The music from the pit and the dancing on stage did not always seem to line up ideally, although the visuals were beautiful, especially Jermaine Terry’s cool-purple costumes.

With her much more engaging Suspended Animation, Sidra Bell became the first black woman to choreograph a work for New York City Ballet. It opened in a whimsical way with dancers attired in technicolor costumes by the young black fashion designer Christopher John Rogers, something like Dr. Seuss characters strutting on a parody of a 1960s fashion show walkway. The dancing became more visible as the performers lost these extravagant outer layers, like birds molting their feathers. Set to music by Dosia McKay (the string quartet Is Now Not Enough? and Unveiling for strings), Oliver Davis (Solace for strings), and Nicholas Britell (The Middle of the World from his score for the film Moonlight), the piece turned from surreal to serious with an extended solo accompanied only by silence.

NYCB saved the best for last, a dynamic abstract ballet by Justin Peck, inspired by Caroline Shaw's ground-breaking Partita for 8 Voices, heard as accompaniment to the performance in the recording by Roomful of Teeth. Eight dancers, clad in white sneakers and variously colored workout clothes, moved in response to the score's often unconventional sounds. In a noteworthy tie-in, sculptor Eva LeWitt designed the sets for the ballet, hanging backdrops made of brightly colored ropes forming large discs above and behind the dancers. LeWitt is the daughter of minimalist artist Sol LeWitt, whose instructions for anyone executing his work Wall Drawing 305 were quoted extensively in Shaw's piece. Peck, who is one of the more musical choreographers working today, created a compelling work that translated music into motion, somewhat heavy-handed at times but seamless.

Sara Mearns and New York City Ballet in George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (photo: Paul Kolnik)
The last four days of the run at the Kennedy Center are devoted to a recent classic, George Balanchine's innocent, child-centered story ballet based on William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, seen on Thursday evening. Premiered in 1962, the work weaves together Mendelssohn's overture and incidental music for the play with other selections by the composer, to make a convincing whole, a first act with most of the action plus a compact second act consisting largely of a divertissement. The Pennsylvania Ballet brought its utterly charming version of this Balanchine ballet to the Kennedy Center a few years ago, and this was a welcome chance to see it in the hands of the company that premiered it. (One thing that NYCB should have imitated from Pennsylvania Ballet was the placement of the singers, women from the local choir Choralis, for the vocal selections in the pit: the piping in of those performers from another location was less than satisfying.)

One of NYCB's best dancers, Sara Mearns, was a warm, almost glowing Titania, easily the stronger of the royal pairing with Daniel Ulbricht's Oberon, all vanity and strength in his tantrums and athletic leaps. Taylor Stanley made an antic, caprine Puck, running with manic exaggeration and even soaring suspended on wires in the striking final tableau. Georgina Pazcoguin displayed her own virtuosic strength as Hippolyta, bounding in impressive leaps as she hunted a pack of dancer-animals. The most gorgeous moment of the night came in the Act II pas de deux, danced with time-stopping grace by Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle. The swarms of faeries, especially the local children in their delightful insectoid costumes, stole the show during the scenes where they appeared.

A Midsummer Night's Dream runs through July 12.

Washington Ballet returns to its new and improved 'Giselle' at the Warner

Eun Won Lee and Gian Carlo Perez in the Washington Ballet's Giselle (xmb Photography)

In some ways the Julie Kent era at Washington Ballet began with Giselle, the big classical story ballet on her first season in 2017. After two years of pandemic struggles, the company has brought back its artistic director's production of this romantic ghost story, described by Kent as "revised and refined," this time at the Warner Theater instead of the Kennedy Center's slightly larger Eisenhower Theater. The venue change brought with it some box office woes, as delays in picking up tickets delayed the start of the performance by a half-hour, problems that can hopefully be prevented going forward.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, Washington Ballet’s ‘Giselle’ brims with charm and musical delights (Washington Post, April 29) Other Productions: American Ballet Theater (2020) Bolshoi (2014) Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris (2012) Mariinsky (2011)

Eun Won Lee, the Korean étoile who came to Washington to dance for Kent, remained remarkable in the title role. She was equally fragile in both acts, a bubbly girl weakened by a bad heart. As one of the Wilis in the Act II ballet blanc she was less a vaporous spirit this time, it seemed, than a soul that yearned to be still corporeal, a living woman now just out of Albrecht's reach. Her Albrecht, the strong and nobly comported Gian Carlo Perez, in an admirable debut, seemed to see her but could not grasp her at first in that darkened second act.

To their credit Kent and her partner, associate artistic director Victor Barbee, have certainly captured the frightening side of the ballet's "Halloween" act. Adelaide Clauss glowered with menace in her debut as Myrtha, queen of the Wilis, the avenging spirits of wronged women. The absurdly pompous Hilarion of Oscar Sanchez, another fine debut, got his just deserts when the ghosts drove him to his agonizing death.

The most impressive debut came in the peasant dance scene in Act I, an extended pairing often used to feature rising dancers. The chipper Tamako Miyazaki danced with Rench Soriano, who joined the Washington Ballet studio company in 2019. He was compact and strong in this athletic choreography, all leg musicle and clean vertical line in his leaps. The corps bounced with fervor in the peasant scenes in Act I, changing into rigid, forbidding spirits in Act II. The surprise moment when their white veils are ripped away, pulled by strings into the wings, added to the aura of mystery.

Charles Barker, principal conductor of American Ballet Theater, returned to the pit in his ongoing collaboration with Kent. He presided over a stripped-down chamber arrangement of Adolphe Adam's score, which other than some occasional weakness in the strings (parts covered by only twelve musicians total) was remarkably effective. Nicolette Oppelt's flute and Ron Erler Fatma Daglar's oboe were highlights in the woodwinds, with fine contributions from harpist Nadia Pessoa and an ardent viola solo from Jennifer Ries in the touching Act II pas de deux. The horns and trumpets provided heraldic hunt sounds in Act I.

The Washington Ballet's Giselle runs through May 1 at the Warner Theater.

Washington Ballet takes flight in long-delayed return to Kennedy Center

Washington Ballet corps in “Swan Lake,” at the Kennedy Center through Sunday. (xmb Photography)

Sometimes this season it feels like the last two years didn't happen or were some sort of bad dream. This was the feeling last night watching Julie Kent and Victor Barbee's long-awaited Swan Lake finally make it to the Kennedy Center. It was as if we were back in 2020, a few years into the Kent era at Washington Ballet. Somehow, the company's new production of Swan Lake, a marquee event for any dance company, was not canceled by the coronavirus pandemic. Watching this group continue to move in an encouraging direction made one realize again how culturally deprived we have been during the lockdowns.

Ballet is back, or almost. This run is taking place in the Eisenhower Theater rather than the Opera House (occupied instead by something Broadway). Things felt a little cramped: the scenery (designed by Peter Cazalet and on loan from Ballet West) crowded the dancers at times on the smaller stage. The limited number of strings, with the Washington Ballet Orchestra packed into the venue's smaller pit, limited some of the musical climaxes of Tchaikovsky's often wondrous score. The important thing was that the company made its return accompanied by live music, with Charles Barker, principal conductor of American Ballet Theater, again invited to take the podium. With some shortcomings in the collective string sound, the instrumental contributions were excellent, including the violin solos of concertmaster Sally McLain, the bright trumpet of Chris Gekker, brilliant flute and oboe of Sara Stern and Ron Erler, and the magical harp of Nadia Pessoa.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, Washington Ballet’s ‘Swan Lake’ is finally at the Kennedy Center, intimate and also more ambitious than ever (Washington Post, February 10) Lisa Traiger, Washington Ballet shows a so-so ‘Swan Lake’ at Kennedy Center (D.C. Metro Theater Arts, February 11)

Kent and Barbee built their production on the choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, made for the 1895 revision of the ballet. It has more in common with Kevin McKenzie's version, last seen from American Ballet Theater in 2017 (see video), than the reconfigured version created by Konstantin Sergeyev, last seen with the Mariinsky Ballet in 2014. Spoiler Alert: At the end, Odette leaps from a cliff into the lake rather than live with Prince Siegfried's betrayal. Siegfried joins her in death, leaping as well, and their union destroys the power of the demonic von Rothbart over the flock of women he has turned into swans.

Some things were different. Kent and Barbee did not distract from the orchestral prelude to the first act with any added action, allowing the music to set the stage by itself, leaving the first appearance of the villain, von Rothbart, to the lake scene in Act II. In the original libretto, he appeared in the form of an owl, recalled in some ways by the movements and costume worn by Daniel Roberge, although his wings were more like those of a butterfly or moth. Child dancers featured prominently in the first act as girls and boys from the village celebrating Prince Siegfried's birthday, a charming way to showcase the company's training program. Their choreography, prominently featuring a roundel dance about a May pole, created an idyllic backdrop to the prince's life.

The dancing was all extraordinary. The leads of Eun Won Lee and Gian Carlo Perez are the same as in the company's Romeo and Juliet from 2018, and they have become a beautiful pairing together. Lee seemed both proud and fragile in the Act II pas de deux, and Perez's lifts and leaps showed exceptional strength. Lee seemed less a natural fit as the evil twin, Odile, in the third act, but there was no lack of technique to be sure, not least in that demanding sequence of 32 fouetté turns. The Friday night audience ended up with a bit of luxury casting, as Masanori Takiguchi, who is dancing the role of Siegfried in the alternate cast, took over the role of Benno from Lope Lim. (The reason for Lim being indisposed was not given.) The substitution gave an extra spark to the Pas de Trois in Act I, with Ayano Kimura and the spirited, girlish Ashley Murphy-Wilson.

The corps de ballet danced with near-flawless precision, to beautiful and sometimes comic effect. When the men first encountered the swan-women in the second act, an attempt to touch one of them provoked a unison snapping down of their raised arms. The four cygnets, arm in arm in that famous scene in Act II, moved with crisp unity, and the big swans (Adelaide Clauss and Brittany Stone) presided with elegance over the corps in Act IV. For once the divertissment of national dances did not drag down Act III, with fine contributions from both the men and women of the company, in particular the Czardas, led by Kateryna Derechnya and Tamás Krisza. The richly colored costumes in this scene (also designed by Peter Cazalet and on loan from Ballet West) sparkled under vivid lighting by Brad Fields.

Swan Lake runs through February 13 in the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater. kennedy-center.org

American Ballet Theater's Gothic 'Giselle'

Hee Seo and Cory Stearns in Giselle. Photo: Gene Schiavone
American Ballet Theater returned to the Kennedy Center Opera House this week with a Giselle heavy on the supernatural side of this classic work. The Wilis, the angry spirits of jilted maidens, should inspire fear, something that many productions miss in their fluffy, white softness. The ABT Giselle, the Coralli-Perrot-Petipa choreography staged by Kevin McKenzie, definitely hit its stride in the ghostly second act.

Other Articles: Sarah L. Kaufman, A ‘Giselle’ that whirls with unusual lyricism (Washington Post, February 12) ---, Ballet dancers have weird and quirky pre-show rituals that would put any sports star to shame (Washington Post, February 6) Carolyn Kelemen, Former Howard County ballerina is back at the Kennedy Center, this time as a soloist in ‘Giselle’ (Baltimore Sun, February 12) Gia Kourlas, Skylar Brandt: A Ballerina Invests in Herself (New York Times, February 6)

The company brought back the beautifully matched pairing of Hee Seo and Corey Stearns, who were so heart-breaking together in their Swan Lake in 2017. Seo had an ideal combination of characterizations for the role: pert yet shy as the lovestruck girl, unraveled and distraught when she learns that the lover who has stolen her heart is already engaged to another, and wispy as vapor as the cursed spirit. Besides the finely tuned dramatic sense, Seo's infallible technique put her among the finest Giselles seen here in the last decade, including EunWon Lee, Svetlana Zakharova, Aurélie Dupont, and -- still at the top -- Diana Vishneva.

Stearns was no less accomplished in either regard, his strong body lifting Seo effortless and forming beautifully delineated lines. The score, performed with panache by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, has rarely sounded this good, made more lush and polished in the orchestration by John Lanchbery, who died in 2003. Conductor Ormsby Wilkins, who did not seem in his element conducting a much more complex Strauss score in Whipped Cream in 2018, shaped each halting phrase of the love music with exquisite sensitivity, helping to make the Act II pas de deux so moving. At its climax, when Stearns held Seo perfectly still above him in effortless lifts, it was as if she floated above him in the spirit world, only temporarily visible to him.

The set design helped create the forbidding sense of a forest haunted by spirits, with lightning flashes behind a large hollow tree (scenery by Gianni Quaranta and lighting by Jennifer Tipton). It was the severe Myrta, Queen of the Wilis, of the tall and somewhat icy Devon Teuscher that brought out the harshness of the scene. The edge of her movements and sharp face seemed to inform the cold precision of ABT's well-drilled corps, all clad in the traditional white (costumes by Anna Anni). One could only feel sorry at the fate of Hilarion (the proud, defiant Roman Zhurbin) as he faced the implacable wall of these vengeful spirits.

Giselle runs through February 16 in the Kennedy Center Opera House, with different casts and conductors.

St. Petersburg's 'Paquita' makes U.S. debut at Kennedy Center

Paquita, Mariinsky Ballet (Photo: Darian Volkova/ State Academic Mariinsky Theater)
Paquita was the first ballet that Marius Petipa adapted from a French source when he arrived in St. Petersburg. Hardly a surprise, then, that it is not a great work. The Mariinsky Ballet's new adaptation of the ballet, which opened Tuesday night in the Kennedy Center Opera House, is one of the few productions from this esteemed company that you can pass on seeing. A rather long night in the theater, it made one understand why Paquita disappeared from the repertory, except for a few "bleeding chunks" like the Pas de trois and the Grand Pas and divertissement, the latter performed on its own by the Mariinsky in 2015.

The ballet was first created in Paris, with music by Édouard Deldevez, before being expanded into its better-known form by Marius Petipa in St. Petersburg. As was the usual practice, Petipa augmented the work over the years with new music by Ludwig Minkus and some pieces stolen from other composers. Other companies and directors have been trying to revive Paquita in recent years, too, including a restoration from the Stepanov notation by Alexei Ratmansky in Munich and an adaptation by Pierre Lacotte in Paris.

This production, premiered at the Mariinsky in 2017, is mostly new. Rather than reconstructing Petipa's work, Yuri Smekalov has created a new libretto and new choreography, using a reordering and reorchestration of the music. That new work has been grafted on to Yuri Burlaka's painstaking restoration of the Grand Pas, which constitutes most of the third act. The story remains basically the same, concerning a noble girl stolen away by gypsies. She falls in love with an officer who gives up his commission to live among the gypsies, a sort of variation on the story of Bizet's Carmen twenty-five years later.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, Mariinsky Ballet’s ‘Paquita’: Glittering dancing but a skimpy story (Washington Post, October 9, 2019)

The result is dramatically inert, mostly a series of rather empty pantomime scenes. In particular, the ending of the second act was curiously anti-climactic. The scenic design (Andrei Svebo) and costuming (Elena Zaitseva) are both handsome, including a humorous use of moving shrub trees during one transition. Most of the music, played ably by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra under the baton of the Mariinsky's Gavriel Heine, is not worth a second listen. Some of the more elaborate variations, including extensive solos for violin, flute, and harp (many times), created appropriately dreamy moods in solo dances.

The main reason to see Paquita is for the company's dancers. In the title role is Viktoria Tereshkina, in many ways a cold, steely ballerina (last seen in 2017) who has warmed considerably in this character. Her technique was impeccable, handsome lines and poise that gave her exceptional confidence. Even better in some ways was the Andres of Timur Askerov, a tall, elegant partner for the long-limbed Tereshkina. The Grand Pas of the third act features mostly lower-rung dancers: best among them was Yekaterina Chebykina, also featured to flattering effect as the third wheel in the Pas de trois of the second act.

Paquita runs through October 13 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

New York City Ballet enters the next phase

Gonzalo Garcia and Sterling Hyltin in Jerome Robbins, Opus 19/The Dreamer. Photo: Paul Kolnik
New York City Ballet returned to the Kennedy Center Opera House Tuesday night, as it has done regularly since 1974. Everyone involved with the company seemed a little nervous, starting with a slightly awkward pre-curtain announcement from newly appointed artistic director Jonathan Stafford and associate artistic director Wendy Whelan. They took the reins after longtime ballet master Peter Martins retired from the company in 2018, following allegations he had abused dancers both physically and sexually. Martins denied the charges, and an internal investigation by the company did not corroborate them.

The selection of ballets seemed tailor-made for touring, mostly abstract and without any set pieces. Opus 19/The Dreamer, choreographed by Jerome Robbins, was a highlight because of the graceful, searching movements of Gonzalo Garcia in the title role. In the only white costume, he was seemingly all muscle as he sought among the other dancers dressed in shadowy blue-purple (costumes by Ben Benson). Set to the gorgeous music of Prokofiev, the ethereal Violin Concerto No. 1, the shimmering violin solo (played ably by Kurt Nikkanen) mirrored Garcia's dream-like motions, in fascinating color pairings with harp, piccolo, and other instruments. Principal dancer Sterling Hyltin, taking the lead role often danced in the past by none other than Wendy Whelan, was elusive and pretty.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, It’s hit or miss for New York City Ballet in first Kennedy Center program under new directors (Washington Post, April 3, 2019) Alastair Macaulay, The Unstuffy Gala: City Ballet Delivers Youth and Style (New York Times, September 29, 2017)

It made a bracing pairing with George Balanchine's Kammermusik No. 2, with a more abrasive score by Paul Hindemith and somewhat similar costumes in light blue or gray-black, also by Ben Benson. Abi Stafford and the tall, striking Teresa Reichlen excelled as the tandem pairing that shadowed the contrapuntal part of the piano solo from the virtuosic Stephen Gosling, often with hand following hand just as ballerina followed ballerina gesture for gesture. A small group of male dancers, often with interlocked arms, formed complicated shapes echoing the dissonant musical clusters.

For an appetizer, NYCB brought Composer's Holiday, a commission from the young choreographer Gianna Reisen. The three sections showed a pleasing balance and variety, in a poised, short ballet that moved from intriguing vignette to intriguing vignette. It opened with dancers on one side pointing to a woman lifted in the air, for example, and the first scene closed with a woman hurled into the air just as the lights went dark. The choice of Lukas Foss's Three American Pieces for Violin and Piano (played capably by Arturo Delmoni and Susan Walters) was also savvy, music that is just as enigmatic as the movements Reisen chose.

Two dancers took falls in the evening, unusual for this company, and only one that looked painful. That was in the otherwise triumphant final work, Balanchine's Symphony in C. It showcased the NYCB corps of women, all in sparkly white costumes, in the active first movement of Bizet's Symphony in C, an early work in Mozartean style. The second movement, with its plangent oboe theme, inspired in Balanchine, that most musical of choreographers, a scene of heart-breaking tenderness, spotlighting in this case the graceful dancing of Sara Mearns and Jared Angle. Through a sleight of hand, Balanchine does not make clear until late in the work just how many dancers are involved. In the fast changes of the finale's episodes, the numbers on stage grow and grow to a delightful climax.

This program by the New York City Ballet repeats only on April 7, with a different program scheduled for April 4 to 6.

Briefly Noted: Slatkin's Copland ballet cycle

A. Copland, Complete Ballet Scores, Vol. 3, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, L. Slatkin (released on March 8, 2019) Naxos 8.559862 | 62'49-"

Aaron Copland composed music for six ballets, although only three have been widely performed and recorded. Conductor Leonard Slatkin has taken a special interest in this side of Copland's oeuvre. After leaving the National Symphony Orchestra, where his tenure had mixed results, Slatkin went on to an institution-rejuvenating stint with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Among several admirable projects was a complete survey of the Copland ballet scores, all in their comprehensive versions, a series of performances captured on disc for the Naxos label. This third and final installment pairs the well-known Billy the Kid, from 1938, with the first ballet Copland composed, the curious, pleasing Grohg.

The composer's three most popular ballets -- Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, and Billy the Kid -- all share the signature Copland sound, somewhat saccharine Americana influenced by folk music and redolent of a mythologizing view of this country's history. The earlier Grohg, on the other hand, is something altogether different. Copland began it in 1922, at the suggestion of Nadia Boulanger, with whom he was studying in France for much of that decade. A chance encounter with Friedrich Murnau's horror film Nosferatu that year led Copland and his friend, the writer Harold Clurman, to create a scenario about a necromancer for the ballet. A monstrous creature, Grohg falls in love with people who have just died -- an adolescent, an opium addict, a prostitute. He revives their corpses with his magic, only to be rejected by them. The mind boggles at what a choreographer like Alexei Ratmansky could do with this ballet.

Vol. 1 Vol. 2

As Copland wrote of the piece's composition, "This ballet became the most ambitious undertaking of my Paris years: I had no choreographer, commission or contact with a major ballet company." It was essentially a massive graduate thesis project, and as such was left unpublished. The music shows Copland soaking up the atmosphere of 1920s Paris, a city that had just heard the premieres of Stravinsky's ground-breaking ballets and Debussy's Jeux. "There was a taste for the bizarre at the time," Copland continued, "and if Grohg sounds morbid and excessive, the music was meant to be fantastic rather than ghastly. Also, the need for gruesome effects gave me an excuse for ‘modern’ rhythms and dissonances. Until Grohg, I had written only short piano pieces using jazz-derived rhythms."

Slatkin's is not the first recording of Grohg, an honor that goes to the Cleveland Orchestra under the late Oliver Knussen. (Knussen also conducted the first recording of another rare Copland ballet, Hear Ye! Hear Ye!, with the London Sinfonietta, offered on the same disc.) Slatkin and the DSO give a technicolor rendition of this unusual score, as well as an elegiac performance of the more familiar Billy the Kid. All three discs are both an affordable way for a collector to acquire all of Copland's ballet scores, as well as a testament to the fine partnership of Slatkin and the DSO, an orchestra that has revived along with its city, now that Slatkin has stepped back to take the position of Music Director Laureate.

New York City Ballet celebrates Robbins and Bernstein

New York City Ballet in Jerome Robbins's Glass Pieces (photo by Paul Kolnik)
Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein were both born in 1918, the former on October 11 and the latter on August 25. After a program honoring three of its major choreographers earlier in the week, the New York City Ballet offered a tribute to Robbins, its other co-founder, and the composer with whom he often collaborated, seen on Friday night in the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Robbins is most remembered for his hybridization of classical ballet with popular dance, a trend he began in his very first choreography, Fancy Free. Premiered in 1944 by the company that would become American Ballet Theater, it is set to a jazz-heavy score by Bernstein, in a foretaste of what they would create a decade later in West Side Story. The scene is wartime Manhattan, evoked immediately by the "overture," a minute or so of a recording of Big Stuff, a Bernstein original that sounds like a classic blues. NYCB's new music director, Andrew Litton, has changed the recording used at this moment to one made by Billie Holiday, the voice envisioned by both Bernstein and Robbins, although she had obviously not recorded the song at the time of the ballet's creation.

Roman Mejia, Harrison Coll, and Sebastian Villarini-Velez, the Saturday matinee's trio of sailors in a last-minute substitution, burst onto the stage one by one with cartwheels. The opening music, bubbling with enthusiasm, contains the kernel of the melody of "New York, New York, it's a helluva town" (the Bronx is up and the Battery's down, the people ride in a hole in the ground), from the musical adaptation of this ballet, On the Town. This trio was enthusiastic and physical, if not always as unified as they might have been. The style of choreography must have been bracing to see in 1944, still some years before Gene Kelly would popularize the style in countless big-production film musicals. It now feels rather dated, however, especially the interactions of the sailors with the three Passers-by, women who are minding their own business and end up basically getting harassed.

Other Reviews: Alastair Macaulay, Then, With a Touch of Now, and a Fully Charged Prodigal Son (New York Times, January 21, 2008) Brian Seibert, A Jerome Robbins Tribute by New York City Ballet Brims With Brio (New York Times, February 9, 2015)

The Robbins legacy came off the strongest in the first work, Glass Pieces, from 1983. Lucinda Childs had already choreographed Glass's music at that point, in Einstein on the Beach and Dance, but Robbins captured something essential about Glass's style in these excerpts from Glassworks and Akhnaten. In the opening scene (see photo above) the corps walks about busily, like the bustling city streets slowed down in the film Koyaanisqatsi, which came out just before this ballet.

Pairings and small groups of dancers in solid colors enter the scene accompanied by new musical motifs, disrupting the workaday mood with lyricism. Eventually the corps is drawn into what they are doing, a sort of metaphor for artistic inspiration. The choreography is most ravishing, however, in the slow movement, set to the "Facades" movement of Glassworks, with a gorgeous pas de deux, spotlit in front of a sort of conga-line corps silhouetted in blue light. The exceptionally strong new principal dancer Russell Janzen elegantly lifted the long-limbed Maria Kowrowski around the stage to the held, hovering notes of the soprano sax solo. The final scene, with its percussion-heavy syncopated elements, did not reveal the men of the corps in the strongest light. Conductor Andrews Sill had some trouble at times keeping musicians on opposite sides of the pit perfectly aligned in this complex, repetitive music.

The eccentric side of Robbins came across in the last piece, The Four Seasons from 1979. It is principally a choreography for the ballet of that name in the third act of Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes, augmented by some music from the same composer's I Lombardi and Il Trovatore. The staging and costumes, with caped dancers in front of a huge, soaring crest bearing Verdi's name, seemed extremely kitschy by comparison to the week's worth of bare stages. Robbins made many jokes that matched music to movement, like the shivering ballerinas in the Winter scene. Outstanding solo work came from the poised Sarah Mearns, with an elegant, upright vertical line in the Spring section, paired beautifully with Jared Angle. Ashley Laracey was again extraordinary in the lead role of Summer, even in this least striking of the four scenes, and Ashley Bouder and Joaquin de Luz excelled in the wine-dipped concluding dances of Fall, watched over by the athletic caprioles of Daniel Ulbricht.

This program will be repeated today at 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Opera House with various casts.

New York City Ballet returns with Balanchine and Peck masterpieces

New York City Ballet in George Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements (photo by Paul Kolnik)
The New York City Ballet is back in town, bringing an Easter feast of modern choreography to the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House. The first of their two programs, seen on Tuesday night, brings together works of choreographers representing three eras: George Balanchine, Peter Martins, and Justin Peck.

Chase Finlay in George Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15 (photo by Paul Kolnik)

Two Balanchine jewels bookend the evening, beginning with Divertimento No. 15, from 1956. It is a banquet for the eyes, with costumes by Karinska evoking vaguely military-style dress uniforms for the men and graceful gestures that recall the social and courtly dance of Mozart's gorgeous music. Chase Finlay was a tall, chiseled presence among the three male soloists, gracefully partnering especially with Ashley Laracey in the exquisite "Andante" movement, with its extended cadenza for two violins. The strings of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra struggled, especially the violins in high passages and runs, giving the impression that conductor Daniel Capps had spent the lion's share of rehearsal time on the more complex Stravinsky scores later in the program.

At the end of the evening came Balanchine's striking Symphony in Three Movements, made in 1945 after Stravinsky suggested the title piece to Balanchine as suitable for a ballet. The last company to present it at the Kennedy Center was the Boston Ballet in 2013, and direct from the source, as it were, it was an even more bracing thing to see. The curtain rises to reveal a striking scene, the corps of women in white, belted leotards arranged in a diagonal row, one arm raised. Jagged movements that go with Stravinsky's accented, zig-zagging music were crisply defined, the dancers' hair in long ponytails fanning out at times. The solo pairing of Sterling Hyltin and Adrian Danchig-Waring, featured beautifully in the central slow movement, was a highlight.

Other Reviews: Sarah L. Kaufman, New York City Ballet: After the fall (Washington Post, March 28, 2018) Alastair Macaulay, Kaleidoscopes of Patterns Against Backdrop of Mozart’s Chivalry (New York Times, February 16, 2011) ---, City Ballet’s Greatest-Hit Makers Get Help From Some Old Masters (New York Times, January 5, 2008) ---, The Unstuffy Gala: City Ballet Delivers Youth and Style (New York Times, September 29, 2017) ---, One Week’s Journey Through a Whole Century in Ballet (New York Times, May 6, 2012) ---, Taking Flight: A Season of Revival (New York Times, January 28, 2011)

At the heart of the program is a brand-new choreography by Justin Peck, Pulcinella Variations, premiered by the company just last fall. Peck, whose taste in music has sometimes seemed questionable, chose brilliantly here, with the suite from Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Stravinsky's delightful neoclassical reworking of music by Pergolesi, revived after a long absence by the National Symphony Orchestra a few years ago.

Kooky costumes by Japanese fashion designer Tsumori Chisato, half commedia dell'arte by way of Watteau and half manga fantasy, highlighted the inventive movements of the dancers. Red stripes glinted on one costume with each pirouette, and a flesh-colored strip and tutu of only partial circumference made another costume seem to cover only two-thirds of a dancer's body. Breaking from the otherwise bare stage favored in the Balanchine pieces, billowy gray curtains hung above and in the wings, giving the impression of a department store window or fashion show runway.

Sarah Mearns and Jared Angle were a sensual pairing in the "Serenata" movement, but the most beautiful moments of the ballet came from the extended pas de deux of the "Gavotta" with its two variations, featuring the outstanding Tiler Peck and Joseph Gordon. Anthony Huxley proved a dynamo of energy in the "Tarantella," costumed in bright yellow stripes with streamers, reminding Miss Ionarts of an overactive cartoon bee darting among the flowers incorporated into the other costumes.

Two shorter duet pieces filled in the gaps less memorably. Tiler Peck again stood out in Balanchine's Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, made in 1960 to music drawn from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Here partnered with Jared Angle, she showed remarkable poise and calm, frozen into extensions like a statuette, often accompanied by ardent violin solos from concertmaster Oleg Rylatko.

In this superior company, Zakouski, made by Peter Martins in 1992, felt a little like a drab cousin, not least for the uncomfortable overtones recently revealed about the Martins era at NYCB. (In January, Martins was forced to resign from his position leading the company, due to allegations of sexual harassment and physical abuse from former dancers; somewhat confusingly, the company announced in February that its two-month investigation did not corroborate any of the allegations.)

Indiana Woodward stepped in on short notice to replace Megan Fairchild and did so with warmth and energy, matched with the somewhat heavy-handed folk dance gestures of the excellent Joaquin de Luz. Violinist Arturo Delmoni and pianist Susan Walters performed the music, all short pieces by Rachmaninoff (including the famous Vocalise), Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky, admirably from a corner of the pit.

This program will be repeated tonight and Thursday, with a second program, devoted to choreographer Jerome Robbins, performed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Various casts will dance in these performances in the Kennedy Center Opera House.