#balanchine

#balanchine

The ballroom design features impractical elements like a stairway to nowhere and fake windows, emphasizing a focus on flashiness over functionality.

Bronze, when shaped by the right hand, holds time in suspension—an argument against decay, against disappearance, against the quiet erasure of the human story.

"Decorative, escapist, imaginary princesses and swans and flowers," said Janet Eilber, a former member of the company and its current artistic director. "And she wanted to dance about real human beings, real human challenges." Graham wanted to use dance to tell American stories, which at the time was a revolutionary idea, when so much of American cultural life was focused on Europe.

I started getting the sense it was maybe opera or ballet or something, it's kind of like a dying art form or something. No 'woe is me' thing, but you start working on movies, you start acting, pursuing your thing.

All this to say that Alexander Whitley can harness the technology that so fascinates him, and equally importantly, that he fully understands, to enhance his primary vocation as a dance maker and produce bewitching work. Unfortunately, Mirror, and its companion piece The Rite of Spring, in the brand new double bill currently at Sadler's Wells East, proved major disappointments.

It was my first attempt at a story ballet, and I was over the moon. I would have somehow made it work with 10 or with 100 dancers. And so, in 1996, Wheeldon started crafting a ballet based on William Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

In Siegfried, the third part of Der Ring des Nibelungen, Richard Wagner shifts the focus away from the troubled world of the gods towards the energy of youth on earth. This is storytelling through opera, where the theatre is crucial and the music sublime.

I've been coming to the Art Series since 2022. The after-party is one of the most fun to go to, and tickets are a lower price than usual for ballets. A friend introduced me to it, and that's what I'm doing now-bringing a friend who's never seen the ballet before.

President Trump overhauled the Kennedy Center's board last year, got himself elected chairman, and installed ally Ric Grenell as president. Then, in December, his handpicked board renamed the venue "The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts" - slapping his name ahead of JFK's on one of the country's most storied arts institutions.

I don't want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it's like, Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more. Chalamet said in a recorded conversation for Variety, expressing his reluctance to participate in art forms he perceives as lacking contemporary audience engagement and cultural relevance.

First performed in 1910 by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and adapted by George Balachine for New York City Ballet in 1949, Firebird was inspired by a Russian folk tale. The ballet tells the story of Prince Ivan, who captures the firebird, a creature who is part bird, part woman, and then lets her go.

I don't want to be working in ballet or opera things where it's like 'Hey, keep this thing alive,' even though it's like no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there.

With 'Dance Reflections,' the idea was to give back concretely to another discipline that still gives us a lot. It's the reason why 'Dance Reflections' is a sponsorship program, but also a curatorial program; that's quite rare for a brand to have.

When attending the ballet used to mean lining up at the box office or will-call window for a chance to score seats, you can now buy ballet tickets easily online, through the respective company websites or through third-party sites like Stubhub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek.

This is an absolute beginners course on the foundations of classical ballet and, a single catastrophic line dance lesson aside, it is also the first dance class I have ever attended. I am in the minority. As we take the barre, it quickly becomes apparent that not being able to tell my left from my right will be a significant deficit over the next 16 weeks. This, however, is a tertiary concern.

It's typical for the Joffrey Ballet to seat a mixed-repertory concert near the beginning of the year. But the 2026 edition of such an evening (a series of loosely connected shorter works packaged together), breaks at least one habit. There's nothing new in "American Icons," running two weekends at the Lyric Opera House. Instead, the Joffrey has dug up a range of works showcasing mid-20th century innovation and the porous kinship between ballet and modern dance during that time.

In one of classical ballet's most celebrated, multifaceted, and difficult roles, Aurora matures over the course of the ballet, growing froman effervescent teenager sizing up suitors at her 16th birthday party, to an ethereal vision conjured to draw the prince to her bedside, and finally, to a bride, regal and self-assured. It's a fiercely demanding role set to Tschaikovsky's soaring score that requires persuasive acting skills and formidable technique.

A gala is a gala. It's there to celebrate, not to challenge. So, it's to the credit of Ballet Icons, the organisation behind the annual Ballet Icons Gala, which marked its 20th anniversary at the Coliseum on Sunday, that, side by side with gala staples such as Le Corsaire and Diana and Actaeon, it makes a point of programming new and less familiar works.

Created for the company in 2016, Kahn's Giselle is imbued with inventiveness (this is a daring, dystopian dance-drama like no other), integrity (in the way themes are transposed from the nineteenth-century Romantic-era classic to this reimagining) and impressiveness (the level of commitment from the dancers, whose embodiment makes the work a formidable entity, is outstanding). You can't just watch it. You exist inside it, breathe it in, let it get under your skin.