Marianne Adams

“AfterEffect,” “Company B,” “The Green Table”
American Ballet Theatre
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
October 28, 2015

In its second week, American Ballet Theatre presented a world premiere of a brand new work by one of its own – principal dancer Marcelo Gomes. The ballet, curiously titled “AfterEffect,” was ambitiously set to Tchaikovsky’s string sextet “Souvenir de Florence.” Alas, even the slim flourish it possessed quickly faded against the more effective works that followed, Paul Taylor’s “Company

“The Brahms-Haydn Variations,” “Monotones I and II,” “Green Table”
American Ballet Theatre
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
October 22, 2015

ABT’s fall season is traditionally a mixed bill affair but rarely one with works as audaciously diametrical in nature as this year. The company’s second night of the season offered older ballets created between 1932 and 2000, but each felt refreshingly different as much from what might be expected in a mixed bill these days, as

“Concerto Barocco,” “Monumentum pro Gesuaido,” “Movements for Piano and Orchestra,” “Episodes,” “Four Temperaments”
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
October 18, 2015 (matinee)

For all the dedication to new and inventive ballets that NYCB stands for, sometimes nothing works as well to please the audience as a collection of Balanchine classics that strip away pomp, circumstance, or the quest to arouse shock or awe, and simply present excellent ballet in all its purity. The five

“Nutcracker”
Teatro Colón Ballet
Teatro Colón
Buenos Aires, Argentina
December 23, 2014

Outside the theater the streets may have been permeated with the warmth of the early Argentine summer, but for a few hours inside the famous Teatro Colón the ballet troupe enveloped the audience in the wintry magic of the “Nutcracker.”

The theater’s new 2014 production, staged and choreographed by the company’s artistic director Lidia Segni, replaced a Rudolf Nureyev version which had a long performance history

“Tree of Codes”
Company Wayne McGregor and Paris Opera Ballet
Park Avenue Armory
New York, NY
September 15, 2015

The opening scenes of light-speckled people moving on a pitch black stage wasn’t how “Tree of Codes,” the collaborative work featuring Wayne McGregor’s choreography, Olafur Eliasson's visual design, and music by Jamie xx, really began. Instead, the audience was immersed in art from the moment they streamed into the versatile and all-accommodating Park Avenue Armory drill hall, as they

“Ritornare,” “Partita No. 2 in C Minor,” “Lasciatemi Qui Solo,” “The Innermost Part of Something”
Emery LeCrone Dance
Joyce Ballet Festival
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
August 13, 2015

With over fifty original works in her artistic portfolio in less than a decade as an active choreographer, an evening of Emery LeCrone’s new and recent creations was promising to be at the very least intriguing, if not exciting. The presented ballets indeed were interesting, but more than anything

“Infra,” Divertissements, “Age of Anxiety”
The Royal Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
June 28, 2015 (matinee) 

Mixed bill programs, particularly when brought by a company on tour, are usually a great vehicle for showing a company’s range. But if the Royal Ballet said enough about the impressive roster of British choreographers in its repertory with just the first cast, the second cast indicated that the depth of its performers’ bench, and their ability to excel

“Romeo and Juliet”
American Ballet Theatre
The Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY
June 18, 2015

It was a long time coming, but Russian ballerina Evgenia Obraztsova, and her signature role of Juliet, finally made it to New York. The Kenneth MacMillan version of the ballet that ABT puts on season after season may not be the best vehicle for Obraztsova’s iteration of Shakespeare’s famous heroine, but the trademark innocence with which she dances the role nonetheless shone

"ROBOT"
Blanka Li and Dancers
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Brooklyn, NY
June 11, 2015

If you ever wondered what kind of future it would be where robots are ubiquitous, Blanca Li’s “ROBOT” can suggest only one answer: a funny and entertaining one. From the theme-setting opening scene, where a single dancer, Gael Rougegrez, stood on a dark stage with projections of various human and robotic forms making him at times flesh and at times machine, the Spanish-born

“La Bayadère”
American Ballet Theatre
Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY
June 3, 2015

by Marianne Adams
copyright © 2015 by Marianne Adams

So much can be said in a span of two hours, particularly in the context of “La Bayadère,” that it is sad when the opportunity is wasted. Unfortunately, it was precisely this that became the takeaway from ABT’s performance of the pruned and tired Natalia Makarova's 1980 production of the ballet with Maria Kochetkova, who replaced

“Up and Down”
Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg
New York City Center
New York, NY
May 22, 2015

How do you put psychology in dance form? For Boris Eifman, the recipe calls for one part of the Roaring Twenties setting, one part of psychological drama loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night," several parts of different music ranging from George Gershwin to Frederic Chopin, one part an  incredibly limber, tall and expressive dancing cast, one part

“Sarabande,” “Sunshine,” “Steptext”
Lyon Opera Ballet
The Joyce Theater
New York, NY
April 29, 2015

All three of Lyon Opera Ballet’s works on its opening night program focused on reconstructing and extracting from the grammar of the choreographic text varying meanings, and all three conveyed a perspective on modern choreography and a statement about the company.

The all-male “Sarabande,” Benjamin Millepied’s sequential approach to Bach’s music inspired by Jerome Robbins’s “A Suite of Dances,” presented an