Mary Cargill

Pacific Northwest Ballet: Petipa Exotique
Works & Process
Peter B. Lewis Theater
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York, NY
February 23, 2014

The audience in New York's Guggenheim Museum watched a rare recreation of some of the French Marius Petipa's Russian choreography danced by performers from Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet, based on manuscripts in the Harvard Theatre Library's Sergeyev Collection, originally smuggled from Russia by the refugee Nicholas Sergeyev, and sold to them by the heirs of the British dance

"Dances at a Gathering", "Union Jack"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
February 9, 2014

Jerome Robbins' "Dances at a Gathering", the most famous of the piano ballets, is also one of the most fragile.  The dancers must have vibrant yet complimentary personalities to create that self-enclosed, nostalgic world. For me, many recent performances are haunted by ghosts of former dancers, and it has seemed to be a series of unconnected slightly saccharine exercises.

"Concerto Barocco", "Kammermusik No. 2", "Who Cares?"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
January 21, 2014

City Ballet opened its Winter season crisply, with three Balanchine works and one intermission. The scrupulous architecture of "Concerto Barocco" is really indestructible, as those glorious patterns weave in and out.  At times, though, the corps looked a bit tentative, and there were a few near misses.  There were no misses from Sara Mearns, dancing the second

"Freefall", "Kaitlyncaitlin", "Talk Radio"
Trainor Dance
Theater of the Riverside Church
New York, NY
November 14, 2013

Caitlin Trainor, a dance professor at Barnard College, has a small modern dance company, which had its Fall season at the intimate Riverside Church theater.  Among the novelties were costumes by Christian Soriano, familiar to Project Runway fans as a designer of fabulous, flamboyant evening gowns.  These costumes showed that he is aware of bodies in motion, and they were modest,

"Gong", "A Month in the Country", "Piano Concerto #1"
American Ballet Theatre
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
November 9, 2013

ABT's fall season, away from the cavernous Metropolitan Opera House, allows it to feature the younger dancers and shorter works, and the dancers have seized their opportunities, giving the performances an exhilarating gusto.  Mark Morris' "Gong", while not an especially rich or profound work, let the corps show off in the cascade of steps.  It is

"Theme and Variations", "Aftereffect", "The Tempest"
American Ballet Theatre
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
October 30, 2013

The ABT gala was a feast featuring new costumes for Balanchine's "Theme and Variations", a pièce d'occasion for eight men by Marcelo Gomes, and a new Ratmansky ballet based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest".  New costumes and eight bare-chested men are fine, but the focus was on the Ratmansky.  How could Shakespeare's cerebral, poetic vision, with its complicated

"Pacific", "Twilight", "Solo", "Play"
Houston Ballet
Joyce Theater
New York, NY
October 22, 2013

The Houston Ballet, directed by the Australian choreographer Stanton Welch, returned to the Joyce for a week-long season, with four works (two with live music), variable choreography, and strong, confident, and appealing dancers.  Mark Morris' "Pacific", to two movements of a Lou Harrison trio, opened the program.  It was choreographed in 1995 for the San Francisco Ballet, and combines point shoes with unusual, shifting

"Veils", "String Quartet in E Minor"
Celebrating the Music of Giuseppe Verdi
Intermezzo
Buttenwieser Hall
92nd St. Y
New York, NY
October 18, 2013

Giuseppe Verdi is two hundred years old this year, which is welcome news for opera marketers.  Ballet companies have generally not taken up the opportunity (waiting for Tchaikovsky's party, perhaps), so ABT soloist Craig Salstein's Verdi celebration, with his new company Intermezzo, was a novelty.  Verdi, of course, wrote a lot of ballet music,

"Company", "Tower"
Mazzini Dance Collective
Roulette
Brooklyn, New York
October 16, 2013

The Mazzini Dance Collective performed as part of a program of new music presented by the American Modern Ensemble.  (Annmaria Mazzini is the ensemble's choreographer-in-residence.)  This group, as the affable introduction explained, presents "adventurous modern music".  Not too adventurous, though, as the works all had rhythm and structure. The first half was all music, featuring an eclectic group of instruments--xylophone, cello, piano, augmented by a

"La Sonnambula", "The Prodigal Son", "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue"
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, NY
October 9 and October 11, 2013

"All Balanchine Short Stories" was the somewhat cumbersome name the marketing department came up with for the triple bill.  It is a bit misleading, since the ballets are really poetic examinations of events , not straightforward narratives.  Nor are they "all Balanchine" since in each case, he was assigned the music and the

"The Arrogant King", "The Perfect King", "The Story of the Stories", "The Ascetic Prince", "The Trojan King"
Rajika Puri in Sutradhari Natyam
Ailey Citigroup Theater
New York, NY
October 6, 2013

In the question and answer session after the performance, Rajika Puri explained that she is trying to be a bridge, to show her Western audience the meaning behind the stories her dances tell.  She sings her own lyrics, often in English, a convention, she said, not used in

Fall Gala
"Capricious Maneuvers", "Neverwhere", "Spectral Evidence", "Western Symphony" (4th movement)
New York City Ballet
David H. Koch Theater
New York, New York
September 17, 2013

NYCB's fall gala focused on new works, with costumes by fashion designers, presumably to pull in a fashion-conscious audience with lots of money.  Each new work was introduced by a short film of the designer talking about his/her process, very "Project Runwayish".  Black, white and red were the colors du jour,