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The Best Boston Dance Stories of 2010

Tradition, innovation, and (loving) parody animated the year's dance
Some of the past year's most interesting dance events recaptured iconic moments in our history, either as usable texts for today's dancers or as a springboard into reinterpretation, parody, and nostalgia.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 21, 2010

Review: Jonathan McPhee & the Longwood Symphony Orchestra at Jordan Hall

Where's the audience?
Jonathan McPhee is a hard man to keep up with.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 10, 2010

Review: Boston Ballet's The Nutcracker (2010)

Old faithful
When E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote Nutcracker and Mouse King back in 1816, he can hardly have imagined the impact it would have on ballet as we know it.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 30, 2010

Review: Trajal Harrell's vogue and anti-vogue

Plus Boston Ballet's La Bayadère
Trajal Harrell's 20 Looks or Paris Is Burning at Judson Church (S) is as obscure as its title.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | November 10, 2010

Review: Boston Ballet's La Bayadère

Temple of love
The Ballet's opening-night performance confirmed that La Bayadère should visit the Hub more often.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 12, 2010

Review: Boston Ballet's fifth 'Night of Stars'

Promise of things to come
Now that Boston Ballet has settled into the Opera House (after nearly 30 years at the Wang Theatre) and its "Night of Stars" gala has turned five — well, the thrill might not be gone, but the novelty has worn off.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 28, 2010

Fall Dance Preview: Kick up your heels!

Dance around town
Fall dance starts at the very beginning, which is a very good place to start, with Doug Elkins and Friends’ hilarious send-up of The Sound of Music , and continues straight through to the brink of the holiday season with an authentic Gypsy “Ole!” from a pair of flamenco cousins.
By DEBRA CASH | September 16, 2010

Photos: Boston Ballet tours Spain

Scenes from the Boston Ballet's five-week tour of Spain
Boston Ballet dancers Jeffrey Cirio and Sabi Varga "have been snapping images like crazy" during the company's five-week trip to Spain -- see what they caught in their lens.
By JEFFREY CIRIO AND SABI VARGA | July 09, 2010

Photos: Boston Ballet presents Black & White (2010)

Boston Ballet presents Jiří Kylián’s Black & White
Boston Ballet's reprise of Jiří Kylián’s Black & White
By ROSALIE O'CONNOR | May 28, 2010

Second sight

Boston Ballet reprises Jiří Kylián’s Black & White
May in Boston has always been Storybook Ballet Month, as Boston Ballet finished off its season with Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty or Don Quixote , something classical and highbrow and reassuring. That, after all, is what Boston audiences want, right?
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 28, 2010

Theme and variations

Boston Ballet’s ‘Ultimate Balanchine’
George Balanchine was famous for “non-story” ballets, but when you put three of his works — the usual number to fill up an evening — together, you always get some kind of narrative.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 13, 2010

Sparring with the Ultimate

Boston Ballet in The Four Temperaments, Apollo, and Theme and Variations
There’s never been a more brilliant exemplar of the ballet art than George Balanchine.
By MARICA B. SIEGEL | May 11, 2010

Happy returns

Boston Ballet’s Coppélia , Alvin Ailey at the Wang
George Balanchine didn’t go in for productions of the old classic ballets.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | April 20, 2010

Here’s looking at you

Boston Ballet sees into the heart of Coppélia
Set in the usual small village — this one in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe — Coppélia might look like just another pleasant 19th-century ballet about a boy, a girl, and another girl. But appearances can be deceiving — and that’s theme of this work, whose title character is a life-size mechanical doll.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 30, 2010

Naked Boston

Spring has finally arrived! So take off all your clothes with these seven ways to celebrate nudity in greater Boston.
Every year, Ol' Man Winter cruelly turns Bostonians' bodies into shriveled, cracked sacks of atrophied muscle and lumpy goo — not exactly fodder for Playmate of the Month.
By ALEXIS HAUK | March 22, 2010

High stepping

Dancing with the stars
The heavy-hitter repertory shows this season come from ALVIN AILEY and GEORGE BALANCHINE . But why not welcome spring by taking a chance on fresh experiences as well?
By DEBRA CASH | March 11, 2010

2009: The year in dance

Milestones and memories
You could say there were two tremendous forces that propelled dance into the world of modern culture: the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev and the choreography of Merce Cunningham.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 22, 2009

Is it magic yet?

Boston Ballet's Nutcracker
When you've seen every Boston Ballet Nutcracker for the past 20-odd years, and reviewed most of them, it can get a little hard to locate the magic. Then again, when you survey other Nutcracker s around the world you appreciate that there's no place like home, and not many that are as good.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 02, 2009

Plugging in

Festival Ballet move to Metallica and Radiohead
For the past six years, Festival Ballet Providence has presented an evening of short works, Up Close on Hope , in their Black Box Theater on Hope Street.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | November 18, 2009

Both ears and the tail for this Carmen

Boston Ballet's 'World Passions'
"World Passions," the collection of four works that Boston Ballet opened at the Opera House last night, was more pleasant than passionate until Kathleen Breen Combes sashayed out as the title character in Jorma Elo's Carmen .
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 28, 2009

Definitions

Boston Ballet’s ‘World Passions’; Streb Brave at the ICA
Boston Ballet’s artistic director, Mikko Nissinen, wants us to think of his company as utterly contemporary, but it’s a tricky balance to pull off.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | October 28, 2009

Photos: Boston Ballet's World Passions

Photos from the Boston Ballet's "World Passions" at the Opera House
Photos of the Boston Ballet's "World Passions" collection, including Jorma Elo's Carmen ; Helen Pickett's Tsukiyo ; Viktor Plotnikov's Rhyme ; and Marius Petipa's Paquita.
By ERIC ANTONIOU | October 26, 2009

No place like home

Boston Ballet's Giselle fits right in
The first thing audiences see when the curtain goes up on Boston Ballet's Giselle is our heroine's charming Rhineland-village home, a rustic abode that in Peter Farmer's set is framed by birches, a symbol of fidelity.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 07, 2009

Photos: Boston Ballet's Giselle

Photos from the Boston Ballet's Giselle , opening October 1, 2009
Giselle at the Boston Opera House
By ERIC ANTONIOU | October 02, 2009

Smaller, bigger, better

Boston Ballet’s fourth ‘Night of Stars’
Is Boston in the midst of a ballet boom? You could certainly believe that if you attended Boston Ballet’s fourth annual season-opening gala last Saturday.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 22, 2009

Terpsichore's delight

A season of foot (and body) work
There's no end to variety to the fall's dance season, from a Boston Ballet classic to Hawaiian hula and "extreme action" acrobatics.
By DEBRA CASH | September 14, 2009

Dancing in a new direction

Notes from 'Ballets Russes 2009'
The 100th birthday of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes prompted the expected centennial tributes in Boston: a "Diaghilev's Ballets Russes 1909–1929: Twenty Years That Changed the World of Art" symposium and exhibition at Harvard University in April, and a "Ballets Russes 2009" festival this month.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 14, 2010

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