George Balanchine

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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: Festival Ballet celebrates Balanchine

By George
There is a long list of reasons why George Balanchine is regarded as the greatest and most influential choreographer of the 20th century.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | November 02, 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

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

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

Squiggles and lines

Alonzo King at the ICA, Mark Morris at the Opera House
The eponymous directors of Alonzo King Lines Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Group both came from backgrounds in modern dance with sprinklings of other styles, and they both subsequently invented movement vocabularies to serve their choreographic ideas.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | February 02, 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

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

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

Must-see moves

Flying feet and acrobatic hijinks
Two of this fall's dance performances will tell Halloween-style stories — a reprise of Viktor Plotnikov's THE WIDOW'S BROOM , by Festival Ballet Providence, and a premiere of Miki Ohlsen's DRACULA , by Island Moving Co.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | September 16, 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

Brava Larissa!

Boston Ballet opens The Sleeping Beauty
The end of an era loomed last night as Boston Ballet opened The Sleeping Beauty — what's likely to be the last story ballet ever to be staged at the Wang Theatre.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 29, 2009

Slideshow: Boston Ballet's Jewels

Boston Ballet performs George Balanchine's Jewels .
Photos from George Balanchine's Jewels, performed by the Boston Ballet.
By ERIC ANTONIOU | February 27, 2009

Crowning glory

Boston Ballet's Jewels at the Wang Theatre.
In 1967, George Balanchine created Jewels for New York City Ballet, and in short order this evening-length triptych — Emeralds , Rubies , and Diamonds — became the crown jewel of 20th-century dance.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 04, 2009

Dancing ballet or not

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's Celebrity Series program at the Cutler Majestic last weekend could have been a primer of the ways not to dance ballet.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | February 10, 2009

Sizzling frost

Dance heat 2009
The winter dance season starts out promoting international coexistence.
By DEBRA CASH | December 29, 2008

Year in Dance: Reusable histories & durable trends

No startling breakthroughs, but that's okay
Conservation is a good thing in these times, and some of the most interesting performances drew on the uses of history — personal history, performance history, and even some inventions that sought to overturn history.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 24, 2008

Not so great

San Francisco's Nutcracker on PBS
Way back in 1977, PBS gave us a Nutcracker with a difference: Mikhail Baryshnikov as an electrifying Nutcracker/Cavalier and willowy Gelsey Kirkland as an older-than-usual Clara, as the Sugar Plum Fairy.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 02, 2008

Dynamos

Philadanco at the ICA
The four pieces on the program that Philadanco brought for its Boston debut last weekend at the Institute for Contemporary Art were all-dance numbers showcasing a troupe of highly polished, supercharged dancers.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | November 18, 2008

State of the art

Boston Ballet’s third ‘Night of Stars’
Maybe it’s the economy, but Boston Ballet’s third-annual season-opening gala was a sober evening, without the orchestral overture that graced the first two affairs.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 17, 2008

Floor show

Sara Hook at Harvard
Sara Hook explains the title of her cabaret piece Salad Days as a reference to youth and indiscretion.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | October 01, 2008

Where the chips fell

Marjorie Morgan, Karl Cronin, Lucinda Childs, and Boston Ballet
Dance history reverberated across Boston during the past few weeks, affirming that how we live now owes a lot to how we’ve chosen to remember — and forget.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 28, 2008

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