Diana Adams

BWW Review: LA BALLET 'BALANCHINE'S BLACK AND WHITE' AND 2020 GALA at The Broad Stage

Boston Ballet's 2019a?"2020 spring season opens with rEVOLUTION, a dynamic program showcasing three choreographers who transformed the world of ballet: George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and William Forsythe. rEVOLUTION runs Feb 27a?"Mar 8 at the Citizens Bank Opera House.

October 31, Halloween. I was walking to City Center for the opening of 'Balanchine: The City Center Years.' But then I began thinking of Stephen Sondheim's 'Follies.' You must all know the musical. Everyone returns for a reunion, only to be met with ghosts and remembrances of their past lives. After all, City Center is where New York City Ballet began in 1948. I wondered who I would encounter? I saw Allegra Kent. I think I saw two other members of the company who danced on New York City Ballet's opening night 70 years ago? But perhaps I'd encounter some of the other principal dancers of that time: Maria Tallchief on the stairs? Or Tanaquil Le Clercq at the bar? Or Frank Hobi? Francisco Moncion? Nicholas Magallenes? Yvonne Mounsey? Diana Adams?

For his first solo museum show in the United States, artist Nick Mauss (b. 1980) will present Transmissions, an exhibition conceived for the Whitney, which explores the reciprocal relationship of modernist ballet and the avant-garde in New York from the 1930s through '50s. The exhibition-which features daily dance performances in the Whitney's eighth-floor Hurst Family Galleries-goes on view March 16.

The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival enters its 23rd season presenting five artists over five weeks, from February 24 through March 25, 2017. Centered around the theme of Then, Now + Next, the 2017 Festival features world premieres from two companies and showcases a varied spectrum of work, from revivals of classic works to cutting-edge pieces by emerging talent.

Alexei Ratmansky's 2015 version of 'Sleeping Beauty,' based on the Stepanov notation of the original 1890 version, as well as Diaghilev's production in 1921, has always posed a problem for me. I saw it last year with a friend, and our reaction was the same: why do we need this new 'Sleeping Beauty?' It's beautiful to look at, lavish to the extreme, but is there anything really new in this 'Sleeping Beauty' that we have not seen before? With every new version of this classic we want to see the choreographer's mind and heart at work; why was this warhorse tackled again? What speaks to the soul, how can the ballet literally take wings and have us fly with it? That is the problem with 'Sleeping Beauty.' For all its beauty, it remains earthbound. It's better to read about than view. History is indeed interesting, but not at these prices, especially if you're trying to build a new audience as the baby boomers are now in their sixties and moving on. Who will take their places at the ballet, especially at these prices?

Columbia University will confer the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters on the legendary dance pioneer and social activist Arthur Mitchell this month, the Arthur Mitchell Project announced today.

Just when you think you are Sleeping Beautied out, along comes another production. This one however, is being produced on the other side of the world by the Australian Ballet. That's a long way to travel to see something you've already encountered in 500 other productions. On the other hand, why not? I'd never been to Australia and needed a vacation. So a 27-hour flight didn't seem to faze me. Plus, I would see a company that was almost totally unknown to me. I'd seen them on You Tube and was highly impressed. I missed them in New York, so this would be my chance not only to see the company, but Australia! Of course, there were other reasons. Like a great love I had in college 40 years before and had left because he wanted me to move to Melbourne with him. And I was going to meet him again! So if you combine the meeting of a past love and a new Sleeping Beauty, the combination was almost irresistible, at least to me. (I'm told that my brain works in peculiar ways, and this was definitely one of them!) So I booked a flight and in two days I was transported to one of the loveliest cities imaginable. And I could have been there 40 years earlier!

Programming for American Ballet Theatre's 2015 Fall season at the David H. Koch Theater was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie. Highlighting the season will be the New York City Premiere of a new work by Mark Morris and the Company Premieres of Frederick Ashton's Monotones I and II, George Balanchine's Valse-Fantaisie and AfterEffect by Marcelo Gomes. The 2015 Fall season at the David H. Koch Theater, October 21 through November 1, marks the conclusion of ABT's 75th Anniversary celebration.

Calling all balletomanes, historians, Ph.D. candidates, sociologists, audience members, and just about everyone else interested in dance. Do you want to see Diana Adams, Allegra Kent, Violette Verdy, Jillana, Maria Tallchief, Tanaquil LeClercq, Andre Eglevsky, Suki Schorer, Patricia Neary, Carol Sumner, Todd Bolender, Arthur Mitchell, Francisco Moncion, Nicholas Magallanes and Jacques d'Amboise again in the intimate surrounding of your living room? No, this not a joke, but the first of many VAI DVD releases from Montreal's Radio-Canada archive, encompassing a televised history of Balanchine's many works from 1954 well into the 1970s.

Oregon Ballet Theatre announced during Pink Martini's concert at the Oregon Zoo that Nicolo Fonte's world premiere in the upcoming OBT 25 program will feature Portland's favorite 'little orchestra' sharing the stage with the dancers in the first ever full-scale collaboration between the two groups. The ballet, titled Everywhere, was inspired by Fonte's eagerness to create an unforgettable experience for the audience that will reveal new facets of both groups and the performers in them. In celebration of the Ballet's 25th Anniversary Season, this entirely new creation will feature China Forbes, who has been the lead singer for the band since its inception. Opening today, October 11, 2014 at the Keller Auditorium, OBT 25 will continue for five performances through October 18.

The New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies), NYC's premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, announces Arthur Mitchell, founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, as the recipient of the 2014 NY Dance and Performance Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance and Dr. Chuck Davis of DanceAfrica! for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance. These awards will be presented at the 30th Annual Bessie Awards ceremony at the legendary Apollo Theater on Monday, October 20.

Oregon Ballet Theatre announced last night during Pink Martini's concert at the Oregon Zoo that Nicolo Fonte's world premiere in the upcoming OBT 25 program will feature Portland's favorite "little orchestra" sharing the stage with the dancers in the first ever full-scale collaboration between the two groups. The ballet, titled Everywhere, was inspired by Fonte's eagerness to create an unforgettable experience for the audience that will reveal new facets of both groups and the performers in them. In celebration of the Ballet's 25th Anniversary Season, this entirely new creation will feature China Forbes, who has been the lead singer for the band since its inception. Opening Saturday, October 11, 2014 at the Keller Auditorium, OBT 25 will continue for five performances through October 18.

I glanced at the program photograph as I was sitting down for the Fadi J. Khoury Dance concert on July 24 at New York Live Arts. I suppose it's me-or an over stimulated brain-because the photo screamed, yelled, and hollered 'beefcake evening.' Nothing wrong with that-there are worse things one can encounter in life.

Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH), the groundbreaking and newly revitalized classical and contemporary ballet company, will open the 2013 Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival season in the Ted Shawn Theatre June 19-23. Led by founding member and former principal dancer, Artistic Director Virginia Johnson, the company will present a range of classic and new ballet work including George Balanchine's Agon, The Lark Ascending by Alvin Ailey, and Far But Close by Canadian contemporary choreographer John Alleyne.

It wasn't until Frederick Ashton undertook a new creation of the ballet that it finally became an international hit. He referred to it as his 'poor man's Pastorale,' a lovely reference to Beethoven's symphony where things go from simplicity to thunderstorms and back to normalcy and contentment with the world. He commissioned The Royal Opera House conductor, John Lanchberry, to orchestrate a new score that, while recalling French culture and manners (it did begin as a French ballet after all), is firmly rooted in an English sensibility

Tanaquil LeClercq was one of Balanchine's most famous ballerinas from the late 1940s until 1956. Unfortunately we don't have much footage of her in full length ballets, so here's one that spotlights her immense gifts not only for dance, but comedy as well.

For nearly four decades (1957-1994), Martha Swope was America's pre-eminent photographer of theater and dance, her discerning eye chronicling hundreds of classical ballets, modern dance, and Broadway performances and performers. But she also went behind-the-scenes, documenting what audiences never get to experience-the creative collaborations that make the magic on stage possible: rehearsals.

Following the 80th Anniversary Season's record-breaking attendance, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival announces the 2013 Festival schedule today. Jacob's Pillow is a National Historic Landmark, home to America's longest-running dance festival, and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts.