Maria Kowrowski News

New York City Ballet's Centennial Celebration at the Koch Theater in Lincoln Center of the 100th anniversary of Jerome Robbins' birth honors the prodigiously gifted dancemaker, the company's Co-Founding Choreographer, with a ballet lover's feast of five programs from May 3rd to May 20th 2018. The run include two world premieres as well as 20 ballets by Robbins. He died in 1998 at the age of 80, but “Robbins 100” shows beyond a doubt that his legacy endures.

The spring 2015 season of the New York City Ballet at the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center boasts not one but two programs featuring George Balanchine's minimalist masterpieces that are affectionately referred to as the "leotard ballets" by dancers and devotees alike. On the evening of May 1st, "Balanchine Black & White 1" proved once again that plotless ballets stripped of elaborate sets and costumes do indeed achieve Mr. B's goal of focusing on the movement and the music. What is so remarkable is that each of the three works on the bill, all of them with the dancers in practice clothes, is uniquely compelling. This feast of Mr. B's earliest neoclassical creations holds the audience in thrall from start to finish without ever becoming repetitious.

On the first ever World Ballet Day, October 1st 2014, I postponed watching the video stream of five top ballet companies in favor of attending what turned out to be a mesmerizing mixed bill featuring Balanchine ballets to the music of Stravinsky at the Koch Theater in Lincoln Center. YouTube can wait for me to catch up on the video stream later, but being in the audience at a live performance is always a one-time experience never to be recaptured except in the mind's eye.

The All Robbins program offered this spring season by New York City Ballet is a testament to the range and depth of the choreographer's genius. 'Glass Pieces', the 1983 work to the driving rhythms of music by Philip Glass, is an ideal opener with its masterful blend of postmodern and classical movement styles that call to mind the pulsating urgency of urban life.

Nearly 31 years have passed since George Balanchine, the prolific and pioneering 20th century choreographer, died on April 30th 1983. Yet the New York City Ballet, the company he co-founded with Lincoln Kirstein 80 years ago, continues to revere and remember him with equal parts fondness and awe. That legacy of love and respect for Mr. B was especially evident on January 25th 2014, the 4th annual celebration of "Saturday at the Ballet with George" in honor of his birthday. He was actually born on January 22nd 1904 but scheduling the event on a Saturday allows for a daylong series of workshops and performances, all of them affordable and some of them free.

The 31st Annual Fred & Adele Astaire Awards took place last night, June 3 at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University (566 LaGuardia Place). BroadwayWorld was there for the special celebration and you can check out photo coverage below!