Boston Ballet

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Boston Ballet's 'Simply Sublime'

Road to the city
Boston Ballet's "Simply Sublime" (at the Opera House through February 19) traverses 20th-century ballet's arc from Russian romance to a robust and confident neoclassicism.
By DEBRA CASH | February 15, 2012

Photos: Boston Ballet's Les Sylphides

Boston Ballet performs at the Opera House
A Boston take on Michel Fokine's 1909 "ballet blanc"
By ERIC ANTONIOU | February 15, 2012

Boston Ballet brings back John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet

Return of the star-cross'd
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has probably inspired as many ballet translations as The Rite of Spring .
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | November 08, 2011

Tudor, Millepied, Ratmansky, and Wheeldon at ABT

Expanding the envelope
NEW YORK — American Ballet Theatre devoted only four performances of its two-month spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House to a mixed bill of short ballets.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | June 06, 2011

end of era with retirement of Boston Ballet dancer Larissa Ponomarenko

Larissa Ponomarenko bows out

End of an era
The bad news — really bad news — this past week is that principal dancer Larissa Ponomarenko is retiring after 18 years with Boston Ballet. (She will, however, be staying on as a ballet master.)
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 26, 2011

next generation of Boston ballet dancers

The BIBC, 'Next Generation,' and more of Boston Ballet's 'Balanchine/Robbins'

Ballet notebook
It's been a busy week and a half. The first ever Boston International Ballet Competition took place May 12-16 at John Hancock Hall, climaxing with a gala awards ceremony and performance last Monday. On Wednesday, at the Opera House, Boston Ballet presented its second annual "Next Generation" performance.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 26, 2011

Boston Ballet's 'Balanchine/Robbins,' plus a soupçon of tap

The pleasures of craft
Boston Ballet is ending the season with four prime examples of ballet choreography, displaying not only the rigors of classical technique but the different kinds of images technique can be crafted to evoke.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 19, 2011

Boston Ballet's 'Balanchine/Robbins'

Mind games
After the frenetic gutbusting of its Elo Experience and "Bella Figura" programs, Boston Ballet is closing out its 2010–2011 season with a breath of classical fresh air — or so it would seem.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 26, 2011

The meaning of 'THE'

Boston Ballet's 'Bella Figura'
William Forsythe's 1991 ballet The Second Detail begins with 13 dancers in ice-blue leotards and tights, facing away from the audience.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 09, 2011

Boston Ballet's 'Bella Figura'

Everything is beautiful
"Bella figura" in Italian is more than a phrase — it's a philosophy. It makes life beautiful. "Bella Figura" as the title of Boston Ballet's latest program is an invitation to find beauty in three disparate choreographic styles — one of them incorporating topless women (as well as men).
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 02, 2011

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Boston Ballet

Boston Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Moonstruck
George Balanchine didn’t create a slew of full-length ballets, but it’s easy to see why a setting of Shakespeare’s ever-popular A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of them — and not just because, back home in St. Petersburg, when he was eight, he played a bug in a theater production of the Bard’s moonbeam-muddled comedy.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 25, 2011

Jorma Elo and Anna Sokolow

What's in that box?
In silence a man slowly pushes a large, light-filled box across a dark stage. The box is bigger than an outhouse and smaller than a garage, and the light shows through only one side.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | March 30, 2011

Boston Ballet's Elo Experience

Moon landing
Moon landing
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 28, 2011

Festival Ballet's emotional, sensual Carmen

Gypsy woman
Although the gypsy girl Carmen is most familiar from the 1875 opera of that name by Georges Bizet, local audiences have also become acquainted with the Carmen performed by Festival Ballet, which was commissioned by them and first appreciated in the 2003-04 season.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 25, 2011

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 22, 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

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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

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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