New York City Ballet

Latest Articles

A Beatle gets a ballet

Oceanic love
The synopsis for the new Peter Martins/Paul McCartney ballet Ocean's Kingdom reads like a pastiche of 19th and early-20th-century plots.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | September 27, 2011

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

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

Jerome Robbins's Opus Jazz on PBS
When Jerome Robbins's New York Export: Opus Jazz boogied onto the scene in 1958 then took Europe by storm. Created for Ballets: U.S.A., a company of ballet, modern, and jazz dancers that Robbins had put together for a government-sponsored cultural exchange tour, Opus Jazz was a kind of spinoff from the 1957 hit musical West Side Story , which Robbins directed and choreographed.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | March 17, 2010

New stuff

Pacific Northwest Ballet, Twyla Tharp, and much more in New York
One thing that impressed me was that dance invention seems to be making a comeback as a major challenge for young choreographers after years of being stirred into the multimedia stew.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | January 19, 2010

John Harbison plus 10

Picking from a packed concert schedule
Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | January 05, 2010

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

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

Review: Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center

Tidal wave
Gotham was awash in dance during early January as the annual Dance on Camera Festival coincided with the conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (better known as APAP, the national bookers' convention).
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | January 20, 2009

Adam and Eve

It's boy-meets-girl at New York City Ballet
A day at New York City Ballet that starts with a matinee of Coppélia and ends with a Balanchine evening might seem to offer merely the contrast between classic and modern, old and new.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 13, 2009

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

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

Winged feet

Dance around town
Dance highlights from the fall season.
By DEBRA CASH | September 11, 2008

Prodigies old and new

Tharp’s Rabbit and Rogue at ABT, Ratmansky and Robbins at NYCB
Tharp’s dances almost invariably have a euphoric effect on their first audiences, even when they miss their mark and don’t hold up over the long run.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | June 10, 2008

Russian revel?

Looking ahead to Ballets Russes 2009
The Russians are coming!
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 23, 2008

Mastering the masterpieces

Boston Ballet takes on Balanchine, Tudor, and Tharp
It’s not exactly a trip down Memory Lane, but this weekend Boston Ballet is revisiting some pieces and choreographers it hasn’t performed in the Mikko Nissinen era.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 21, 2008

Decoding Balanchine

Nancy Goldner on Mr. B
Nancy Goldner’s diminutive new book about George Balanchine’s choreography is deceptively readable.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 06, 2008

Oppositions

The Kirov's Balanchine at City Center
The end of a three-week, thousands-of-miles-from-home season is never the right time to assess a dance company.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 30, 2009

Scenes from the city

The Kirov at City Center, plus Jerome Robbins, Stephen Petronio, and Cloud Gate
I missed more things in two and a half days last week than I managed to take in, so whatever I might infer about dance in the New York vortex could have come out a different way if I’d reversed my priorities.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | April 08, 2008

Quo vadis?

Boston Ballet’s ‘Next Generation’
“Next Generation” is the kind of ballet-program title that might have you asking yourself what happened to “This Generation."
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 10, 2008

Moonbeams

Boston Ballet illumines George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a dizzy dance of a drama, meandering mystifyingly between May Eve and Midsummer Eve under a moon that goes from new to full swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 24, 2008

Above the fray

Parsons Dance's musical moves
Modern dance choreographers from Martha Graham onward have sometimes been described as too abstract or inaccessible.
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | January 22, 2008

Holiday favorites

Revive the tradition
For many of us, the holidays would not be the same without the familiar melodies and musical traditions we’ve grown to love.
By EMILY PARKHURST | November 28, 2007

Chris and friends

Wheeldon’s Morphoses at City Center
The hype was huge, but Wheeldon seems to have a modest agenda.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | October 29, 2007

Not quite Nina

Ananiashvili and the State Ballet of Georgia look to find their footing
On hearing the opening notes of the Kronos Quartet composition and seeing the dancers lit in sunny yellow, I feared we were about to be subjected to one of those “up with people” ballets.
By JANINE PARKER | May 07, 2009