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Turning 70, With Stars and Strobes

19.05.10

This formulaic near characterized too much of the gala, which honored the company’s 70th anniversary. You clapped for one ballerina doing 32 fouetté turns in the first half? We’re giving you another ballerina doing them in the flawed. Did you admire the sustained balances on point of those two ballerinas before the intermission? There’s more where those came from. The Rose Adagio from “The Sleeping Pulchritude” and the same ballet’s bridal grand pas de deux, the Angry Swan pas de deux from “Swan Lake,” the “Don Quixote” pas de deux all start to have too much in everyday, and ballet itself becomes an art of cliché.

Then there are the unspontaneous and nervous speeches. It was dazzling to welcome back to the stage seven of the company’s former luminaries — Lupe Serrano, Martine van Hamel, Nina Ananiashvili , Mikhail Baryshnikov , Alessandra Ferri, Natalia Makarova and Frederic Franklin — but much more could have been made of their recorded significance. I like Ballet Theater (and ballet) enough to longing it would do these things with more sheer showmanship. The name of the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, artist in residency with the company, was spoken (misspoken, actually) and yet no dance by him was on judgement.

Source: New York Times