Rachel’s blog @ View Rachel @ Juilliard Dance | Published: November 6, 2018 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus Tributes to historic masterpieces and their creators are a tricky business. In dance, the choreographer and original dancers with whom he or she created the piece are long gone. What has been passed on inevitably undergoes changes from the original, sometimes seismic ones. So rather than catering to nostalgia, the curators of […] Published: August 27, 2015 Category: historyBy Rachel Straus It is a rare teacher who develops a loyal following among ballet and modern dancers, but such was the case with Maggie Black (1930-2015) who died at age 85 in May on Long Island. This fiercely independent ballet teacher’s transformative effect on dancers’ abilities was famously dubbed “Black Magic” by none other […] Published: October 9, 2013 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus Sara Mearns as Odette. Photo by Paul Kolnik. On Sept. 17, New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns entered the pantheon of great interpreters of Swan Lake. Dancing the lyrical Odette (white swan) with elegiac grace, and the sharp Odile (black swan) with erotic hauteur, Mearns almost redeemed […] Published: December 1, 2012 Category: profileBy Rachel Straus Damian Woetzel Not since the defection of Rudolf Nureyev has a ballet dancer moved so rapidly into the sphere where the arts, politics, power, and the media collide. Yet the international visibility of Damian Woetzel, whose Americana-style charisma won him accolades for two decades performing with the New York […] Published: May 17, 2012 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus NEW YORK — New York City Ballet titled its spring gala on May 10 “À la Française, ” and indeed it was, with all of the works having French connections of one sort or another. French composer Marc-André Dalbavie’s Trio No. 1 (2009) was Ballet Master-in-Chief Peter Martins’ choice of score for […] Published: February 28, 2012 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus Seeing “The Matrix” in 1999 made my heart sink. It wasn’t Keanu Reeves’s acting that depressed me; it was the advances in live action animation. In the final battle scene, Reeves and Hugo Weaving engage in mortal combat. With millisecond timing, they evade each other’s rocket-force punches by bending their head to […] Published: October 24, 2011 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus NEW YORK — Suzanne Farrell is hailed for her staging of George Balanchine’s ballets. So it was with great anticipation that the Suzanne Farrell Ballet was greeted at the Joyce Theater on Oct. 20 for its six-day, sold-out run. The company, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, began as a series of […] Published: May 31, 2011 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus NEW YORK – New works by three of the ballet world’s most in-demand choreographers were among the calling cards on American Ballet Theatre’s “From Classics to Premieres” program, May 25 at the Metropolitan Opera House. Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon were represented by world premieres, Benjamin Millepied (a.k.a. Mr. Black Swan) by […] Published: May 10, 2011 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus There is no better way to anoint a rising City Ballet male star than to award him the title role in Balanchine’s “Apollo.” On May 5 corps dancer Chase Finlay hit the big time, receiving curtain calls and roars of applause. The 21-year-old looked like a young Nordic god (much the […] Published: May 9, 2011 Category: reviewBy Rachel Straus NEW YORK — Not a tutu or jewel-encrusted bodice was in sight at New York City Ballet’s opening night, May 3 in the former New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. The dancers wore the minimum — leotard and tights — but delivered the maximum, forming configurations of crystalline complexity as created […] |