Rachel Straus - Dance Writer

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Juilliard Dance

 
Published: December 17, 2013
Category: review

A Shot of Adrenalin for the Vienna Staatsballett

By Rachel Straus

VIENNA—The former Paris Opera Ballet Étoile Manuel Legris took the reigns of the Vienna Staatsballett in 2010, infusing a company that had developed a reputation for being a ballet museum with a shot of 21st-century dancing adrenalin. Legris’s modernizing hasn’t bruised his financial support: the Staatsoper budget for opera and ballet is […]

Published: October 9, 2013
Category: review

An Odette for the Ages

By 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 Peter […]

Published: August 3, 2012
Category: history

Royal Winnipeg Ballet at Jacob's Pillow

By Rachel Straus

Like the history of Jacob’s Pillow, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s evolution reads like a pioneer’s tale. Becket, Massachusetts and Winnipeg, Canada are not obvious places to build internationally hailed dance institutions. Yet in 1939, Gweneth Lloyd and her former pupil Betty Farrally formed the Winnipeg Ballet Club. A few years earlier, Ted […]

Published: April 21, 2011
Category: review

'Swan Lake,' the Real Thing

By Rachel Straus

NEW YORK– “Swan Lake” may be the hardest work in the classical repertoire to do well. First, the plot is perhaps the best known in the canon (undoubtedly one reason “Black Swan” has done so well at the box office). Second, any ballet company worth its salt performs it – or tries […]