Michael Popkin

THE NEW YORK STATE THEATER IS ONE BLOCK FROM BROADWAY

Double Feature
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, New York
May 17 and 18, 2008

By Michael Popkin
copyright 2008 Michael Popkin

NYCB is dancing Susan Stroman's Double Feature again this week; they danced it last winter too, along with Peter Martins' Thou Swell and both Christopher Wheeldon's Carousel and An American in Paris.  All of these ballets belong together; their mutual orientation towards Broadway unites them.  It's a City Ballet tradition the company tells us:  Balanchine and Robbins worked there; and anyway it's a natural place to look for venacular material in New York.

THE KIROV DANCES BALANCHINE -- Meanwhile SESAME STREET ZEN at CITY BALLET

Serenade, Rubies, and Ballet Imperial
The Kirov Ballet
New York City Center
New York, New York
April 18 - 20, 2008

Watermill
New York City Ballet
New York State Theater
New York, New York
May 2, 2008

If the Kirov's reduction of its Petipa ballets to one act offerings during the opening week of its New York season showed how such cut-down Petipa could look like Balanchine; the all Balanchine program on the Kirov's final weekend (Serenade, Rubies, and Ballet Imperial) showed something else:  that between the two kinds of work there's a revolution in the way ballets are structured.  The organizing principle for Petipa is the structure of the classical pas de deux - entrance for the couple, variation for each, then recapitulation.  Serenade and Ballet Imperial abandon that principle.