Ratmansky

At City Ballet, a Swan Is Born and a Firebird Flies Into the Sunset

David Bale1 week ago011 mins

“It was pandemonium,” Maria Tallchief wrote in her memoir about her “Firebird” debut, in 1949. “The theater had turned itself into a football stadium, and the audience was in a frenzy.” The only thing that went wrong was that they hadn’t rehearsed the curtain calls. Tallchief was New York City Ballet’s first star, a thrilling…

In Ratmansky’s ‘Paquita,’ Worlds Collide to Make a Ballet Big Bang

David Bale1 month ago012 mins

It’s a test tube ballet: an experiment that at first glance might seem like pining for the past. But while Alexei Ratmansky’s new production of “Paquita” finds its footing from ballets of earlier centuries, it lands in the here and now as a daring proposal about legacy and lineage. What makes classical dancing modern? In…

Alexei Ratmansky’s ‘Paquita’ Is an Echo Chamber of Ballet History

David Bale1 month ago013 mins

New York City Ballet dancers trickled onstage in mismatched sweatshirts, down vests, practice tutus and leg warmers at the start of a rehearsal for Alexei Ratmansky’s “Paquita.” They disappeared, then reappeared in sleek leotards and tights, crisscrossing the stage to mazurka-like music. Soon the whole coalesced in a great diagonal stretching downstage to upstage, headed…