Humbled and Overwhelmed

Mearns and Ramasar in the Rondo of Brahms-Schoenberg ABT's Harlequinade, photo @ Marty Sohl Spring ballet season continues in NYC. I was at the first performance of ABT's spring season and reviewed it for bachtrack here . Ratmansky's Harlequinade is a delightful miniature gem but it needs a livelier performances than it received the night I saw it. The mime has grown cartoonish, the corp de ballet dances had the good old ABT sluggishness, and while individually very fine James Whiteside as Harlequin, Isabella Boylston as Colombine, Stella Abrera and Pierrette and Thomas Forster as Pierrot could not bring the commedia dell'arte tale to life the way they had been able to last year. I have never seen the Met so empty and unenthusiastic -- there wasn't a single individual curtain call.

 Tanowitz's Bartok Ballet, photo @ Andrea Mohin This spring season at NYCB truly marks the start of a new era -- Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan are firmly in place as the new artistic directors, and the company looks both more at ease and more disciplined. No more turmoil. First of all, as you all might know, I've been writing more for bachtrack, and so two of the performances I attended this spring at NYCB are at bachtrack. One is the opening night performance of Pictures at an Exhibition / Oltremare / Rodeo . Review can be found here . The other is my review of the Spring Gala which had a Justin Peck premiere (the six minute, pleasant, and forgettable Bright ), a Pam Tanowitz premiere, and the classic Tschaikovsky Suite #3 . Review can be found here . However my review was extensively edited and they took out my favorite line about the disappointing Pam Tanowitz piece, so I'll quote it here: Bartók Ballet  reminded me of why I rarely enjoy Asian fusion restau...

Dialogues des Carmelites, photo @ Ken Howard Poulenc's masterpiece Dialogues des Carmelites only has three performances at the Met this season. Which means ... you should definitely try to catch one of the two remaining performances either in person or in HD, because opera does not get more devastating than this. I went in only having seen the opera on video. Nothing could have prepared me for the impact of seeing it live in person. This is the sort of opera that makes you unable to sleep at night.