Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

I tend not to like narrative ballets (especially full-length narratives) because I find there's not enough dancing. Sure, there's usually a nice pas de deux, but usually it's just a lot of graceful gesturing. So I was pleasantly surprised that Peter Martins 's take on The Sleeping Beauty includes quite a bit of dancing, much more than I expected. I guess that when the main plot points of a story revolve around parties and dreamy visions, there's plenty of opportunities for divertissements and fantasy dances. The libretto (by Marius Petipa and A. Vsevolozhsky )for this version hews pretty closely to what most people know (likely from the Disney animated film). We begin at the palace where the king ( Andrew Scordato ) and queen ( Gretchen Smith ) are celebrating the arrival of their daughter, Princess Aurora. The Catalabutte ( Sean Suozzi ) and his lackey ( Giovanni Villalobos ) provide a welcome amount of humor. Soon, various fairies are bestowing blessings up...

New York City Ballet is back in full swing. For the first of my five ballet outings this spring, I got to see four ballets, three of which I hadn't seen in at least two years. We began with Bournonville Divertissements , which was paired with La Sylphide last spring . These are selections from August Bournonville 's repertoire, and feature music by Holger Simon Paulli and Edvard Helsted. (Based on Bournonville's choreography, Bournonville Divertissements was originally stage by Stanley Williams; it was later staged for NYCB by Nilas Martins.) As divertissements should be, all four movements are presentational, mostly meant to be pretty and pleasant and fun. The first movement is "Ballabile," led by Erica Periera and Troy Schumacher , and it's the most presentational of all. From my view, it actually looked a little sloppy, and like the men were having trouble partnering with the women. Of course, that's part of the choreography (all I had to do ...