The dancing began with women running and diving onto the shoulders of their male partners, folding double in a split second, and being rushed off upside down. This tricky lift recurred from time to time, and it ended the ballet. In recent work, Wheeldon seems to have been preoccupied with inventing ways for women to be hoisted and tied in attractive knots by their partners, but Thirteen Diversions doesn't dwell on these maneuvers. Instead, it behaves like a plotless classical ballet that's been jarred loose from the traditional symmetries and line-ups.
Like Ratmansky, Wheeldon often poses two different choreographic motifs against each other, but instead of looking like two sets of people going about their business, Wheeldon's dualities look like arranged counterpoint. He explores the compositional relationships of small groups, like the two bouncy women in a conversation of mirroring and doubling movements followed by two men having a similar but more aggressive dialogue. There's an elegiac duet and a discordant one. Following the composer's musical indications for each of the 11 variations, Wheeldon ranges through a variety of moods and climates. He draws your attention to the possibilities offered by Britten, but variety and virtuosity are always woven into the bigger choreographic framework. It's the best ballet I've seen him do in years.
Related:
Boston Ballet's Elo Experience, Boston Ballet's 'Bella Figura', Boston Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, More
- Boston Ballet's Elo Experience
Moon landing
- Boston Ballet's 'Bella Figura'
"Bella figura" in Italian is more than a phrase — it's a philosophy. It makes life beautiful. "Bella Figura" as the title of Boston Ballet's latest program is an invitation to find beauty in three disparate choreographic styles — one of them incorporating topless women (as well as men).
- Boston Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
George Balanchine didn’t create a slew of full-length ballets, but it’s easy to see why a setting of Shakespeare’s ever-popular A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of them — and not just because, back home in St. Petersburg, when he was eight, he played a bug in a theater production of the Bard’s moonbeam-muddled comedy.
- The meaning of 'THE'
William Forsythe's 1991 ballet The Second Detail begins with 13 dancers in ice-blue leotards and tights, facing away from the audience.
- Second sight
May in Boston has always been Storybook Ballet Month, as Boston Ballet finished off its season with Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty or Don Quixote , something classical and highbrow and reassuring. That, after all, is what Boston audiences want, right?
- Review: Trajal Harrell's vogue and anti-vogue
Trajal Harrell's 20 Looks or Paris Is Burning at Judson Church (S) is as obscure as its title.
- The Sounds | Something To Die For
The recent news that British electronic act Faithless have called it a day no doubt left dejected ravers reaching for extra MDMA to stave off the tears.
- Jorma Elo and Anna Sokolow
In silence a man slowly pushes a large, light-filled box across a dark stage. The box is bigger than an outhouse and smaller than a garage, and the light shows through only one side.
- Burial | Street Halo and Ego/Mirror
Hyperdub (2011) & Text (2011)
- Review: Boston Ballet's The Nutcracker (2010)
When E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote Nutcracker and Mouse King back in 1816, he can hardly have imagined the impact it would have on ballet as we know it.
- Festival Ballet's emotional, sensual Carmen
Although the gypsy girl Carmen is most familiar from the 1875 opera of that name by Georges Bizet, local audiences have also become acquainted with the Carmen performed by Festival Ballet, which was commissioned by them and first appreciated in the 2003-04 season.
- Less
Topics:
Dance
, Dance, Boston Ballet, Christopher Wheeldon, More
, Dance, Boston Ballet, Christopher Wheeldon, reviews, American Ballet Theatre, boston dance, ABT, Less