Well, here we are at the close of another glorious and satisfying chapter. Somewhat like the many who are waltzing across Lincoln Center stages this week in their academic regalia, Megan Fairchild is waltzing through her final performances in Coppélia at New York City Ballet as she prepares to go off, most assuredly, to make another mark on the world. There is no doubt that her days ahead will be spectacular. She leaves behind a sparkling ballet career forged from discipline, love, and an abundance of natural talent and grace.

At her penultimate performance on Friday night, Megan was still checking off her ballet bucket list. In a fit of Swanilda-like spunk she commandeered the microphone to make the pre-curtain announcement prohibiting cell phone usage. But this was a performance for which even Megan, herself, could not suppress the audience from sneaking videos and pictures which are now trending.

It was a particularly well-danced and tightly organized performance by the 70+ member cast that included 24 miniature aspiring Megans from the School of American Ballet in pink tulle who ran and bourreed like the wind. They will be the next generation of stars. But it was a star of a generation past who nearly stole the show. Robert La Fosse was deliciously dorky as Dr. Coppélius, the old fuddy-duddy toymaker who mistakenly thought that he had the magical powers to bring his beloved life-sized doll, Coppélia, to life. Megan’s Swanilda stole the doll’s identity and flummoxed La Fosse’s character who hobbled around trying to control the chaos that Swanilda and her friends were sowing. Joseph Gordon was a superb Franz whose romantic desires couldn’t distinguish the fantasy doll from the real girl.

The actual dancing through the night was superb. If Megan found the dancing more difficult than twenty years ago, she certainly didn’t show it. All of that hyper-articulation of the feet and legs was on display. Her arabesques were thrown from a spine that seemed lubricated with the love of dancing. Gordon, too, was in high form and full character. Soloist Sara Adams performed a gorgeous Bells Waltz – nothing showy or ostentatious, just quite beautiful allegro with pristine positions and a natural ease. Mary Thomas MacKinnon was the Dawn that burst forth with the grandest sunshine. Dominka Afanasenkov’s Prayer solo was assured, but her presentation was bland and her increase in mass is still a big negative factor. What made Olivia MacKinnon’s Spinner such a lovely surprise was how she found maturity in her port de bras. She trusted that the correct shapes would be beautiful and avoided flinging the arms too high or too wildly. She also presented a mature sense of calm and confidence that has slowly developed over the years. The Discord and War variations have always seemed to be bottom-shelf Bolshoi-influenced and parade-worthy. Naomi Corti and Jules Mabie managed all the flashy, trumpeting grand allegro with ease, but it was kind of a waste of these two artists.

Our HH Pump Bump Award, swiped from the Oscars, is bestowed upon Megan Fairchild and Robert La Fosse for the rich and memorable performances throughout the years. Although Megan is dashing off to Europe for her next chapter, we’re pretty confident that she is not deserting us—it is but chapter 2 of what will be an epic novel. 

The See the Music session concluded with Maestro Litton telling the audience to enjoy Balanchine’s Diamonds which was the rest of the program. The orchestra then descended back into the pit in their usual musical way. But there was a pause as two of the musicians quickly exited to seats directly behind the pit. Haglund wondered what the heck was going on when he saw those guys strap on humongous axes. All of a sudden the announcer said, Please welcome Mick Jagger and Jimmy Fallon, and the New York City Ballet Orchestra blasted out the guitar riff from (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction as the two dudes casually wandered out from the wing. It was a short musical intro but it was probably strings-payback for that recent night of all-piano music. (Orch. Mgmt. to the bass player: We’re sorry but we’re devoting an entire night to Ligeti, Brahms and Shostakovich and there won’t be much for you to do. How about we make it up to you by letting you blast Mick Jagger onto the stage at the gala? Oh, yeah.)

Jagger and Fallon, the warm-up set for Balanchine’s Diamonds, never waste an audience. They were ready with a gala-sized schtick: Fallon’s almost-better-than-the-real-thing imitation of Jagger’s singing and dancing. Jagger made a pitch for the upcoming 60th Anniversary of Diamonds and Jewels and lauded the company’s dancers. It was all said with great sincerity which makes Haglund think maybe it’s time to let go of that grudge against Jagger for stealing a favorite ballerina off the stage a decade ago.

Diamonds started off grandly with the corps de ballet sweeping through the intro with flawless clarity amid the flashing of the newly bauble-laden costumes possibly inspired by drag queen Trixie Mattel. It’s hard to believe how a costume update could actually interfere with the sparkle of Balanchine’s choreography, but it has. Isabella LaFreniere and Chan Wai Chun were served a glacial tempo for the pas de deux that caused uncharacteristic awkwardness in some of the turns, and added pauses where there should have been none. Isabella, like some of the NYCB ballerinas, has adopted a pedestrian flat-footed walking entrance instead of entering with the formal walk of weight on the balls of the feet and heels ever so slightly lifted. The flatfooted version removes a lot of elegance and formality from the entrance. The Scherzo Allegro Vivo section and the Finale were blessedly brisk and brilliantly danced. Both Isabella and Chan served their variations with the majestic power of a royal couple. 

After discussing Mick Jagger and Balanchine’s Diamonds, it’s hard to argue that the main feature and highlight of the gala performance was something else. But to an extent, it was. Tiler Peck’s second ballet for her home company received its premiere. Symphonie Espagnole, created to the violin concerto of the same name by Edouard Lalo, was an ambitious undertaking — a growing experience and a successful one. Tiler, a musical magician in the ballet world, chose the type of music that her body and spirit crave. Much of Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole begs to be danced. It’s hot, it’s sultry, it’s tender, it’s bold, it’s spicy. The Rondo Allegro is a stirring finale for the violin soloist but it’s not the type of major orchestral finale that brings an entire ballet together with an explosive wow. When Tiler was putting this ballet together, she probably acquired a new appreciation of how Balanchine fiddled with Serenade to make the music + the ballet > than the two individual components. It would have been impractical for her to do any fiddling with Symphonie Espagnole when she had invited one of the great classical fiddlers of our time to perform as the soloist. Tiler filled the stage with 40 dancers whose high energy along with the memorable choreography created lots of wow, but Lalo’s Finale didn’t support it. So, it kind of didn’t reach the level it should have.

What a treat to have Hilary Hahn working from the orchestra pit as guest soloist for the gala and other selected performances. She had never performed this piece although she had prepared it over the years. It would be wonderful to have her back again for Tiler’s next ballet. Hilary has a fiery interpretation of Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 which definitely is structured like a ballet. You know, if we’re not going to get Bruch’s concerto back where we first met it at ABT (which it appears we never will), there is no reason to waste the beautiful music when we have a developing NYCB choreographer who could really do it justice. 

The corps de ballet’s choreography was fantastic throughout the ballet — ambitious, musical, and it challenged the corps to try to dance with the brilliance of Tiler Peck. The end result was quite spectacular. This was the first performance where everyone was having to think a lot resulting in an occasional uncertain moment or two, but wow, what a feast of interesting and articulate phrases. The women who opened the first movement along with Emma Von Enck and Joseph Gordon wore gorgeous burgundy-plum tutus with layered ruffles — Emma’s tutu was bright red — perhaps a faint reference to the ruffles we see in traditional Spanish flamenco dresses. The two principals were tearing up the stage, but honestly, the corps had most of our attention.

The second and third movements, designed for Kloe Walker and Roman Mejia, brought her to the forefront of everyone’s attention and showed a pleasing discipline to his form. Kloe is one of the more unusual talents in the midst of an enormously talented corps de ballet. Her length and narrow lines, clarity of geometric shapes, maximized technique, and natural rapport with the audience make her easy to spot and easy to follow. She looked exquisite in the burning red dress with knee length skirt dancing in front of a corps of women wearing the same dresses in dusty mauve. The choreography given to her revealed a level of accomplishment and mastery that we had not yet seen in the opportunities given to her so far in the company. Roman served up the Spanish spice in response to the Carmenesque 3rd Movement Intermezzo. The corps of eight men who danced authoritatively behind him were the La Mancha saffron to Roman’s smoked picante paprika. We’ll leave it at that.

The 4th movement Andante featured a pas de deux with Mira Nadon and Ryan Tomash who were supplemented by soloists and a should-be-soloist. Mira, in a dress similar to Kloe’s but a deeper cabernet red, was of course lovely and superbly partnered by Ryan although the choreography was not particularly memorable and had a requisite feel to it. This andante dancing came too late structurally in the ballet which was part of the choreographic challenge we mentioned above. 

Let’s just say that Symphonie Espagnole was impressive as a whole. The dancing was magnificent. We are excited to see Tiler’s next piece and hope that she will stay on the same course and not think that she has to be innovative or do something weird. Big ballet, lots of dancers in lovely colors, classical choreography, music with a pow factor — basically a ballet that Tiler would like to be in is all we want. Of all the choreographers that NYCB has brought in, Tiler’s artistic sensibilities most closely align with what the audience is looking for. We salute this latest effort and toss her a spicy H.H. Pump Bump Award, a red ruffled slingback from Louboutin.

From the ring levels in the theater one gets a bird’s eye view of what is happening in the orchestra pit. Sometimes it’s more interesting than what’s on the stage. Take Friday night, for instance. 

Christopher Wheeldon’s Continuum, imported from San Francisco Ballet to the New York City Ballet this season, had its first performance. Fearful that viewers would find it too repetitive of Wheeldon’s other choreography to the same composer, György Ligeti, NYCB marketed it as a continuation or companion piece or chapter 2 of Wheeldon’s creative vision. As they say, marketing isn’t about the products you make; it’s about the stories you tell. Unfortunately, Continuum was the same old multiple instances of twisty, acrobatic, manipulative pas de deux by dancers dressed as cooked green beans with the women squeezed in the middle by belts. The first minute when all eight dancers filed onto the stage had us thinking that maybe there would be some not-seen-before ideas here, but the second minute followed by the next 20 proved us wrong. However, true brilliance was burning in the orchestra pit courtesy of Stephen Gosling and Alan Moverman.

The Ligeti selections chosen by Wheeldon not only required two pianists but required them to be playing the same piano and jumping back and forth between piano and harpsichord. Sometimes the pianists were seated together but at other times Moverman would stand to the side leaning over to hold keys down while Gosling played. And there was the added interest of the constant adjusting of what looked like possibly a super-duper, late model digital metronome. There was as much choreography in the pit as on the stage, and it was far more interesting. 

For the following dance by Lar Lubovitch, Hanna Hyunjung Kim played gorgeous selections from Brahms’ Eight Piano Pieces on stage while Adrian Danchig-Waring and Taylor Stanley flowed through Lubovitch’s organic swirls and dips. Each In Their Own Time is like a freshwater brook babbling through an unspoiled natural setting. 

Distant Cries, a duet by Edwaard Liang, brought us a little more harpsichord music along with a fantastic oboe solo by Julia deRosa. The choreography, executed by Ruby Lister and Chun Wai Chan, was a sustained yawn, but showed a more interesting side of Lister who may have found a niche in the angular, acrobatic, less traditional ballet repertory that was made on Wendy Whelan. However, that doesn’t mean that we want Wendy to plan a vanity schedule of more of these works. 

The program concluded with Hanna Hyunjung Kim’s fingers burning through the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major Op. 102 as we watched the dancers burn through Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH. This piece is nearing twenty years old but seems as fresh, alive, and interesting as it did when it premiered. It’s always a pleasure to hear this music and see this ballet tackled by a new generation of dancers. Delivering a performance on the level of the original interpreters, Joaquin De Luz and Gonzalo Garcia, is a big ask of anyone. Roman Mejia and KJ Takahashi will find their way through this in time. They’ve got the steps. They’ve got the energy. They’re looking for that je ne sais quoi that the two Spanish bros brought to the choreography that made everything look like spontaneous, competitive messing around.

Indiana Woodward as the instigator of the madness was in top form. Adrian Danchig-Waring and Unity Phelan imbued the pas de deux with a genuine warmth. Some of the soloist and corps members were a little dizzied by the details but otherwise did a super job for their first time out.

The programing for Friday was another big miss by NYCB. Trying to forcefeed Continuum and Distant Cries to an audience before getting to Concerto DSCH resulted in box office backfire. There is less and less appetite for the derivative, manipulative pas de deux that some choreographers repeatedly make the centerpieces of their work. We want the authentic Balanchine. A program of Divertimento No 15, Concerto Barocco, and Concerto DSCH would always pack the house. Parceling these out in a way that forces the audience to also accept less palatable programing is a strategy that will result in declining success as ticket prices and their faux fees soar.

The H.H. Pump Bump Award, a Dolce & Gabbana piano stiletto, is bestowed upon Stephen Gosling, Alan Moverman, and Hanna Hyunjung Kim for their dazzling treatments of Ligeti, Brahms, and Shostakovich.

Last evening’s performance was slightly delayed when a very senior balletomane who had been brought to the theater by her son suddenly fell into an unwakeable sleep prompting concern for a medical emergency. It took a half hour for EMS to arrive to assist her after which her son thanked the audience for its patience and reported that his mom would be okay. The audience erupted into cheers and applause. We wish her well and hope to see her back in the theater again. It’s the best kind of son who will escort his elderly mom to the ballet, no doubt about it. 

But Mom was the lucky one. Soon the rest of us started hearing voices.

Ratmansky’s experimental Voices created to the mashing of piano with recorded voices of six accomplished women is torturing us again. Whatever the women say is unintelligible and intentionally obscured by the piano. Solo women dancers take the stage to perform complex combinations of steps requiring great strength and coordination but with little meaning and no musicality. It is just stripped down to the bare steps. Each woman is then ushered off by a group of men. One of the men then performs a line or manége of a classical ballet trick, e.g. double saute basque, coupe jeté entournant, whatever. Of course, the audience automatically applauds the men’s tricks but really doesn’t have much to say about what the women do. OK, we get it. The choreography was, as already suggested, agonizingly arbitrary. Maybe we should say brutalizingly arbitrary. The dancers looked fine and were clearly challenged by the movement. The pianist, Stephen Gosling, seemed happily challenged by the notes he had to play overtop the women’s voices. If management has confidence in this kind of stuff, why not put it last on the program and see if anyone stays. Okay. Next.

In Memory of… was created by Robbins to Alban Berg’s violin concerto which he composed in response to the death of a good friend’s daughter.  Here, Unity Phelan was the daughter who lived within a caring community. She had a love — Adrian Danchig-Waring — who it seemed would be her forever love. Then she died, courtesy of Chun Wai Chan’s dark and dangerous death figure. Then she came back after life with her hair down, of course, and ascended to wherever. The movement throughout was all quite pretty and watchable as most anything that Robbins created is. But the darkness and sadness coming on the heels of the schizo-choreography of Voices made for a long, depressing evening that even the excessive Temu jewelry on the Diamonds costumes couldn’t brighten up.

We realized last night that those new costumes look quite different depending on where one is seated. They are abhorrent from the rings because the lighting detonates the crystals with blinding force. From the orchestra, the costumes look like they have electric blinking mechanisms on them. It all is just so overdone, and it makes us worry terribly what NYCB might do to the Emeralds and Rubies costumes for the upcoming anniversary. Please, someone have the good sense to tone it all down.

Mira Nadon and Peter Walker put on quite the show despite the distracting costumes. The composite length of their limbs is a sight to behold. But more than that, they are convincing as a regal pair, and we would find them convincing as Romeo & Juliet as well. At this point, they’ve had enough coaching on Diamonds; the ballet should be entrusted to them to create their own vibes and nuances. This should become their take on the choreography, not someone else’s stamped mannerisms. Also, I hope that we still have an occasion to see Nadon in both Emeralds and Rubies. It would be a shame if we lost her unique interpretations of those roles to Diamonds.

Walker has gotten stronger with each performance although his turns a la second went a little wonky before he pulled in for a super-clean multiple pirouette. The manége of coupe jete was pretty confident. He finished it as though he had enough gas in the tank to go around again. Nadon’s lovely arching back on the developpe devant was more pronounced than perhaps anyone’s we’ve ever seen, and quite lovely in all respects. 

The demi-couples and corps de ballet were assured. Kloe Walker took an early spill but brushed it off and danced splendidly to the end. Within the corps we noticed Shane Williams’ exquisite arabesque lines on both the left and right. We were happy to see Samuel Melnikov, Spartak Hoxha and Cainan Weber dancing so strongly. While we enjoyed Ruby Lister’s actual movement, her facial expression was one of awkwardly knowing she should smile but not wanting to. The result was a fixed pressed-lip effort. We’re continuing to notice the glamour that infuses Grace Scheffel’s performances and the maturity that is coming into Sarah Harmon’s stage presence.

We’re moving on past this awkward program. There wasn’t enough interest in it to warrant opening the third ring — not even with Diamonds’ new tacky sparkles blinking away. Again, if whoever programed this thinks this was a good selection, try putting Diamonds first on the bill and see how many people stay for the rest of it.

There he stood nearly motionless as the thundering brass of Stravinsky’s final notes of Firebird swirled around him. They were the notes of victory over the evil (albeit totally captivating and adorable) Kastchei and his gang of thugs. There he stood with such obvious emotion in his face on the stage where only days shy of a year earlier he had ruptured his Achilles tendon. Gilbert Bolden III would spend the next year rupturing the common viewpoint that such an injury is necessarily career-ending. This was his moment of victory, too. 

The final tableau of Balanchine’s Firebird is nearly overwhelming. There are no steps, per se. Balanchine chose to step back and allow the powers of Stravinsky’s music and Chagall’s artwork carry this production to its glorious end. It is the stunning work of geniuses who we cannot treasure enough.

Bolden’s personal victory aside, this opening night performance of Firebird saw Isabella LaFreniere take flight with blazing splendor. She brought a balance of power and delicacy to the role with a refined, turbo-charged technique. The theatrical rapport between LaFreniere and Bolden fueled the fantasy of the Firebird story. They believed every word — step — of it, and so did we.

Meaghan Dutton-O’Hara was a lovely Prince’s Bride and showed much more interpretive freedom than previously. Oscar Estep as Kastchei, the Wizard, enjoyed a formidable debut.

Also returning to the stage after a maternity leave was Unity Phelan in Agon. Nerves were evident, understandably. Counts weren’t as tidy as usual. There was a collision during heavy traffic in the back court. It was a rather ambitious ballet to return to after a long absence in which the dancer-body was in upheaval for nine months. It’s okay with us if Unity is a little more chill during this comeback season. But her performance was in no way a disappointment. The entire cast was outstanding. Naomi Corti’s slicing precision and power along with an innate glamour are approaching major ballerina territory. She excels in the black & white canon like Agon but she also has a warm and gracious classical side to her dancing which we hope will be cast more frequently.

Adrian Danchig-Waring and Taylor Stanley were simply superb in this masterpiece. Both were propelled by the same understanding that Balanchine’s steps are enough and there’s no need to layer any interpretation on top of them. Haglund was remembering how Danchig-Waring stressed for so many years on that left outside position of Agon, where Victor Abreu danced last evening, and how he was so intent on expending every ounce of his energy to get everything perfect. It must be the role position, because Abreu now exhibits the same stress. We look forward to watching him develop the quiet exactitude that is so valuable in the black & white ballets. Andres Zuniga, Sara Adams and Mary Thomas MacKinnon rounded out the strong cast.

It’s not just smart, but expected and necessary to open the season with a big Balanchine ballet. There are no more eloquent speakers of his language than the dancers at New York City Ballet. Listen to them speak: the enunciation of a tendu, the distinction within a pas de chat, the emphasis of an arabesque position, the mumbling of batterie. What?! Yes, it’s true. The beats often are not what they should be. That was clear during an otherwise sparkling opening performance of Symphony in C when there was much batterie mumbling until we got to the finale with Mira Nadon from the Second Movement Adagio. Every time Preston Chamblee picked her up in front of him, Nadon made the most of those beats with emphatic crossings of beautifully arched feet. No mumbling there. She made something quite beautiful out of a moment that many just swim through in order to get to the next trick. What a lovely, lovely debut for her and Chamblee who was understandably hyper-concentrating — but he’s got this, and he’s on the road to greatness.

Megan Fairchild and Joseph Gordon flew through the First Movement allegro with the vitality that has marked their long and successful careers. Emma VonEnck and David Gabriel seemingly never tired from all those grand jetés in the Third Movement. Olivia MacKinnon and Jules Mabie brought charm and clear dancing to the Fourth Movement. And what about that corps de ballet! Exceptional job on the first night back.

Throughout the evening, the NYCB Orchestra held nothing back in delivering their world class music to us. Is there any orchestra that brings alive Stravinsky any better? We doubt it.

So, we’re pretty happy with the start of the season. We recognize the many, many dancers on that stage last night — from every rank— who have come back from serious, persistent injury and physical layoffs. That they were able to soar as they did through such important and beautiful choreography is worthy of everyone’s salute. But there is only one H.H. Pump Bump Award. And for this opening night, we bestow this feathered thong sandal upon Gilbert Bolden III and Isabella LaFreniere for their exquisite performance of Firebird.

and we’re off and running in the 2026 tournament of ballet champions.

The universe is sprinkling such good karma all over Haglund. Tomorrow New York City Ballet opens the spring season with a superbly cast program of Balanchine favorites; it’s opening day for pickleball in Central Park where the magnolias are showing off like buffoons; the weather is going to be perfect (50º + sun = 60º court temps); and it’s his birthday!

Haglund has been binge-buying ballet tickets lately. In addition to a gluttonous spring season, the summer ballet picnic will be packed with Onegins, Sylvias, Swans, and those high calorie, brain freezing DQs. When he recently sent through his ’26-’27 NYCB subs online, TD Bank paused his purchase to ask, “Dude, are you sure?!” Of course he’s sure! Moderation is so overrated.

Let’s go, people. Let’s get to the theater!

Earlier this week McHaglund O’Heel wandered over to Carnegie Hall to hang with the famous Irish fiddler Martin Hayes and The Common Ground Ensemble to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Hayes and the Ensemble have a home-away-from-home at the Irish Arts Center in Hell’s Kitchen; so, it was with great pride that the H.K. Irish folks jigged & back-clicked our way en masse over to the great hall for their debut.

Hayes is a specialist in Traditional Irish music. He formed the Common Ground Ensemble “as a collaborative project to facilitate a musical dialogue between Irish traditional music and other traditions, genres, and artistic disciplines.” Their performances include percussive dancing, poetry, and music that utilizes a variety of instruments including the bouzouki, cello, piano, concertina, guitar, harmonium and harp. It’s a very lively group.

Hayes says that Traditional Irish music “is a living, breathing tradition that does not belong to any one era; it lives through renewal.”

It lives through renewal.

No nonsense talk about moving the art form forward to some unknown destination or over a cliff or forcing it to be relevant to whatever a particular generation deems relevant. It lives through renewal. 

So does ballet. Tradition is the future.

The ballerina wasn’t the only one praying during the Mozartiana Preghiera section on Friday the 13th. After what seemed her interminable absence due to a resentful tendon in the foot, we were gratified and relieved to see Devon Teuscher relevé to such a high level of grace in this Balanchine masterpiece. We’ll forgive if she did not have 100% confidence in that foot and was overthinking a little bit. It was a good start back, hopefully a comeback that will not be interrupted again. This was not the promised Theme and Variations that still lives in our dreams, but it was more than sufficient to keep us happy.

Joo Won Ahn also served this ballet and his ballerina well. His beats and turns were crisp and clean, and his eager elegance was just right for role. The steadiness of his partnering was especially important on this evening. He knows this ballerina well and was able to anticipate her needs perhaps even before she did. However, we wish we would see 90° arabesques from him again and more attention to stretching the leg lines in the air.

Jake Roxander’s dancing in the Gigue was superb in all respects. The tempo was sluggish and really did a disservice to the dancer by taking the urgency (and challenge) out of the steps. We’ve seen enough soloist work from this dancer. His choppers are ready for a big steak, and we are counting the hours until his Basilio debut this summer. 

The four women in the Menuet were fine, but not more. The overly long tutus were fussy and, along with the dreadfully slow tempo, diminished the dancing. 

Throughout the ballet the tempi almost made it sound like Tchaikovsky was mocking Mozart. It could have been the background music for a Geritol commercial. While the Preghiera speed was okay, the music never built during sequences where it needed to, such as in the horizontal bourrees. It was terribly lackluster, like it was being performed in a little room for ten people. Honestly, the audience usually cringes at how ABT nearly always constipates the music to Balanchine ballets.

The other complaint, an ongoing gripe, is the horrible black floor which ABT insists on importing into this theater that comes equipped with a beautiful floor cherished by some of the world’s greatest ballet dancers. The scuffed-up black floor under the black tutus and black tights worn by Roxander was unappealing and distracting. The dancers, all dressed in black, actually receded; when the curtain opened, the ballerina appeared to be standing six feet farther upstage than we are accustomed to seeing. Furthermore, this floor amplifies the shoe noise. How could ABT not recognize the disservice that this black floor does to its productions and dancers?

Jiří Kylián’s Nuages performed exquisitely by Hee Seo and Thomas Forster put us on Cloud Nine. Haglund doesn’t remember the ABT premiere of this pas de deux in 2014 by Diana Vishneva and Marcelo Gomes, but imagines that they melted the Marley in those days. Friday night Seo and Forster were beyond sublime. 

Nuages is early-Kylián. We see here the fresh beginnings of his style: the introduction of the dancers with their backs to us, the sudden falls to the knees followed by soaring lifts, the deep bends in the ballerina’s back, the V-shaped arms, the blessed dancing of the same steps by men and women. Kylián uses the floor with Graham accents perhaps more than any other ballet choreographer. His work is the perfect fusion of ballet and modern dance. The lighting design, backdrop and of course the title all depict clouds, but Debussy’s music (Trois Nocturnes) brings to mind La Mer which came some years later and Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune that came a few years before Nuages. It was beautifully interpreted by the ABT Orchestra.

Seo, dancing on the occasion of her 40th birthday, could not have been more lovely. She retains the gorgeous lines and pliable back that have been her calling card for her entire career. Here she launched into the hazardous swoons and knee pirouettes with total confidence, and engaged the music and her partner with a potent reserve that conveyed more than any overtly emotional response could. Forster deserved her confidence. His partnering was magnificent in its strength and ease. His naturally low-key demeanor (although not forgetting how his Stepsister ran those pearls through her teeth a decade ago) was the perfect expressive match with Seo. Both dancers still have much to give.

The program concluded with Ratmansky’s Firebird which seems more a novelty take-off than an interpretation. The choreographer has remade the story into a Buster Keaton comedy where masses of dancers raced around, suddenly paused, raced some more. The cluttering clattering steps didn’t serve Stravinsky’s incredible music at all. It used the music, but it didn’t serve it on this night when it was so gloriously played by the ABT Orchestra.

There was no question that the Firebird came out like a house a’fire hurling lethal battements, nifty slides on pointe, and more nifty slides on pointe. Catherine Hurlin most likely did exactly what Ratmansky wanted at his preferred frenetic pace. She was powerful, aggressive, a veritable fighting Peregrin Falcon in red feathers. Sunmi Park was the long-suffering Maiden. Like Hurlin, she brought major theatrical vitality to her performance along with lovely executed steps. Daniel Camargo as Ivan was a very good sport in all of this. He looked great in the white Elvis suit and was able to pull off the comedy with style and without committing serious exaggeration. The highlight of Firebird, however, was Kaschei performed by Cory Stearns. How many times in this dancer’s career have we seen him in a role that requires him to move with such speed? We’ve spent years watching him mostly decelerate through allegro, and now Ratmansky has him moving like Quicksilver of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. He was the star of this show — the one who created the most interesting, off-the-wall, unpredictable character and actually used physicality to tell the story.

Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, a Moschino floating-cloud stiletto, is bestowed upon Hee Seo and Thomas Forster for their beautiful interpretation of Kylián’s Nuages, a pas de deux which is the perfect gift for these two ABT veterans.

That’s one of the advertising tags for the current run of Arthur Miller’s masterpiece Death of a Salesman, first performed in 1949, which opened in previews on Friday night at the Winter Garden Theater. It stars Nathan Lane, Laurie Metcalf, Christopher Abbott and Ben Ahlers. It is deeply moving theater and devastating even when one knows well the lines that are coming. There’s no way to steel oneself to be numb to great art. It’ll get to you no matter what. Most everyone in the audience knew that the confrontation between Biff and Willy Loman was coming; it had simmered and sparked throughout the play. But when the moment finally arrived, the audience lost its grip on what little collective composure it still had. Miller’s play is a classic. It is the classic. It’s what we need now.

There is no glitz in Death of a Salesman. Just words. Just words so well-crafted and so well-delivered that it makes one wonder why some of the other productions on Broadway that boast themselves as contemporary even bother to turn on their lights. Attention must be paid  to what is good and what is not.

Up the way at Lincoln Center, American Ballet Theatre opened its season over the weekend in performances of  Othello by Lar Lubovitch with a score by Elliot Goldenthal. First performed in 1997, it offers sterile George Tsypin scenery of plexiglass and an ultra shiny and reflective black floor. The costumes by Ann Hould-Ward are more traditional and Shakespearean than the scenery.  But how does this contemporary dance stack up against the classic treatment of Othello by José Limón in The Moor’s Pavane to Henry Purcell’s music, which like Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, was first performed in 1949? As in Miller’s play, one knows the outcome of this story regardless of the storyteller. It is just as hard to watch the violent strangling of Desdemona that is portrayed downstage in Lubovitch’s dance as it is to watch Limón’s murder of her when it is partially eclipsed by Emilia’s dress held wide by both hands to cover the crime. We see Othello’s arms raise and descend with force but we never see him actually strike Desdemona. 

Like Willy Loman’s Studebaker that didn’t measure up to his previously-owned classic Chevy, Lubovitch’s treatment of Othello doesn’t measure up to Limón’s. Nothing could make that more clear than the choice of music. Let’s face it: Elliot Goldenthal simply is not on the same level as Henry Purcell. Goldenthal’s bombastic alerts to something serious coming up were relentless and exhausting cinema background music. On the other hand, Purcell’s stringed arrangements were the tidy, beautiful coverup for the rage and violence of an honor killing.

The two choreographers’ styles have similarities which is understandable considering they crossed paths when Lubovitch was a student at Juilliard while Limón was there as a teacher. However, Limón’s ideas are sometimes too re-worked in Lubovitch’s dance and look like they were used as a template. When Iago looms over Othello from behind in the pas de deux in Lubovitch’s dance, it looks strangely similar to Limón’s. 

The afternoon cast was comprised of superb dancers and actors. Isaac Hernandez as Othello, Skylar Brandt as Desdemona, James Whiteside as Iago, and Devon Teuscher as Emilia performed the steps exceptionally well, but they could not overcome the deficiencies of the staging. It was physical enough; it just wasn’t interesting enough. And unfortunately, the music hampered the production from start to finish.

It certainly is worth asking why this full length dance was scheduled to take up nearly half of all performance dates of ABT’s inaugural spring season at the Koch Theater. Haglund truly wishes he could muster up more enthusiasm for Lubovitch’s Othello.

Arthur Miller said, “The past is holy.” It is, and attention must be paid to it.

A crime has been committed. New York City Ballet has gone full-frontal Trump with its gaudy, hideous re-design of Madame Karinska’s revered costumes for Balanchine’s Diamonds. What a way to destroy a tradition of elegance. Maybe the costume department was inspired by Trump’s decision to re-do the Kennedy Center in his own brand & image in order to put his own ugly mark and name on a treasure.  So now instead of Madame Karinska’s beautiful tutus that are embellished with crystals, we have what seriously look like battery lighted baubles and coins embellished with some tulle along with circus pony headgear. The constant flashing is enough to trigger epileptic seizures. Do you want to know how to give an entire audience a headache? Put a stage full of this vulgar glitz in front of them. Even the women’s gloves, which had been white, now looked like beige bandages. WTF, NYCB?!

And the dancing wasn’t what it should have been either. This corps de ballet was woefully under-rehearsed or maybe their signals just got crossed from all the flash. For most of the season, we’ve been watching Gabriella Domini mess up counts, often when she’s in the front. Nieve Corrigan, after a long stretch of attentive musicality, was back to her disorganized solo-izing self last night. This is Balanchine’s Diamonds — where’s the respect? Why wasn’t Mary Elizabeth Sell anchoring the demis in this corps? 

Mira Nadon and Peter Walker in the leads were superb in spite of the atrocious costumes. But it was hard to watch them. The flash kept obscuring Balanchine’s glorious choreography. Every time Walker turned upstage, we were blinded by the flashing across the back of his shoulders. Here were two extraordinary artists giving a very unique and particularly captivating interpretation of a masterpiece, and it was almost impossible to watch. While mesmerized by Nadon’s sparrow-like limbs and freedom of flight, we soon found ourselves deeply invested in Walker’s psyche as he pursued her. That, and the gorgeous assembly of his long legs in his double tours and his courageous manège.

Guest conductor and former NYCB Orchestra violinist Andrew Grams got it exactly right. We can trust him.

Robbin’s Dances at a Gathering received an average performance. An average performance of this ballet inevitably makes it feel ninety minutes long. The saving graces were Indiana Woodward (in pink), Olivia MacKinnon (in apricot), Anthony Huxley (in brown), and Hanna Hyunjung Kim whose hour long piano solo was as crisp and melodic as we could possibly want. Robbins famously maintained that there was no subtext to his choreography. It was simply people dancing and that whatever they made of it was what it was at the moment. These three artists possessed the imagination and quality of interiority that pulled us into their solitude. Their solos were polished as expected, and their interactions seemed genuine and spontaneous, not choreographed.

Our H.H. Pump Bump Award, from Badgley Mischka, is bestowed upon Indiana Woodward, again, who continues to deepen her artistry in ways we could not have imagined.