Atlanta Ballet: Don Quixote

I mentioned to a friend at work on Wednesday or Thursday how I wasn’t feeling excited about going to the ballet this weekend. It was purely my mood at the time, though, and had more to do with my general lack of interest in anything at all and nothing to do with my expectations. I wasn’t really able to shake that feeling by the time Saturday rolled around and I was worried because Atlanta Ballet tends to program their February show to be more accessible to a non-dance audience. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does generally mean that it will be an evening-length narrative ballet with nothing particularly avant or challenging for the audience. That, of course, means that if I wasn’t able to feel drawn into the work then I’d not be able to fall back on my general interest in the art as an art. Fortunately, just as children often have misgivings about taking a bath and then won’t get out of the tub until the water is cold and their skin has wrinkled, I found myself happily drawn into the show once “Don Quixote” began.
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Atlanta Ballet: Firebird

The evening began with a rather mediocre performance of Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante.” The staging itself, I think, also detracted from the piece: I think that it would have looked better on a smaller stage or, perhaps, keeping the dancers closer to center. As it was, the stage often seemed to swallow the pastel and light-gray dancers. Had it been perfectly staged and performed, though, I’d still have found it dull. Like most people who enjoy ballet, I like a lot of Balanchine’s work but I also dislike a lot of Balanchine’s work. I suspect that there isn’t a perfect overlap between what interests a dancer about his work and what interests the audience and, with a large repertoire developed in near total absence of local competition, the disjunction between the two points of view leaves a lot of opportunity for audience disappointment.
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Atlanta Ballet’s MAYhem: Kissed

Atlanta Ballet’s dancers really rose to all of the challenges of their spring concert, MAYhem: Kissed. A mixed repertoire show, the first two pieces were modern dance followed by some real ballet. It was a good mix of styles and I suspect that anyone who can appreciate dance created in the last 10 years could find something to enjoy in it.

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Atlanta Ballet: MAYhem

What a great night of dance! Any concerns that I harbored going in that Atlanta Ballet would not pull off this concert were, thankfully, unfounded. The performances by the company as a whole and each dancer individually ranged from decent to excellent and every piece was well realized by the dancers on the stage.
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