Ballet madness!

Today's New York City Ballet performance kicks off two months of ballet mania on my calendar: there are several very interesting rep programs in New York City Ballet's spring season through June, including ballets like Divertimento No. 15, the return of Christopher Wheeldon's full After the Rain (only the pas de deux has been seen of late), revivals of Balanchine's Scotch Symphony and Liebeslieder Walzer, plus Robbins ballets like The Concert and The Four Seasons.

Then, American Ballet Theatre's spring season begins at the Metropolitan Opera House in mid-May and runs through early July. I plan to catch at least a few of performances there, including Natalia Osipova's Giselle and La Sylphide (the week of June 13-20 will be very Osipova heavy, with her New York debut in Giselle, a Sylphide in the middle of the week, then a Corsaire with her home company in Washington DC to cap it off - more on that below). Veronika Part's much vaunted Swan Lake is also a big attraction for me, as is Nina Ananiashvili's farewell performance on June 27. The season rounds off with Frederick Ashton's Sylvia and Kenneth MacMillan's staging of Romeo and Juliet (I might want to see Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg in the title roles).

Out of town, Boston Ballet is remounting the Ninette de Valois' old but very good staging of The Sleeping Beauty through this coming weekend; it will be worth checking out just to see this beautiful staging that normally performed only by the Royal Ballet - and in my opinion its really the best way to do Sleeping Beauty.

During the second weekend of May, I am flying out to see San Francisco Ballet perform Jewels and also see the company bid farewell to the its much loved ballerina Tina LeBlanc, in her farewell performance.

Then, in mid-June, I travel to Washington DC for the Kennedy Center's double header of the Bolshoi Ballet - performing an over-the-top grand reconstruction of Le Corsaire - and The Royal Ballet - who will performing an intriguing mixed bill of short ballets by Frederick Ashton, Christopher Wheeldon and Wayne McGregor. (The Royal also performs Manon later in its run, but I do not really need to see another Manon in the near future…)

Whee!

(Above: Pascal Molat of San Francisco Ballet, in Jerome Robbins' The Concert. This ballet will be performed by New York City Ballet in May as part of its spring season. Photo by Erik Tomasson.)