Ballet Magazine

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BALLET May 2016

Get an inside look at New York City Ballet 2015-2016 Fall Season

The Bolshoi’s Shining Star

Svetlana Zakharova NEW YORK CITY

DANCE PROJECT PHOTOGRAPHS


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NYC Ballet 2015-16 Season

New York City Dance Project

Dancing Diagrams

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Meet Svetlana Zakharova 3


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ho is Miriam Miller? She became a member of the New York City Ballet corps only in January — so recently, in fact, that her brief biography on the company’s website has no photo attached. This is odd for two reasons. One: From the auditorium of the David H. Koch Theater, where the company finished its six-week winter season on Sunday, she appears to have the perfect, theatrically legible features of a model. Two: It’s been apparent since City Ballet was — and to a large extent remains — the domain of the choreographer George Balanchine (1904-83). Although it’s been correctly said for decades that the company has room for

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leading women of different shapes and sizes, the ballets he created feature a number of high-prestige roles usually reserved for long-limbed, lovely, cool and unknowable apparitions whose dancing is on a naturally Titanic scale. With such women, Balanchine — whose genius had innumerable facets — loved to develop many aspects of his high Olympian strain. Ms Miller has the qualifications: mystery, attack, grandeur, authority and beauty. In June, when she was still an unknown apprentice, she made her debut in one of those roles: Titania in his “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1962). On Friday and Saturday, she gave her first performances in a more exalted part, the


pas de deux of Balanchine’s “Agon” (1957). She wasn’t perfect, but she so naturally embodied the ideal for such prima roles that the question “Who is Miriam Miller?” was much asked over the week Not since Darci Kistler (who arrived in 1980) and Maria Kowroski (who became a corps member in 1994) has a newcomer seemed so tailor-made for the goddess roles. At this stage, Ms Miller has yet to master the elusive momentum for this pas de deux — the sense that each stop is the next start. And, as a friend observed, it looks as if she uses her upper and outer muscles rather than the inner, lower ones, giving a more stressful There’s no knowing what will happen. (In her late teens Ms. Kistler suffered a serious injury that lasted longer than her work with Balanchine had.) But it’s exciting that City Ballet, which has sometimes been too cautious with its youchaes, Throughout its recent six-week season (Jan. 19

through Feb. 28) and the preceding “Nutcracker” season (Nov. 27 through Jan. 3), the company was renewing itself at all levels. What’s more, it isn’t rigid about physical types. The most privileged of the Balanchine ballerina roles is the second movement in Balanchine’s “Symphony in C” (1947); I’m sorry to have missed the debut in this work of the principal Sterling Hyltin, who is so gifted with amplitude that it took me years to realize that she is petite. Another role usually given to tall deities is the ballerina one in “Mozartiana” (1981); Ms. Hyltin’s Saturday performance was a marvel of lucid musicianship, with strokes of wit and delicacy that the part has seldom seen since its originator, Ms. Farrell, danced it.The 13 Balanchine ballets in repertory this winter season In the “Symphony in C” adagio movement at the same matinee on Saturday, Sara Mearns’s authority was extraordinary: this long dance becomes

Schedule SEPTEMBER Swan Lake Four Temperments Serenade

OCTOBER Giselle Cinderella

NOVEMBER Balanchine’s Jewles Stars and Stripes Coppelia Tchaikovsky’s Pas de Deux

DECEMBER Balanchine’s The Nutcracker

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New York City DANCE PROJECT

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MIRIAM MILLER Not since Darci Kistler (who arrived in 1980) and Maria Kowroski (who became a corps member in 1994) has a newcomer seemed so tailor-made for the goddess roles. At this stage, Ms Miller has yet to master the elusive momentum for this pas de deux — the sense that each stop is the next start. And, as a friend observed, it looks as if she uses her upper and outer muscles rather than the inner, lower ones, giving a more

JAMES WHITESIDE Not since Darci Kistler (who arrived in 1980) and Maria Kowroski (who became a corps member in 1994) has a newcomer seemed so tailor-made for the goddess roles. At this stage, Ms Miller has yet to master the elusive momentum for this pas de deux — the sense that each stop is the next start. And, as a friend observed, it looks as if she uses her upper and outer muscles rather than the inner, lower ones, giving a more

TILER PECK Not since Darci Kistler (who arrived in 1980) and Maria Kowroski (who became a corps member in 1994) has a newcomer seemed so tailor-made for the goddess roles. At this stage, Ms Miller has yet to master the elusive momentum for this pas de deux — the sense that each stop is the next start. And, as a friend observed, it looks as if she uses her upper and outer muscles rather than the inner, lower ones, giving a more

LAUREN LOVETTE Not since Darci Kistler (who arrived in 1980) and Maria Kowroski (who became a corps member in 1994) has a newcomer seemed so tailor-made for the goddess roles. At this stage, Ms Miller has yet to master the elusive momentum for this pas de deux — the sense that each stop is the next start. And, as a friend observed, it looks as if she uses her upper and outer muscles rather than the inner, lower ones, giving a more

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Dancing Diagrams A VISUAL BREAKDOWN OF DANCE FUNDAMENTALS

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A B A L L E T E D U C AT I O N

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Svetlana Zakharova W

ho is Miriam Miller? She became a member of the New York City Ballet corps only in January — so recently, in fact, that her brief biography on the company’s website has no photo attached. This is odd for two reasons. One: From the auditorium of the David H. Koch Theater, where the company finished its six-week winter season on Sunday, she appears to have the perfect, theatrically legible features of a model. Two: It’s been apparent since City Ballet was — and to a large extent remains — the domain of the choreographer George Balanchine (1904-83). Although it’s been correctly said for decades that the company has room forFrom the auditorium of the David H. Koch Theater, where the company finished its six-week winter season on Sunday, she appears to have the perfect, theatrically legible features of a model. It’s been apparent sinceFrom the auditorium of the David H. Koch Theater, where the company finished its six-week winter season on Sunday, she appears to have the perfect, theatri-

Who is Miriam Miller? She became a member of the New York City Ballet corps only in January — so recently, in fact, that her brief biography on the company’s website has no photo attached. This is odd for two reasons. One: From the auditorium of the David H. Koch Theater, where the company finished its six-week winter season on Sunday, she appears to have the perfect, theatrically legible features of a model. Two: It’s been City Ballet was — and to a large extent remains — the domain of the choreographer George Balanchine (1904-83). Although it’s been correctly said for decades that the company has room From the auditorium of the David H. Koch Theater, where the company finished its six-week winter season on Sunday, she appears to have the perfect, theatrically legible features of a model. Two: It’s been apparent sinceFrom the auditorium of the David H. Koch Theater, where the company finished its six-week winter season on Sunday, she appears to have the perfect, theatrically legible of a model.City Ballet was — and to a large ex-

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