David Mead
New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has announced six days of online streaming devoted to dance. Featuring Ballet Hispánico, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The School of American Ballet, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, it’s a week that combines works from the recent past with broadcasts that have not been seen in decades including landmark New York City Ballet works by George Balanchine with some dancers in the roles that Balanchine created for them.
The streamings can be watched at LincolnCenter.org and on Lincoln Center’s Facebook page.
The films will be available for different periods following their premiere dates. Check the listings below for each one.
Ballet Hispánico in CARMEN.maquia and Club Havana
From Saturday, May 30, 2020 at 7pm (UK), and indefinitely
A 2015 Lincoln Center at the Movies presnetation, Ballet Hispánico will whisk us away to the hot spots in a showcase of Latin-inspired contemporary dance. In Club Havana, the intoxicating rhythms of the conga, rumba, mambo, and cha cha are brought to life by choreographer Pedro Ruiz, himself a native of Cuba. Gustavo Ramírez Sansano’s CARMEN.maquia is a Picasso-inspired, contemporary take on Bizet’s classic opera about a passionate gypsy that fuses contemporary dance with nods to the Spanish paso doble and flamenco.
Photo courtesy Lincoln Center
New York City Ballet in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
From Sunday May 31, 2020 at 1am (UK) for 45 days
The end of May A Midsummer Night’s Dream is as traditional in New York as is The Nutcracker at Christmas. This 1986 Live From Lincoln Center broadcast features Maria Calegari (Titania), Ib Andersen (Oberon), and Jean-Pierre Frohlich (Puck).
American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House
From Monday, June 1, 2020 at 1am (UK) (availability tbc)
This 1978 Live From Lincoln Center broadcast features an evening of mixed repertory including the Act III Grand Pas de Deux from Don Quixote with Natalia Makarova and Fernando Bujones; Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides, with Rebecca Wright, Marianna Tcherkassky and Ivan Nagy leading the cast; and George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations led by Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov. It’s rounded off by Fokine’s Firebird with Cynthia Gregory (The Firebird), John Meehan (Tsarevitch), Leslie Browne, (Tsarevna) and Marcos Paredes (Immortal Kostchei).
Photo Paul Kolnik
The School of American Ballet Virtual Workshop Performance Celebration
From Monday, June 1, 2020 at midnight (UK) for 4 days
The School of American Ballet premieres recent outstanding highlights of the School’s annual Workshop Performances at Lincoln Center’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater, with commentary and insight from the School’s artistic leaders, Jonathan Stafford and Kay Mazzo, alumni Justin Peck and Maria Kowroski, and SAB’s senior faculty member Suki Schorer. This special event also includes the announcement of the 2020 Mae L. Wien Awards for Outstanding Promise, a distinction awarded to three senior students who show significant potential for high professional achievement. Past performances to be screened in their entirety include Justin Peck’s In Creases and Jerome Robbins’s Circus Polka (both 2018), the pas de deux from George Balanchine’s Agon (2019), and his Scotch Symphony (2017).
New York City Ballet in Coppélia
From Wednesday, June 3, 2020 at 1am (UK) for 45 days
George Balanchine choreographed his version of the 19th-century comic ballet with ballerina Alexandra Danilova in 1974. This 1978 Live From Lincoln Center rebroadcast features the ballet’s original leading dancers, Patricia McBride, Helgi Tomasson, and Shaun O’Brien.
New York City Ballet: Tribute to Balanchine
From Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 1am (UK) for 45 days
After George Balanchine’s death on April 30, 1983, the New York City Ballet honored its founding genius in a tribute performance to the legendary choreographer, who co-founded NYCB in 1948 and created more than 120 works for his company. In this 1983 Live From Lincoln Center rebroadcast, the company presents three of these ballets: Vienna Waltzes to music by Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehar, and Richard Strauss, with Kyra Nichols and Sean Lavery, Heather Watts and Helgi Tomasson, Elyse Borne and Bart Cook, Karin von Aroldingen and Peter Martins, and Suzanne Farrell and Adam Lüders; Mozartiana to music by Tchaikovsky with Suzanne Farrell, Victor Castelli, and Ib Andersen; and Who Cares?, to music by George Gershwin as adapted and orchestrated by Hershy Kay, with Lourdes Lopez, Patricia McBride, Heather Watts, and Sean Lavery.
Photo by Gert Krautbauer
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Chroma, Grace, Takademe, Revelations
From Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 1am (UK), and indefinitely
This 2015 Lincoln Center at the Movies film includes Wayne McGregor’s sumptuous Chroma, with orchestrations of songs by The White Stripes; Ronald K. Brown’s Grace, a powerful meeting of modern and West African dance to music by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis, and Fela Kuti; and Robert Battle’s humorous, high-flying Takademe, before concluding with the iconic masterpiece that is Alvin Ailey’s Revelations.
Lincoln Center at Home’s Dance Week will also include special themed Pop-Up Classrooms, the schedule still to be announced.
Lincoln Center are also making available some of its most loved Broadway productions for free with Broadway Fridays, beginning on Friday, June 5, 2020 with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel with the New York Philharmonic.
Visit LincolnCenter.org for more details.