#City Ballet

[fayriequeene]

[pinkfairies]

♡ @pinkfairies

[dance-world]

Jovani Furlan Junior, New York City Ballet - photo by Trey McIntyre

[typo1]

New York City Ballet - A Midsummer Nights Dream 1966

[srldesigns6277]

Harry truly has fabulous legs.

[lovelyballetandmore]

Shadian Aquia | Greg Trechel | Glenn Moretti | Mario Elefante | Miami City Ballet School

[balanchine-ballet-master]

Francisco Moncion as Coffee, Tanaquil Le Clercq as Dew Drop, and Maria Tallchief as the Sugar Plum Fairy, City Center, 1954. Balanchine's original Coffee variation was for a man.

Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt

[silkjade]

jadetham⋆.༦࿑ོ⁺ museum coworkers au — moodboard (2/?)

spending the holidays alone in the city with only your coworker, who also happens to be your ex, as company

coming out of the opera building after a night at the ballet. christmas bells are ringing in the streets, and the first snow of the season lands a crown of snowflakes in your hair. your laughs are brighter than the stars above, who twinkle as they ponder over how you two could’ve ever fallen out of love

[israelcastillophoto]

How would you caption this shot?

Israel Castillo Photography

Instagram

[pinkfairies]

♡ @pinkfairies

[dance-world]

Jovani Furlan Junior, New York City Ballet - photo by Trey McIntyre

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm still thinking about it, so---if you're a local, I highly encourage Rough House Theater's "House of the Exquisite Corpse". It's lovely, arresting, from the performances down to the smallest touches. I still can't get over the ripped umbrellas hanging upside down in dreamlike suspension from the ceiling; the way each "station" is wrapped in plywood and decorated in its own meaningful pattern and design.

But first, let me step back. "House of the Exquisite Corpse" takes its name from the old Surrealist parlor game, at the heart of which is the idea that you can collect a disparate group, then smash their ideas together and create something from the smithereens. This is something like what Rough House has done, which is pick a theme ("Superstition") and then let the artistic groups loose to create short scenes built around that theme.

(I want to call them tableaux, because watching the performances I was struck by how it felt like something out of time---as though we were 17th century courtiers in Paris ushered into a candlelit ballroom, or early 20th century farmers in Minnesota, paying our penny to see what the circus brought to town.)

The set-up itself does a wonderful job ushering you into a time-outside-of-time---you step into a space divided from the rest of the space by black sheets, chunky headsets dangling from wooden ladders suspended just over your head. The emcee is carrying a clipboard and speaks into an old-school broadcasting mic---which you can only hear if you're wearing the headsets.

It is, you'll discover, the central conceit of the performance. From there, you're directed from station to station by silent ushers, carrying flashlights so they can point you forward. Unless you are wearing the headphones at each station, you can only listen to the absent, ambient music echoing around the room.

Not only are the stations set up to wrap you in a specific soundscape, but they play with your vision too---most stations have you peer through holes or cracks in the wall, though one station had us line up in front of mirrors and watch the reflection of the performance, while another station placed shards of glass at every peephole, so you watched the scene and the character's experience of the scene in a strange double-vision. A couple of the stations used tricks of the light---strobe effects that made the puppets' movements seem even more uncanny or imply violence; a haze of smoke or fabric to disguise the human "prowling" in the puppet-shape of a tiger.

(I always like when I can tell an artist is reacting to something I've seen before, and the Rousseau "The Dream" vibes in that scene were exquisite.)

I will say that “A White Bird in the House is an Omen of Death” was my favorite, not in the least because it featured a whole choreographed song (feat. a lovely articulated owl puppet, plus some very effective shadowplay work). However, “Through the Looking Glass” was beautifully up my alley, from the unique staging---this was the station where you watched the performance in a mirror---to the creative puppetry, and a meditation on loveliness that had some bite to it. “Broken Mirror” was more traditional in its puppet work, but it also had the most elaborate staging, a fully-realized world in miniature.

I keep going back to how enormously creative so many of these artists were, in ways I simply can't ignore. “Step on a Crack” didn't necessarily work for me, but I can't stop thinking about it---its trippy setup, the inhuman knit masks the creator used; the spines dangling, neon-colored, from the nearest tree as the protagonist recited lines about loving his mother with increasing, feverish and horrible energy. The glimpses I got during “An ill fate befalls those who pluck from fruit in their dreams” of the puppeteer's face---how she shut her eyes and turned away, as though she too was affected by the puppet's horror.

[papes-and-capes]

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

[diamondsandcigarette01]

nyc nutcracker costumes 2006

[lovelyballetandmore]

Tyler Piwowarczyk | Twin Cities Ballet

[ninadaily]

NINA DOBREV attending NEW YORK CITY BALLET FALL FASHION GALA 2024 in NEW YORK, USA on 09TH OCTOBER 2024.