Larissa Ponomarenko

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end of era with retirement of Boston Ballet dancer Larissa Ponomarenko

Larissa Ponomarenko bows out

The bad news — really bad news — this past week is that principal dancer Larissa Ponomarenko is retiring after 18 years with Boston Ballet. (She will, however, be staying on as a ballet master.)
End of an era
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 27, 2011

next generation of Boston ballet dancers

The BIBC, 'Next Generation,' and more of Boston Ballet's 'Balanchine/Robbins'

It's been a busy week and a half. The first ever Boston International Ballet Competition took place May 12-16 at John Hancock Hall, climaxing with a gala awards ceremony and performance last Monday. On Wednesday, at the Opera House, Boston Ballet present
Ballet notebook
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 21, 2011

Festival Ballet's emotional, sensual Carmen

Although the gypsy girl Carmen is most familiar from the 1875 opera of that name by Georges Bizet, local audiences have also become acquainted with the Carmen performed by Festival Ballet, which was commissioned by them and first appreciated in the 20
Gypsy woman
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 28, 2011

Review: Boston Ballet's The Nutcracker (2010)

When E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote Nutcracker and Mouse King back in 1816, he can hardly have imagined the impact it would have on ballet as we know it.
Old faithful
By JEFFREY GANTZ | December 03, 2010

Second sight

May in Boston has always been Storybook Ballet Month, as Boston Ballet finished off its season with Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty or Don Quixote , something classical and highbrow and reassuring. That, after all, is what Boston audiences want, right?
Boston Ballet reprises Jirí Kylián’s Black & White
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 21, 2010

Here’s looking at you

Set in the usual small village — this one in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe — Coppélia might look like just another pleasant 19th-century ballet about a boy, a girl, and another girl. But appearances can be deceiving — and that’s theme of
Boston Ballet sees into the heart of Coppélia
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 09, 2010

Both ears and the tail for this Carmen

"World Passions," the collection of four works that Boston Ballet opened at the Opera House last night, was more pleasant than passionate until Kathleen Breen Combes sashayed out as the title character in Jorma Elo's Carmen .
Boston Ballet's 'World Passions'
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 30, 2009

No place like home

The first thing audiences see when the curtain goes up on Boston Ballet's Giselle is our heroine's charming Rhineland-village home, a rustic abode that in Peter Farmer's set is framed by birches, a symbol of fidelity.
Boston Ballet's Giselle fits right in
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 09, 2009

Smaller, bigger, better

Is Boston in the midst of a ballet boom? You could certainly believe that if you attended Boston Ballet’s fourth annual season-opening gala last Saturday.
Boston Ballet’s fourth ‘Night of Stars’
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 25, 2009

Setting the Wang on fire

Boston Ballet's 'Ballets Russes'
Boston Ballet's 'Ballets Russes'
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 22, 2009

Slideshow: Ballets Russes at the Wang

Boston Ballet performs "Diaghilev's Ballets Russes Centennial Celebration" at the Wang Theater
Diaghilev's Ballets Russes Centennial Celebration
By PHOENIX WEB STAFF | May 15, 2009

The real deal

Nineteenth-century ballets are not all alike. But Boston Ballet's Sleeping Beauty is the real McCoy.
Boston Ballet's Sleeping Beauty
By BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 01, 2009

Brava Larissa!

The end of an era loomed last night as Boston Ballet opened The Sleeping Beauty — what's likely to be the last story ballet ever to be staged at the Wang Theatre.
Boston Ballet opens The Sleeping Beauty
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 01, 2009

Slideshow: Boston Ballet's Jewels

Photos from George Balanchine's Jewels, performed by the Boston Ballet.
Boston Ballet performs George Balanchine's Jewels .
By ERIC ANTONIOU | February 27, 2009

Crowning glory

In 1967, George Balanchine created Jewels for New York City Ballet, and in short order this evening-length triptych — Emeralds , Rubies , and Diamonds — became the crown jewel of 20th-century dance.
Boston Ballet's Jewels
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 27, 2009

Dance noir

Looking for a spooky Valentine? Try Jirí Kylián's Black and White .
The Czech choreographer/Nederlands Dans Theater director made an evening out of five pieces — No More Play, Petite Mort, Sarabande, Falling Angels, and Sechs Tänze — he'd created between 1986 and 1991.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 13, 2009

Smaller is better

Next fall, Boston Ballet will move all its performing operations to the Opera House from Citi Performing Arts Center's immense and unfriendly Wang Theatre.
Boston Ballet's Nutcracker at the Opera House
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 02, 2008

State of the art

Maybe it’s the economy, but Boston Ballet’s third-annual season-opening gala was a sober evening, without the orchestral overture that graced the first two affairs.
Boston Ballet’s third ‘Night of Stars’
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 17, 2008

Where the chips fell

Dance history reverberated across Boston during the past few weeks, affirming that how we live now owes a lot to how we’ve chosen to remember — and forget.
Marjorie Morgan, Karl Cronin, Lucinda Childs, and Boston Ballet
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 28, 2008

Mastering the masterpieces

It’s not exactly a trip down Memory Lane, but this weekend Boston Ballet is revisiting some pieces and choreographers it hasn’t performed in the Mikko Nissinen era.
Boston Ballet takes on Balanchine, Tudor, and Tharp
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 21, 2008

Big pond, little pond

Swan Lake is ballet’s prima ballerina because, 131 years after its Moscow premiere, it’s still poised on pointe.
Swan Lake in Boston and Providence
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 06, 2008

Theatrics

There’s got to be more to the future than the spectacle of gaudier and gaudier soulless cyberbodies.
Boston Ballet’s ‘Next Generation’
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | March 12, 2008

Quo vadis?

“Next Generation” is the kind of ballet-program title that might have you asking yourself what happened to “This Generation."
Boston Ballet’s ‘Next Generation’
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 10, 2008

At long last love?

Boston Ballet has been playing the Romeo and Juliet dating game for almost 25 years now.
Boston Ballet hitches up with John Cranko’s Romeo & Juliet
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 20, 2008

Mastering the motion

“Masters of Motion” is the kind of catch-all title for a dance bill that encompasses everything and puts you in mind of nothing.
‘Masters of Motion’ in Providence
By JEFFREY GANTZ | February 12, 2008

Twinkle, twinkle

For some 15 years now, Boston Ballet has danced like a major international ballet company, and Mikko Nissinen wants to be sure everybody’s aware of that.
Boston Ballet’s ‘Night of Stars’
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 31, 2008

Moonbeams

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a dizzy dance of a drama, meandering mystifyingly between May Eve and Midsummer Eve under a moon that goes from new to full swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.
Boston Ballet illumines George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 24, 2008

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