Results tagged “ballet”

The Mariinsky Ballet, the St. Petersburg company formerly known as the Kirov Ballet, brought its charming, old production of Don Quixote to Washington this week. Alexander Gorsky's adaptation of the classic 1869 choreography by Marius Petipa dates back to the first decade of the 20th century, and not much about it has changed since then. Anyone interested in the cutting edge of ballet is unlikely to be much taken with this bit of history, but for the ballet neophyte it would be a grand, agreeable introduction - a light-hearted, at times slapstick ballet in which the only suicide turns out to be fake.

There is some excellent classical music to be heard this week, before the Inauguration Madness shuts down the District of Columbia.

Washingtonians certainly have enough options to take in a performance of Tchaikovsky's evergreen Christmas ballet The Nutcracker this month. Given the choice this weekend, the more traditional extravaganza version offered by the Joffrey Ballet at the Kennedy Center lost out to the Washington Ballet's revival of Septime Webre's re-imagining of The Nutcracker at the Warner Theater.

The legendary Kirov Ballet company is back at the Kennedy Center for a seven-performance engagement of La Bayadère. This 1941 three-act Soviet version of choreographer Marius Petipa's classic ballet was performed flawlessly by the company on opening night Tuesday.