Miami City Ballet Dazzles In Final Program

Miami City Ballet saved the best for last, dazzling the audience at West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center last weekend with both classical ballet and a little Broadway in the closing program of the 2012-13 season. Program IV, planned last year before the departure of founding Artistic Director Edward Villella but executed by his successor Lourdes Lopez, began with Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering. Set to a series of 14 mazurkas, waltzes, etudes and a nocturne by Polish Romantic pianist Frederic Chopin, Dances at a Gathering is not so much a programmatic work, but rather a series of joyous vignettes featuring five couples, perhaps at a spring festival. Like Chopin’s music, Robbins’ choreography draws heavily on the distinctive folk dances of Eastern Europe, a nod to classic ballet without the bourgeois pretense…read more