It’s good that “Serenade” will be repeated during the season: It’s a tool to help dancers grow back into their ballet bodies, to gain the stamina to be able to fly through it with footwork more gossamer than athletic, and bodies that can bend and swoon like slender reeds. This “Serenade” — with Sterling Hyltin, Ashley Bouder and Megan LeCrone as its female leads — improved as it went along, but at times the dancing lagged in speed, in crispness and in daring. Adrian Danchig-Waring, in a debut, was a bright spot in a performance that, at best, was efficient and enthusiastic; lively, for sure, yet never as alive as it could be. Unfortunately, the other Balanchine ballet on the program, “Symphony in C,” will not be repeated: It was programmed as a special opening-night event, which — when you consider the rehearsals that went into it and the stamina it could generate — is a little puzzling. Megan Fairchild, who remarkably, not so long ago gave birth to twins, led in the first movement with a vibrancy that Joseph Gordon (and his dazzling pirouettes) seemed to feed on as he embellished his own performance with even more verve.

Source: New York Times September 22, 2021 16:52 UTC