Larissa Ponomarenko

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end of era with retirement of Boston Ballet dancer Larissa Ponomarenko

Larissa Ponomarenko bows out

End of an era
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.)
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 26, 2011

next generation of Boston ballet dancers

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

Ballet notebook
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 presented its second annual "Next Generation" performance.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 26, 2011

Festival Ballet's emotional, sensual Carmen

Gypsy woman
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 2003-04 season.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | January 25, 2011

Review: Boston Ballet's The Nutcracker (2010)

Old faithful
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | November 30, 2010

Second sight

Boston Ballet reprises Jiří Kylián’s Black & White
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?
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 28, 2010

Here’s looking at you

Boston Ballet sees into the heart of Coppélia
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 this work, whose title character is a life-size mechanical doll.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 30, 2010

Both ears and the tail for this Carmen

Boston Ballet's 'World Passions'
"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 .
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 28, 2009

No place like home

Boston Ballet's Giselle fits right in
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 07, 2009

Smaller, bigger, better

Boston Ballet’s fourth ‘Night of Stars’
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | September 22, 2009

Setting the Wang on fire

Boston Ballet's 'Ballets Russes'
Burning down the house” is a metaphor, but at the Wang Theatre last weekend, the Boston Fire Department was on hand to ensure that it remained one.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 20, 2009

Slideshow: Ballets Russes at the Wang

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

The real deal

Boston Ballet's Sleeping Beauty
Nineteenth-century ballets are not all alike. But Boston Ballet's Sleeping Beauty is the real McCoy.
By BY MARCIA B. SIEGEL | April 29, 2009

Brava Larissa!

Boston Ballet opens The Sleeping Beauty
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | April 29, 2009

Slideshow: Boston Ballet's Jewels

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

Crowning glory

Boston Ballet's Jewels at the Wang Theatre.
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | March 04, 2009

Review: Jiří Kylián's Black and White at Boston Ballet

Dance noir
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 19, 2009

Smaller is better

Boston Ballet's Nutcracker at the Opera House
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.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 05, 2008

State of the art

Boston Ballet’s third ‘Night of Stars’
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | October 17, 2008

Where the chips fell

Marjorie Morgan, Karl Cronin, Lucinda Childs, and Boston Ballet
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.
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 28, 2008

Mastering the masterpieces

Boston Ballet takes on Balanchine, Tudor, and Tharp
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 21, 2008

Big pond, little pond

Swan Lake in Boston and Providence
Swan Lake is ballet’s prima ballerina because, 131 years after its Moscow premiere, it’s still poised on pointe.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 07, 2008

Theatrics

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

Quo vadis?

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

At long last love?

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

Mastering the motion

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

Twinkle, twinkle

Boston Ballet’s ‘Night of Stars’
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 31, 2008

Moonbeams

Boston Ballet illumines George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
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.
By JEFFREY GANTZ | January 24, 2008