Hanna Rubin's blog

Quirky and appealing as Amy Sherman-Palladino’s “Bunheads” can be, the charm flags quickly when she gets too far away from the dance studio. Last night’s winter season premiere spent many long minutes getting Michelle (Sutton Foster) back under the wing of Madame Fanny (Kelly Bishop) and the dancers back in training under Fanny’s eagle eye.

Recitals have their own awkward charm. The littlest dancers always look adorable; the older ones try so earnestly that with every variation’s successful coda the audience breathes a sigh of relief.

 Few dancers have been as popular with audiences as Angel Corella. When he gave his farewell performance with American Ballet Theatre last night, the vast Metropolitan Opera House, rarely full to the rafters, was sold out. Ballet lovers had come from all over to say goodbye.

 In true ballet fashion, “Bunheads” owes a lot to the enduring power of fairy tales. A Broadway princess (Tony Award winner Sutton Foster) wakes up in a town called Paradise (a nice dash of magical thinking there) to find herself in the shelter of a ballet studio run by a fairy godmother—okay, actually godmother-in-law. The princess escapes from a Las Vegas past that separated her from ballet—her first love—to a kingdom of niceness and sincerity.

Tomorrow night, Wendy Whelan will make her debut as a guest artist with the Stephen Petronio Company at New York’s Joyce Theater, dancing the choreographer’s Ethersketch 1. Pointe talked to Petronio about working with the celebrated New York City Ballet principal on the solo.