This Week in Ballet: The Washington Ballet Performs Giselle

Julie Kent makes her mark on The Washington Ballet’s Giselle, and more.

• The Washington Ballet performs 
  Giselle, March 1–5. Though it’s not a premiere, former American Ballet Theatre star Julie Kent now helms the company, and Giselle was one of her signature roles with ABT. It’s her first season as artistic director, and she’ll be staging the ballet with her husband Victor Barbee. Check out some behind the scenes footage of Kent coaching TWB dancers, like the princely Brooklyn Mack:

• 
  Reset—a French documentary film that follows former Paris Opéra Ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied during the creation of his ballet Clear, Loud, Bright, Forward—will be available for streaming on Sundance Now, starting March 2. You’ll see the mind-boggling efforts required from an artistic director/choreographer, and the equally stunning beauty of the POB dancers.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gSdIg7SMI_o

• Sergei Polunin
  , whose foray into film seems to be evolving into a serious second career, joins the cast of Ralph Fiennes’ Nureyev biopic, titled White Crow. Though Russian dancer Oleg Ivenko will play the lead, opposite Blue is the Warmest Color‘s Adele Exarchopoulos, Polunin is officially listed as a member of the cast. Recently, he’s been working on Red Sparrow, a major Hollywood film billed as a spy thriller. We don’t have many details, but we’re looking forward to the first teasers from both of these films!

• New York Theatre Ballet
  performs Vaslav Nijinsky’s L’Après-midi d’un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun), March 1–4. The rarely performed ballet was created for Ballets Russes and was hugely controversial when it premiered in 1912, and over 100 years later it’s as intriguing as ever. New York Theatre Ballet has been working with stager Ann Hutchinson Guest, whose dance notation research made possible the reconstruction of the ballet. The program also includes Frederick Ashton’s La Chatte metamorphosée en femme, Antonia Franceschi’s She Holds Out Her Hand, and world premieres by Pam Tanowitz and NYTB company member Steven Melendez.

Nureyev as the Faun

• The University of Utah announced that, starting with the 2017–2018 school year, it will be offering an MFA in ballet, the only school in the U.S. to do so. The program will provide coursework in pedagogy, choreography and dance theory both in the classroom and onstage. Students will also undertake a self-designed thesis project as a culmination of their work. For more information, click here.