What ‘War and Peace’ is to the novel and ‘Hamlet’ is to the theater, Swan Lake’ is to ballet – that is, the name which to many people stands for and sums up an art form. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
I hated Matthew Bourne’s ‘Swan Lake’ when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
Some readers took ‘Heaven’s My Destination’ as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect – they’re all empty. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet’s ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vine, we wake up after the dog days of August with something to look at. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
