Sarah Halzack of the Washington Post enjoyed ABT’s performance of Don Quixote Thursday evening with Gillian Murphy and Marcelo Gomes as leads. Excepts from her review:
- “American Ballet Theatre brought this Marius Petipa work to the Kennedy Center on Thursday and delivered a performance that was consistently fleet and gutsy and, in its best moments, even thrilling.”
- “When Marcelo Gomes first takes the stage as Basilio, it’s not hard to see why Kitri falls for him. He’s effortlessly cool, impossibly handsome, and while he fawns over Kitri, he has a flirtatious streak that keeps her on her toes. Gomes’s dancing was commanding and only seemed to grow more so throughout the production. The takeoff of his jumps demonstrated his raw power. When he landed them without a wobble, you saw his extraordinary sense of control.”
- “His partner, Gillian Murphy, danced the role of Kitri with the crispness of a fall breeze. The pace of the dancing in this work often borders on breakneck, and she stayed on top of it thanks to remarkable economy of movement. Her grand jetes exploded into the air, but they did not hang there, allowing her to speedily attack the next step. Her pointe shoes pierced the floor like darts in a string of pique turns, and that intense precision helped her travel the full length of the stage.”
She also liked Luis Ribagorda and Luciana Paris as the gypsy couple. ABT’s final 2014 Kennedy Center performance will be Sunday, followed by the Met season in New York from May 12-July 5.