Dancers from Miami City Ballet in Agon, which George Balanchine choreographed to a commissioned score by Igor Stravinsky. The New World Symphony and Miami City Ballet presented works by Stravinsky and Debussy (and Balanchine and Robbins) on May 6 and 7.
“The New World Symphony’s artistic director laureate Michael Tilson Thomas returned Saturday night to lead a collaborative Stravinsky program with Miami City Ballet to close the orchestra’s season,” Lawrence Budmen in Sunday’s (5/7) South Florida Classical Review. “With the New World Center seating reconfigured to provide an improvised orchestra pit … the venue’s flexibility was as much on display as the music and dance. The only time the musicians were on stage in normal fashion was for [Stravinsky’s] Concerto in E-flat for chamber orchestra, aka Dumbarton Oaks…. Andrew Grams, former music director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra in Illinois, led the 15 players in a rhythmically crisp performance … Stravinsky and Tilson Thomas has always been a winning combination and it proved potent as ever in a hugely colorful traversal of the 1919 suite from The Firebird…. Dancers from Miami City Ballet took the stage in the program’s second half, spotlighting the work of two of the greatest choreographers of the twentieth century, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Robbins’ setting of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun offered a lyrical interlude … vibrantly danced by Cameron Catazaro and Hannah Fischer … Agon (1957) was the culmination of a long-running partnership between Stravinsky and Balanchine … The program’s pairing of terrific dancing and stylish music making concluded the New World Symphony’s season on a high note.”
