DANCE
WEDNESDAY - SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31 - NOVEMBER 4, 2018
8:00 PM WEDNESDAY - SATURDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY
3:00 PM SUNDAY

Balanchine: The City Center Years
American Ballet Theater / The Joffrey Ballet / The Mariinsky Ballet / Miami City Ballet / New York City Ballet / Paris Opera Ballet / The Royal Ballet / San Francisco Ballet
New York City Center
131 West 55th Street, Midtown, Manhattan

$28-$275
https://www.nycitycenter.org/pdps/2018-2019/Balanchine/

Why do I find this festival paying tribute to the great ballet neoclassicist, in a hall with which he had rich associations, so uninviting?  Is it because I live the City with the ballet company with the strongest Balanchine tradition anywhere (it's participating in this festival), and it programs his work all the time?  Is it because, rather than viewing the agglomeration of different ballet companies on each bill as providing a fascinating opportunity to compare different approaches to the Balanchine style, I find it somewhat bewildering, even off-putting:  an incoherent potpourri?  Or is it just that there's so much else going on this week?  Anyway, people with more sense than me will flock to these shows.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  (Or a brunch.)  Up the block and across the street to Benoit for very good bistro.