"It seemed as if it would be a relatively ordinary night of repertory on Thursday evening when the New York City Ballet performed at the New York State Theater. Then Kyra Nichols danced onto the stage with Robert La Fosse in Jerome Robbins's
Other Dances, and the night became historic.
"Miss Nichols has grown steadily as a dancer, continuing to develop well past the point at which she became a star. Now she is a world-class ballerina. Her dancing in the Robbins duet was the work of an artist of exceptional authority who knows, nonetheless, how to give just the right edge of careless play to a little nosegay like this.
"Dressed in the dance's rippling tunic, Miss Nichols looked like a piece of heroic antique statuary. Everything was expressed in the long line of her body and in details like the slowed phrasing of a step, or the pull of her arms behind her.
Kyra Nichols and Robert La Fosse
Photos by Martha Swope, 1988
New York Public Library
"The dance seemed to flow out of her. Yet the calmness and security of her dancing had a kind of spiritual maturity that provided a contemplative distance between the ballerina and the ballet, glimpsed in her voluptuously slow turns, a bold, fleeting arabesque or almost kittenish lilting walks. In one of the performance's loveliest moments, she seemed to be briefly lost in a reverie of the passés her leg was lifting through. Mr. La Fosse was no slouch, either, dancing with a focus that clarified and sharpened each detail but made them all part of a weightless flow of movement. And the two were delectable in their last, giddy dance together."
--Jennifer Dunning, New York Times, 1991
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