NYCB Vol. 15 No. 2 - Ballo Della Regina

Merrill Ashley in Ballo della Regina. Photo by Martha Swope.

“There was George Balanchine’s Ballo Della Regina, a 1978 work set to excerpts from Verdi’s “Don Carlos.” A multifaceted tour de force, Ballo is one of MR. Balanchine’s airiest ballets, danced as it is before a drop that suggests a sky swept nearly clear of clouds, its girls in rippling azure chiffon, their torsos pulled up and arms open. With its sudden bursts of liberating jumps and runs, pyrotechnical fidgets and sudden, courtly arrangements of bodies, Ballo spills over with contrasts in a seamless whole. It is both fun, with its phalanxes of prancing corps girls, and a technical exercise. Feet nip through impossible-seeming batteries, flurries traveling steps and dizzying reversals, with one solo for the ballerina a near trial by pirouette, incorporating some of the oddest and most exciting of turns. 

Merrill Ashley in Ballo della Regina. Photo by Martha Swope.

“The ballet’s original cast of principals and soloists was in fine form Friday. Ballo displays Merrill Ashley at her best, with her precise, stiletto footwork and a technical strength that here transforms off-balance complexities into delicate stylizations. She is most regal, too, rising serenely above an excessive supported broken extension before the final defilé.”

—Jennifer Dunning, New York Times, 1980