Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Sterling Hyltin

When she retires next week, part of me likes to think she’s not really retiring. She’s just decided to stay in the Land of Sweets.

Concerto DSCH received a raucous reception during curtain calls. It’s a classic closer for an evening in that it sends everyone home happy. It doesn’t below as the middle ballet. Programming gods at NYCB, are you listening?

 The melancholy ending was a fitting farewell between ballerina and ballet. The heartmelting, beautiful Duo Concertant alone was worth the entire price of admission.

The fall season opens with three Balanchine ballets and what felt like a gesture of thanks to a trio of ballerinas for their many years of service to the company.

A Greek-themed triple bill is presented with mixed success, although Agon still stands up well, with Unity Phelan making her debut in the central pas de deux.

Sterling Hyltin and Adrian Danchig-Waring are exquisitely self-absorbed in Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun.

Gonzalo Garcia bows out from NYCB with a ridiculously ambitious program of Robbins, Peck and Balanchine.

A trio of audience-pleasing Balanchine ballets as a blizzard blows through New York City...

A matinee performance that was bright and polished across the board, boding well for the company's future. 

NYCB has always had a mission to present new works and Saturday's program included Amaria, a creation by Mauro Bigonzetti for retiring ballerina Maria Kowroski.

To celebrate its return to the theatre after lockdown, New York City Ballet pulled out all the stops with a triple bill of Balanchine's Serenade and Symphony in C and Wheeldon's After the Rain. The house went wild. 

Judging by the enthusiastic audience reactions to this program one might have to rethink the modern/ballet divide. Maybe there’s only two types of dance – good dance and bad dance. 

Disappointing new creations in NYCB's Fall Fashion Gala, leaving Balanchine's Symphony in C as a surefire closer. 

Union Jack isn't a Balanchine masterpiece – it's more of a fun-sterpiece, which is even better.

Ballets live and die by their scores – as Balanchine knew when he kept returning to Stravinsky. His Symphony in Three Movements will live forever, as will Justin Peck's The Times are Racing, to Dan Deacon's America.

Maria Kowroski and Tyler Angle at the top of their game in Diamonds. A smoking performance from Sara Mearns in Slaughter on 10th Avenue. Strong debuts from Emma Von Enck and Taylor Stanley and a memorable classical turn by Aaron Sanz in the Barber.

An all-Balanchine program that is remarkably energetic and free at New York City Ballet

When de Luz reached down and laid his hand on the floor in the final Nocturne, it suggested to me that, on this night and with these dancers, the stage was sacred ground.

Judging by this show, New York City Ballet is doing fine in the aftermath of Peter Martins’s departure.

When you add it all up, this was a perfect closing show. It wasn’t without flaws but they were minor and the good far outweighed the bad.

Sterling Hyltin owns The Concert and seems to be having the best time of anybody onstage.

For that special evening out during the holiday season, you can’t go wrong with New York City Ballet’s warhorse version of The Nutcracker.

As the season closer, you want something like this that lets everyone have some fun.

Sterling Hyltin rendered the sylph so enchantingly that I can’t imagine who could dance it better.

NYC Ballet's fashion-forward program of five new works helps to keep things interesting.

The double bill of Liebeslieder Walzer and Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3 is a cloying juxtaposition that serves neither well at New York City Ballet. A handful of fascinating performances rescue the evening. 

How lucky I am to live in a city where I can head over to Lincoln Center and catch an entire evening’s worth of Balanchine ballets, performed by the stellar artists that make up New York City Ballet. This gift is not lost on me; I may be becoming a jaded New Yorker, occasionally cynical and impressed by little, but I feel quite a thrill attending the ballet.

Who was George Balanchine’s greatest muse? If her name is on the tip of your tongue, and you think that she must be a famous ballerina, think again. From their first collaboration in early in the 1920s, composer Igor Stravinsky inspired and challenged Balanchine with his music, starting in France and then expanding into different countries.