Far from Home

After Dutch National Ballet’s opening performance at City Center (Nov. 20), its first major New York engagement since the ‘80s. They danced works by Ted Brandsen (director), Wubkje Kuindersma (a young choreographer associated with the company), Alexei Ratmansky, Jerome Robbins, and the company’s eminence grise, the 93-year-old Hans van Manen. I’ll be writing more soon for the Hudson Review. But what stood out to me the most was Olga Smirnova and Jacopo Tissi’s interpretation of Robbins’s “Other Dances,” made for Baryshnikov and Makarova in 1976. The parallels in their situations—two pairs of exiles—are hard to miss. They add to the subtext of this ballet, which changes hue and character with each pair that performs it.