Review: NEW YORK CITY BALLET'S COPPÉLIA at Kennedy Center Opera House

New York City Ballet’s annual Kennedy Center run featured few surprises this year, which was both good and bad. On the good side, George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova’s Coppélia, based on Marius Petipa’s staging, featured highly musical and charming performances by NYCB’s dancers. The set is beautiful, featuring impressionistic flowers and giving the village an air both slightly exotic and comforting, and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra performed well, matching the dancers’ vivacity. Disappointingly, the work does not begin to showcase the breadth and richness of what this company can deliver, and DC audiences now have to wait another year or more to see the repertory that they deserve. 

Coppélia, a story ballet, is hardly a major work of Balanchine’s. Known for his plotless ballets, this is the second year out of three that NYCB has presented a story ballet. It’s all lovely to watch, as the dancers move with precision and verve, but I grew bored quickly as the villager dances grew to include soloists and demi-soloists. Jumps were high and expressions were gay, and that was that. 

Megan Fairchild as Swanilda was outstanding, bringing as much range to the role as it could allow. She’s a natural for the role, with petit allegro to die for; she makes cabrioles and brisés look easy. She was funny in the role too, toying with her paramour Frantz to comic effect. 

KJ Takahashi, making his debut as Frantz, has some room to grow into the role, especially in his partnering, but his leaps and tours are formidable. He also demonstrated strong acting ability and comedic timing; I’d love to see him in Susan Stroman’s Double Feature ballet or as a sailor in Fancy Free. 

The performance opened with a curtain speech by NYCB artistic director, Jonathan Stafford, and associate artistic director, Wendy Whelan who noted the choreographers’ journey to the US in search of “artistic freedom.” For a moment, I thought I might hear them speak out against the current presidential administration that is working to influence the art shown at the Kennedy Center while trying to silence critics through lawsuits and misinformation. Instead, the artistic team thanked audiences for supporting NYCB and welcoming the company back to DC. 

These polite words matched the polite program presented, and that was that. 

Runtime: 2 hours, 25 minutes with two intermissions

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