Mira Nadon's Dazzle and a Farewell: What NYCB's Fall Season Delivered

New York City Ballet closed its fall season on Sunday with a farewell performance for longtime principal dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring — and, according to New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas, it was a dazzling one.

The season's story, in Kourlas's telling, runs through two dancers: Nadon, a ballerina she calls possibly "the least divisive person in a fractured world," and Danchig-Waring, whose retirement marked the end of an era for the company.

Who is Mira Nadon, and why does the critic single her out?

Kourlas's praise is specific. Nadon's dancing, she writes, holds "the lost art of atmosphere," and in her work "a beating heart underneath ballet's precise, pristine surface" becomes visible. That's a big claim, and the critic builds the case through concrete moments.

Nadon's speciality, in Kourlas's words, is daring. "Her commitment to living, or dancing, in the moment has no filter." At the end of her first performance of "Diamonds" this fall, Nadon snapped her head to lock eyes with her partner, Chun Wai Chan, with such intensity that "a rush of life flooded the stage," Kourlas writes.

Her season spanned a striking range:

• George Balanchine's "Pithoprakta," a decades-old ballet she made "seem startlingly new"
• Jerome Robbins's "The Concert," where she "embraced comedy with her entire being"
• The classics "Emeralds" and "Diamonds," danced less to sparkle than, in Kourlas's phrasing, to prove ballet's position as "an earthly paradise"

What does the farewell mean for the company?

Danchig-Waring's departure on Sunday closed the season on an emotional high. The only new work of the fall that Kourlas believes deserves a second life was made for him: "Once With You" by choreographer Pam Tanowitz, created as a retirement gift rather than a company commission. That origin matters. Because it wasn't formally commissioned, Kourlas notes, the ballet is unlikely to return — though she adds that its solo is exactly the kind of part male dancers crave.

Why did the fashion gala premieres fall flat?

Here the critic turns sharply negative. The three premieres commissioned for the fall fashion gala were, in her assessment, "different shades of puerile" — "it seemed like a recital at the end of dance camp," she writes.

Her argument is structural, not just aesthetic. Pairing choreographers with designers is a moneymaker, Kourlas acknowledges, "and that's great." Her complaint is about priorities: "But producing ballet of value, at least some value, should always be the point."

What does this change for City Ballet? The season suggests a company that can still deliver at the highest level when its veteran choreographers and star dancers are on stage — Nadon's "Pithoprakta" and Danchig-Waring's send-off prove that. The open question, raised directly by the critic, is whether the gala-commission machinery can produce work that outlives a single gala night. On this fall's evidence, it hasn't.