November 27, 2016
“Review: Pick a ‘Nutcracker,’ One From Balanchine, the Other Reimagined”
by Alastair Macaulay
“Ms. Mearns’s dancing, instinctively dramatic, had moments when you watched with your heart in your mouth (the strangely exposed pirouettes when the cavalier brakes her twirl by catching her wrist), others that seemed fabulously definitive (the rise-and-fall unsupported pirouettes in which her arms rise into a peak before she suddenly arches back with arms open).
Though she placed maximum demands on Mr. Ramasar, he is now the most touchingly chivalrous of cavaliers; and when she stretched back in his arms at the end of those supported pirouettes, he timed to perfection the moment of thrilling stillness before he then turned with her one more time.”