January 24, 2016
“Review: City Ballet Celebrates Balanchine and Heeds Mother Nature”
by Brian Seibert
“‘Kammermusik No. 2’ followed, as it did in history. (Its premiere was a few weeks after ‘Ballo della Regina.’) In place of an all-female corps, as in ‘Ballo’, ‘Kammermusik’ has an all-male one. That’s one of several ways the work is unusual and fascinating, but it’s also recalcitrant, impersonal, unremitting in its response to the harsh modernism of its Hindemith score, harking back to Germany in the 1920s while presaging much about ballet in the 1980s. In the twin ballerina roles, Sara Mearns invested the sportiness with some of her sorceress allure, while Teresa Reichlen floated on her blithe charm until it synced up with the work’s flash of wit.”