July 7, 2017
“Review: NYCB Cooks Up Delicious All-Balanchine Banquet”
by Jay Rogoff
“Yet this is no ‘Swan Lake Lite’; it packs in as much dancing and emotion as the four-act ballet. As Odette, Sara Mearns’ technical dazzle concentrates tragic feeling like a laser. Her precise pirouettes and pointework signal her steely armor against love, while her luxurious melts into backbends and wild plunges forward into penché, securely supported by Jared Angle as Siegfried, suggest her human desire.
Odette’s 30 swans, all in black, create continually shifting geometric formations, ultimately dividing the yearning lovers. Mearns’ Odette proves you don’t need evil Odile and her 32 fouettés to make a profoundly beautiful ‘Swan Lake.'”