Japanese Tourist

Leave it to Jerome Robbins to hover authoritatively and artistically over New York City Ballet‘s 122nd season, even though the famed choreographer died nearly seven years ago. A scrupulous revival of his 1958, jazz-styled ballet “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz,“ paled all of the competition making up the season‘s larger than usual influx, five all told, of new or newly staged works into the repertory mix. Robbins‘ 5-part suite to a serviceably jazzy score by Robert Prince was originally created to highlight of a program of American ballet overseas under the rubric of Ballets: U.S.A.

The unfolding display of emotional mood and generational attitude had its world premiere at the first Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and showed itself here, in a lovingly detailed revival overseen by former Joffrey Ballet dancer Edward Verso, to be a clear, clean and beguiling creation. With their finger-snapping and youthful, jive-based dancing, the sneakers-and-sweat-shirt-wearing cast of eight women and eight men, lending a look partly hipster and partly beatnik, appeared very much part of the late-1950s era and yet fortified so firmly by Robbins‘ ever-savvy theatrical impact, still managed to ...