Smuin Ballet’s The Christmas Ballet just concluded at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, following a fantastic run at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek and the Sunset Center in Carmel. An annual yuletide treat, The Christmas Ballet is full of dance offerings both classical and cool. New to The Christmas Ballet this year are two world premieres: “Home for the Holidays,” a delightful romp by Choreographer-in Residence Amy Seiwert, and “Joy to the World,” an energetic ensemble closing to Act I by Company member Nicole Haskins.
Leigh Donlan of Ballet to the People calls The Christmas Ballet a unique “brand of holiday cheer within a delightful framework of contrasts.” Continually “refashioned” with new works, The Christmas Ballet offers Donlan both classical and “rambunctious” fare. Mary Ellen Hunt of SF Gate praised The Christmas Ballet, calling it a “toe-tapping holiday cavalcade of ballet bonbons that ranges from serenely classical to sassy jazz.”
Ann Murphy of the Eureka Times Standard described Haskins’ “Joy to the World” as a “bounding, colorful” work and Seiwert’s “Home for the Holidays” a “charming family diorama, sweet without being treacly.” Murphy praised Company member Erica Felsch for her “wonderfully sultry” performance in the Smuin Ballet classic “Santa Baby,” noting the work is “so redolent of the late ‘50s it could be considered historical pop art.”
After all, as Hunt noted, it would be a “blue Christmas without Michael Smuin’s The Christmas Ballet!” Don’t miss what Hunt calls a longtime “holiday tradition—complete with dazzling tap numbers, a 40-foot feather boa and falling snowflakes!”
The Christmas Ballet continues its magic in venues throughout the Bay Area from December 17-27. Learn more and order tickets.