ARTICLES & CRITICAL ACCLAIM
WTTW News
April 11, 2025
Pair two of Chicago’s greatest cultural gems in a multifaceted program on the Symphony Center stage, and you have an ideal example of the city’s exceptional talent. And that is exactly what you will find in the current program that brings the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Joffrey Ballet together in a most winning way.
“Les Boeufoons,” a zestily choreographed, circus-like work by Nicolas Blanc, a dancer turned worldly choreographer — with a rich collection of costumes for the work’s many, varied (and mischievous) characters who can pull off quite a few acrobatic moves.”
Broadway World
April 4, 2024
To celebrate its 90th season in 2023, San Francisco Ballet created a wildly ambitious festival of nine world premieres by a diverse group of celebrated choreographers. As exciting as such events are, though, it can be hard to discern in a single viewing the actual, lasting merits of that many new works.
”The program kicks off with Nicolas Blanc’s mesmerizing Gateway to the Sun, which I found to be the most rewarding ballet on the program.“
”Blanc’s unusual holds and lifts in his choreography make this a work crying out to be revived long after the festival of nine premieres is packed away.“
Persinsala
February 26, 2022
In febbrile attesa che il nuovo sovrintendente Francesco Giambrone, dopo l’eccellente esperienza al Teatro Massimo di Palermo, possa avviare l’annunciata «fase di ascolto e dialogo indispensabile per costruire un progetto condiviso da portare avanti nei prossimi anni», il cartellone del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma offre una serata che se, per un verso, rientra nella linea programmatica dell’usato sicuro (due classici da maestri del contemporaneo come Forsythe e Inger), per l’altro conferma come la guida di Carlo Fuortes abbia ormai saputo restituire al palcoscenico della Capitale il grande e doveroso appeal nei confronti del pubblico internazionale, non a caso presente numeroso alla prima del 26 febbraio per assistere a Forsythe / Inger / Blanc.
WTTW News
May 9, 2021
When dance historians and critics are finally able to look back on the work created by both dancers and choreographers between March 2020 and whenever the COVID-19 craziness fully abates — and when live performances attended by live audiences can return to full pre-pandemic “normalcy” — they will immediately be able to identify the dramatic shift in both style and substance of the current era. Whether the defining elements of “pandemic-era dance” will exert an enduring influence is open for question. Hopefully masks will disappear, intimate partnering will require less worry, and the sound of live music and applause will once again make a joyful noise. Dancers, whose art is all about physical contact and breath, have been exceptionally hard-hit during the past year and more. Yet there has been quite an evolution as these indomitable and mostly suffocatingly masked artists have moved from solo barre exercises done at a kitchen counter and captured on home video; to solo dance sequences patched together for increasingly elaborate streamed works via Zoom; to meticulously distanced pieces that have unfolded in backyards, on rooftops, in parks, and on bare city streets; to (more recently), full-scale works filmed in artfully lit studios where masks and other strict safety protocols have been meticulously observed even as a certain degree of freedom has begun to return.
“It is a work of such beauty and dynamic intensity that it can and should easily endure as part of standard ballet rep for years to come.”
“This work was one of the most thrilling performances on the Granada stage this season, with Blanc demonstrating an abundance of ideas and a profound feeling for Ezio Bosso’ a score.”
“Joffrey rehearsal director Blanc, whose Beyond the Shore was a highlight of the troupe’s last visit, this time offered a brilliant large-format (15 dancers) work of sensuousness, mystery and epic sweep set to music by Ezio Bosso beneath a constantly changing canopy of huge leaves, designed and lit by Jack Mehler.”
Art Intercepts
February 9, 2019
It was a blustery night in Grand Rapids on Friday, but everything was warm and cozy in the Peter Martin Wege Theatre for the opening of “MOVEMEDIA: Handmade,” a night of new works by the Grand Rapids Ballet. The two headliners of the evening: choreographer-in-residence Penny Saunders and Nicolas Blanc, whose “Aquatic Hypoxia” marks his first work for this company.
“It’s not the first time Blanc’s set a dance beneath the water’s surface, and unlike many of his contemporaries, he works with a refreshing degree of transparency, leaving little doubt about the subject of his piece. Blanc’s stunning choreography is danced with overt passion.”
Broadway World
July 6, 2018
Barak Ballet is a formidable dance company that was created and fleshed out by Artistic Director Melissa Barak, who is a native Californian, and who has performed with the New York City Ballet and the Los Angeles Ballet Companies before forming her own Company. She trained at the Westside School of Ballet in Santa Monica beginning at the age of eight. She has performed the works of such balletic luminaries such as George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, Eliot Feld and Robert Garland.
“There are ever-changing patterns, within floor work and partner work, with lifts that defy anything ordinarily seen, all beautifully performed.”
“Blanc painted striking images in this piece”
San Francisco Chronicle
March 7, 2020
Ballet dancers lift each other all the time. But the elevation achieved in “Beyond the Shore,” the glowing highlight of the Joffrey Ballet’s weekend repertory at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, seemed to untether one dancer from gravity itself. On Friday, March 6, the same night the San Francisco Ballet announced it was canceling all productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” due to coronavirus concerns, the Joffrey’s Victoria Jaiani floated in from the wings held high aloft by her partner Dylan Gutierrez. Her hips encircled by a disc-thin black pancake tutu as she rotated slowly through the spacious, spectral realm of Mark Stanley’s lighting, Jaiani turned weightless, like some human satellite orbiting far above Earth.
“With the impressive, immensely ambitious world premiere of “Beyond the Shore,” Nicolas Blanc, the Joffrey’s ballet master, proves himself a choreographer with both a strong modernist inheritance and a voice very much his own. “
”Jaiani turned weightless, like some human satellite orbiting far above Earth.Everything in this section of choreographer Nicolas Blanc’s mesmerizing Bay Area premiere, co-commissioned by presenter Cal Performances, served the uncanny illusion.“
Los Angeles Times
June 14, 2016
Imagine the fantastical possibilities and imagery — not to mention confusion — if figures in classical sculpture could suddenly move, breaking free of their frozen poses. This was one way to interpret “Tableaux Vivants,” a gorgeous new dance for Barak Ballet made by Nicolas Blanc.
“At the start of “Tableaux,” four couples shift from one linked-together pose to another, looking like draped figures from a Hellenic frieze. — Blanc, a Chicago-based ballet master, and coach with the Joffrey Ballet, has a gift for genuinely lyrical, beautifully curved and evocative movement.”
Vogue
May 5, 2016
The David H. Koch Theater hummed with anticipation as guests, including Indre Rockefeller and Selita Ebanks, took their seats at the New York City Ballet Spring Gala. The focal points of the evening—which honored board chairman Jay Fishman, a beloved champion of the ballet—were the hotly anticipated premieres of Nicolas Blanc’s Mothership and Christopher Wheeldon’s American Rhapsody, both of which earned rapturous applause.
“Espérons avoir l’occasion d’en voir davantage d’un chorégraphe qui a toute sa place au répertoire des grandes compagnies mondiales.”
“The hotly anticipated premieres of Nicolas Blanc’s Mothership and Christopher Wheeldon’s AmericanRhapsody, both of which earned rapturous applause.”
“Blanc has choreographed a piece that is constantly in motion, consistently surprising”
SF Classical Voice
November 20, 2017
The Joffrey Ballet brought its fine company, under the artistic direction of Ashley Wheater, back to Zellerbach Hall last weekend, burnishing its reputation for lively repertory and superb dancing. The brief visit (seen Friday night) under the aegis of Cal Performances offered a single program: Justin Peck’s In Creases, set to Philip Glass’s Four Movements for Two Pianos; Nicolas Blanc’s Encounter, a pas de deux set to John Adams; Alexander Ekman’s Joy, set to a lively medley; and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Mammatus, set to music by Michael Gordon.
“Encounter was jazzy, sexy and smooth as the dancers effortlessly glided through jaw-dropping lifts, penchés and acrobatics.”
“With the Adams prompts, Blanc swiftly yet sometimes gently (as in a charming love duet) draws parallels between the early anxieties of existence in the 20th century and those we find in the 21st.”
Newcity Stage
April 16, 2015
Soft-spoken and self-effacing, Nicolas Blanc sits in a folding chair in a sunny studio room of the Joffrey tower, gently cueing the entrances and changes for five dancers in his short ballet entitled “Evenfall,” uttering the occasional, supportive “good” or “nice” for a well-landed movement.
“[Evenfall] is a Magritte painting, with atmospheric clouds skittering across the stage as the Poet’s MacBook glows with its apple of temptation. [It is] romantic, evocative and beautifully danced.”
“[Evenfall] is the star of “New Works!”
“The stunning choreography and the dancers’ pure beauty add rich layers to a simple but powerful love story. Evenfall has the potential to be legendary, and it’s exciting to know it started right here in Chicago.”
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