The NYT dances in Paris

The New York Times sent its dance critic, Alexander Macauley, to Paris last week, and he went crazy, supplying four stories about la danse.

• The Nutcracker. Parisians are suceptible to this seasonal affliction as much as anyone. Macauley compares the Paris Opera's production, based on choreography by Rudolf Nureyev, with one in London. Not a fan of Nureyev's interpretation, he states that, "His Paris dances look less like choreography than like workouts, seeming to tell dancers, 'Do these so that you too can keep up with dancers more youthful and gifted than you.'"
• Promising students. Macauley also attended an exhibition put on by the students being trained at the Opera, the most revered ballet school in France. His verdict: "The male dancers, doing double air turns to both right and left as few professionals are seen to do, looked especially full of talent...But it is in the female style, especially in the second division taught by Francesca Zumbo, where you most sense an irreducibly French style of dance: crisp, focused, fragrant."
• Paquita. The Opera's revival of this Romantic ballet about a gypsy's love for a dashing French officer sounds like it would be fun, if not for dancers who are perfect technically but lacking in emotion. "The Parisians, going through the motions without ever demonstrating how perfection turns into real dancing, show just how."
• Cunningham. Americans to the rescue? Here Macauley explains that the Merce Cunningham dance troupe from America is more popular in Paris than elsewhere, and his impression of the revivals of three pieces is that the French judgment is spot on.