On the web: www.nycballet.com

Last update: January 25, 2008 - 5:08 PM

www.nycballet.com

Advances in streaming video have made dance a hot online artistic commodity, and no company has embraced the Web with greater finesse than New York City Ballet. In its newly launched Viewing Room, the company creates a kind of virtual Playbill via a series of slick three-minute videos, each one featuring a different program on NYCB's winter season. Click on "Jewels," for example, and George Balanchine's three-act plotless classic briefly comes alive via tantalizing -- and all-too short -- performance and rehearsal videos, atmospheric music clips, striking photographs and fascinating interviews (featuring artistic director Peter Martins, music director Fayçal Karoui, principal dancer Maria Kowroski and teaching associate Merrill Ashley). It left me wanting more -- wanting to buy a ticket, actually.

RICK NELSON

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