BalletX Spring Series Review
March 20, 2026 | Suzanne Roberts Theatre – Philadelphia, PA, USA
Going to see BalletX has become part of the fabric of my joy. At their all Matthew Neenan program, part of Ballet X’s 20th anniversary season at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, I was reminded why.
You hear everything: breath, feet articulating the floor, bodies taking weight and giving it back. Nothing is hidden.
When I go to a dance performance, I want to be moved. The world has been heavy. If I decide to show up, I want it to matter.
And BalletX makes it matter. Every single time.
The dancers represent a group operating at the highest level in contemporary ballet, but not in a closed way. One dancer brings length and clarity on pointe, another a grounded strength, another an ease that makes difficult movement simple to digest. There is no artistic hierarchy in Ballet X, but there is constant exchange, and I love that. One dancer’s strength sharpens another’s.
Goosebumps. What BalletX does that often leaves me wonderstruck is not just technical.
It is how the company thinks about movement, choreography, and musical connectivity. They move like a hive: Responsive. Aware. There is space for play inside the rigor. Phrasing expands, pulls back, opens again. The choreography does not feel fixed. It feels like it is happening in real time, and that is because the work and quality of movement is totally alive.
You may also like...
In Dance, Francis Patrelle Review: Moving Forward, Without The Captain
Francis Patrelle, who devoted his life to telling stories through ballet, is honored in an in memoriam program assembled with affection.
Pacific Northwest Ballet Firebird Review: Contemporary Wins and a Classic Revisited
Pacific Northwest Ballet Firebird Review: PNB's spring program is a multi-faceted triple bill featuring three pieces of entirely different looks and sounds.
BalletX Spring Series Review
The program opens with Show Me (2015), in close dialogue with a live string quartet. They are not accompaniment so much as presence. The sound is classical, with clean lines and balanced phrasing, but it carries more than form. The music shifts from light to heavy, from sprightly to longing, grounded in storytelling. The strings are buoyant, liberating, playful, reflective, and longing, moving between restraint and release.
Some pieces draw on real places, with titles like “Simpson’s Gap,” the desert gorge in Australia. You hear that sense of landscape in the score, space, distance, quiet expanse.
Like Neenan, the quartet is classically trained, but there is more here than tradition. The dancers meet it in real time. Movement and sound stay close. The phrasing opens. There is room to breathe.
After a pause, Broke Apart (2006) shifts the evening into a heavier register. The musical choices matter.
Outrun Your Demons by Cynthia Hopkins brings a raw, interior edge. La Vie en Rose by Cyndi Lauper lands differently, lush, familiar, disarming in its beauty. Wow.
Neenan and the dancers of Ballet X deliver the feeling of seeing life through rose-colored glasses, the joy and magic of love transforming the everyday. Neenan brings that feeling here, and it lands with real sweetness. These choices shape the emotional landscape as much as the movement. The choreography lets it settle into the body. Phrases lengthen. Balances hover. Nothing is pushed. It stays grounded.
A duet between Skyler Lubin and Jonathan Montepara from Broke Apart stays with me. The choreography is simple. They listen to each other. The timing lands because they are present. It reads as trust.
We return from intermission for the world premiere of SQUARES. The same attention to structure and tone runs through Neenan’s work, but it never feels fixed. Something is always moving underneath.
Across the program, the dancers meet what is asked of them. The physical demands are constant, floor work into jumps into lifts and back again. Weight shifts before it settles. You hear it as much as you see it, contact with the floor, the return to standing.
And still, there is attention.
By the time we arrive at SQUARES, something opens up.
The stage is industrial. Dark. Metallic. Then the light warms it. Then it shifts again, cooler, more stark. It does not settle.
Musical composer Scott Ordway is upstage, right. The sound builds gradually. It feels immersive, like a sound bath. At some point, I stopped focusing on individual dancers.
My attention widens. I begin to see the full picture.
Lines. Angles. Pathways. Dancers form squares, then break them apart. Triangles appear and dissolve. A leg extends and becomes a line that organizes the space around it. A turn resets everything.
The shapes are constantly in motion, never lingering for long. Fabrics ripple and fold as the dancers move, catching the light and shifting with each gesture. Colors appear in combinations I wouldn’t expect: pastel greens with baby blues, dark mauves alongside muted grays. The effect is mesmerizing, a delicate balance of contrast and harmony that feels alive on stage.
There is a constant push and pull. Weight is shared, redirected, caught. Lifts pass through instead of stopping. Formations shift before they fully land. The eye keeps adjusting because the work keeps changing.
And still, it feels clear.
Classical technique is always there. Jumps, turns, fully articulated lines. But what stays with me is the flow. How one phrase leads into the next without interruption. How the group holds together while everything is in motion.
It feels cinematic. Not because it is large, but because of how you are asked to look from the audience. Focus shifts. Time stretches. Then it tightens again. The lights hover. Ordway’s trancelike composition fills the theatre.
At some point, I realize I am fully inside it.
I am not just watching dancers. I am watching the collective. The full stage. The relationships between bodies, light, and sound
I am loving every moment.
Another win, Neenan.
That sense of shared attention extends beyond this program. New works this season by Keelan Whitmore, Lanie Jackson, and Itzkan Dzul Barbosa open up something else. Play. Expansion. Physical risk. If you want to talk about athleticism, it is all here. But it never feels separate from the thinking.
This is not just about strong dancers. It is about collaboration. About people working together with a shared understanding of what they are building. Choreographers, dancers, musicians. Everyone contributing.
It feels connected to something larger. The community. The audience. The City of Philadelphia.
I keep thinking about the fact that this exists in Philadelphia. How many people have not seen BalletX, yet?
The work does not shut you out. You do not need to know the language. You can follow the lines. The timing. The relationships. You can feel it.
BalletX does not hold back. The choreography asks for full commitment, and the dancers meet it. Nothing feels distant. Nothing feels routine.
It matters.
Go see them.
Featured Photo of BalletX‘s Jared Kelly, Ashley Simpson, and Francesca Forcella in Matthew Neenan’s Broke Apart. Photo by Vikki Sloviter.
I could not agree more… I absolutely loved the performance. The second half was amazing. It was my first balletx show but I hope it was the first of many.