Brookline artist Janet Echelman has had everyone looking up, through and beyond with her fibre art sculpture, As If It Were Already Here, that hangs above the Rose Kennedy Greenway. While Echelman’s piece still evokes awe and wonder from those who see it in person or in photographs, in a way it does feel as if it were already here.  It feels as if it is a part of Boston now.  Like a floating soap bubble, it must eventually pop or in this case be taken down. As this bold yet ethereal wonder, that feels as if it is a part of our cultural fibre, is extracted from our city, another art form is stepping up to center stage ready to continue drawing our eyes, bodies, and minds into the creative realm.  Boston Ballet will have some of the classics this year with the annual Nutcracker and much beloved Swan Lake, but it is really the rest of the season that highlights what a gift Boston has with Mikko Nissinen and the Boston Ballet.

This past week, Boston Ballet staged a human form, moving sculpture beneath Echelman’s airborne work as part of a farewell to this visual piece which also has a dance of its own. Echelman’s sculpture will be “performing” above the Rose Kennedy Greenway until Saturday, October 24th. Meanwhile, Boston Ballet begins their season with an equally bold, dynamic, and unique performance as Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler: A Ballet By John Neumeier opens on October 22nd.  Like Echelman’s sculpture, John Neumeier’s work takes something familiar and pushes it past what we know or have known.

“It [Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler] is a completely new form of work. It is a work that tries, through the use of the complete symphony, to create a new form of dance. …

…There is no story that can be expressed in words.  There is only a story that can be seen and felt as you watch the dancers.”

-John Neumeier in an interview from L’Opera de Paris