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When Cornejo, who has been described as diminutive in stature, jumped as high as the second story of Santo Loquasto’s set design of a Spanish plaza, the audiences gasped. Many great male dancers have been kept from plum roles like this one because of their lack of height. Fortunately, ABT doesn’t measure Cornejo’s worth in inches. With the petite Xiomara Reyes as Kitri, Cornejo found a fitting partner and one that executed 32 fuettes with limpid grace. But it was Cornejo’s emotional and physical verve that made the ridiculous story (the shenanigans of two sets of lovers amid Don Quixote’s many infatuations) a fantastical whimsy instead of an irritant.

Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes in Don Quixote
© MIRA

The other lead couple, Sascha Radetsky and Kristi Boone, who danced Espada, a famous matador, and Mercedes, a street dancer, also gave remarkable performances. Radetsky relished swinging his cape at the audience, as though we were the bull, being enticed into the lair of his seductively confident presence. Boone easily beckoned with her rare combination of lyricism and dynamism. Joseph Phillips and Misty Copeland, who performed the Gypsy Couple, stood out for their gutsy and sexy performances. In the second act, Phillips became a champagne cork popping up, when he made a full vertical revolution in the air and at its height split is legs open 180 degrees. Melissa Thomas, as the Queen of the Dryads, confronted her eight fuettes, which alternated between attitude and a la seconde, with a glorious elegance. Finally, conductor Ormsby Wilkins, and his flying head of white hair, made Ludwig Minkus’s heavy-handed composition sound dramatically propulsive.