World-class review of ballet and dance.
Unlikeable humanity in a rapacious society, Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon” hits the zeitgeist—again. Recently staged by the National Ballet of Japan, it’s a stunning testimony to the ballet’s relevance across time and space. Fifty years since its creation and set in eighteenth-century France, the production nevertheless holds a mirror to now.
Continue ReadingAn ambitious yet flawed work, “Dis-order,” seen last week at the Skirball Cultural Center, was described in the program notes as a “communal ritual, and a family drama that asks what forces move through us when we enact an ancient spring rite, and what is left unspoken when we gather...
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American Ballet Theatre typically holds court in NYC twice a year. Their Summer Season at the Metropolitan Opera House features classical narrative full-lengths, and the Fall Season at the Koch Theater showcases edgier, short-form works.
Continue ReadingCrystal Pite is a connoisseur of the ensemble, with a forte for spotlighting the humanity of the collective, from the tight-knit flock to the anonymised mass.
Continue ReadingOnce referred to as the “Rolls-Royce of American dance,” Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founded in 1958 by Alvin Ailey, continues to live up to that plaudit.
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American Ballet Theatre typically holds court in NYC twice a year. Their Summer Season at the Metropolitan Opera House features classical narrative full-lengths, and the Fall Season at the Koch Theater showcases edgier, short-form works.
Continue Reading
Unlikeable humanity in a rapacious society, Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon” hits the zeitgeist—again. Recently staged by the National Ballet of Japan, it’s a stunning testimony to the ballet’s relevance across time and space. Fifty years since its creation and set in eighteenth-century France, the production nevertheless holds a mirror to now.
Continue Reading
An ambitious yet flawed work, “Dis-order,” seen last week at the Skirball Cultural Center, was described in the program notes as a “communal ritual, and a family drama that asks what forces move through us when we enact an ancient spring rite, and what is left unspoken when we gather around the table.”
Continue Reading
Crystal Pite is a connoisseur of the ensemble, with a forte for spotlighting the humanity of the collective, from the tight-knit flock to the anonymised mass.
Continue Reading
Once referred to as the “Rolls-Royce of American dance,” Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founded in 1958 by Alvin Ailey, continues to live up to that plaudit.
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Ranjini Nair wears a few hats. Trained as a classical dancer in her native New Delhi by gurus Seetha Nagajothy, Jayarama Rao, and Vanashree Rao, she later found herself deep within the world of academia.
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It's with great sadness that we learned a couple of nights ago of the untimely passing of dance artist Iona Kewney.
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Looking down into the rotunda from the spiral ramp of New York’s Guggenheim Museum can be dizzying. My perch tonight is located two-thirds of the way to the top—and it’s the best view in the house for Lucinda Childs’ Early Works program.
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Push and pull are pretty commonplace commands. You can push someone’s buttons, pull someone’s leg. Somehow we always manage to conflate the two when facing a door in a public place.
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The Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory is a yawning, cavernous space. In its depths, even the fiercest applause can be rendered a mere din, sounding hollow...
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Noé Soulier’s “The Waves” ran for two nights at the Joyce Theater in early March as part of the Dance Reflections Festival by Van Cleef & Arpels.
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In transparent specimen bags, arranged in a circle, float Lemon Myrtle, Warrigal Greens, and Red Bottle Brush.
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Where language falls silent, dance speaks. That is the case for balletic interpretations of Shakespeare’s great works—particularly Lar Lubovitch’s three-act “Othello,” choreographed for American Ballet Theatre in 1997.
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Like most new adaptations of existing story ballet classics, the world premiere of artistic director James Sofranko’s “Swan Lake” for Grand Rapids Ballet retained the bones of the original it was based on.
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Shakespearean purists, leave your expectations at the door. With his rendition of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” first staged in 2009 to mark the 10th anniversary of K-Ballet Tokyo, Tetsuya...
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Only three years after its premiere at Cork’s Midsummer Festival, Philip Connaughton finds his work of epic proportions, “Trojans,” in the hands of Luail.
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From charming stagings for children to edgy dance theater, Un Yamada Company, a creative collective based in Tokyo, has built a reputation for consistently innovative productions.
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For much of “Romeo & Juliet Suite,” Benjamin Millepied’s stripped-down take on the Sergei Prokofiev ballet—billed as a gender-bent, “contemporary, site-specific” version of Shakespeare’s classic—I find myself thinking of a different play by the bard. Specifically, the direction in The Winter’s Tale: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Most of the drama here, after all, happens offstage.
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Montreal based choreographer and artistic director, Virginie Brunelle’s eponymously named company performed its 2022 “Fables” at Penn Live Arts Zellerbach Theatre series on the brink of Women’s History month.
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What distinguishes a dancer from a choreographer? This is, in the end, an empirical question, one that can only be answered in the theatre.
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