World-class review of ballet and dance.
London has very little to do to convince the world of its artiness. It’s often given that eye-roll inducing title of a ‘world city;’ whatever your heart wishes to see will probably, at some point, make its way through London.
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The New York City Ballet’s Fall Fashion Gala was unusually tense this year, as the dancers refused to walk the red carpet or attend the post-performance dinner in protest of the standstill on their collective bargaining agreement.
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On a Saturday afternoon in late September, the air feels electric in an upstairs rehearsal studio at Kestrels, in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn.
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Alethea Pace's latest work, “between wave and water,” is a journey. Performers physically lead an audience through the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx while examining the history of a local Enslaved African Burial Ground.
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Amrita Hepi, a choreographer with Bunjalung and Ngāpuhi roots, has come a long way from her home in the Pacific.
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Sir Kenneth MacMillan began his choreography for “Manon” with the pas de deux, and from this shining, central point spun outward. Building the story from its heart, almost as if from the inside out, the pas de deux reveals not only the emotional connection between the two dancers, but their place in the world.
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If the ballet world now seems inundated with Dracula productions, Frankenstein adaptations are a rarer sight.
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It’s amusing to read in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s generally exceptional program notes that George Balanchine choreographed the triptych we now know as “Jewels” because he visited Van Cleef & Arpels and was struck by inspiration. I mean, perhaps visiting the jeweler did further tickle his imagination, but—PR stunt, anyone?
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As I watch one after another pastel tutu clad ballerina bourrée into the arms of a white-tighted danseur, a melody not credited on the program floats through my brain. You know the one.
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Misty Copeland’s upcoming retirement from American Ballet Theatre—where she made history as the first Black female principal dancer and subsequently shot to fame in the ballet world and beyond—means many things.
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Haneul Jung oscillates between the definition of the Korean word, man-il meaning “ten thousand days” and “what if.”
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Moss Te Ururangi Patterson describes his choreographic process having a conversation with other elements. As he describes pushing himself under the waves, and a feeling of meditative, buoyancy as he floated in space, the impression of light beneath the water was paramount.
Continue ReadingWatching Matthew Bourne's reworked version of the “star-cross'd lovers,” I was briefly reminded of Veronica, played by Winona Ryder, in the dark 1988 comedy by Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann, Heathers, and her line, “my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Yes, this is the darker side of Bourne's repertoire,...
Continue ReadingThe choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.
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Beneath blue California skies, manicured trees, and the occasional hum of an overhead airplane, Tamara Rojo took the Frost Amphitheater stage at Stanford University to introduce herself as the new artistic director of San Francisco Ballet.
Continue ReadingAfter a week of the well-balanced meal that is “Jewels”—the nutritive, potentially tedious, leafy greens of “Emeralds,” the gamy, carnivorous “Rubies,” and the decadent, shiny white mountains of meringue in “Diamonds”—the New York City Ballet continued its 75th Anniversary All-Balanchine Fall Season with rather more dyspeptic fare.
Continue ReadingAn “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.
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