A Danced Rituel
When Frank Gehry was tapped to be the architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, he envisioned the space to be “a living room for the city.”
Continue ReadingWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
When Frank Gehry was tapped to be the architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, he envisioned the space to be “a living room for the city.”
Continue ReadingSan Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House is a grand, gracious theater, so it was a big deal to see the San Francisco Ballet School hold its end-of-year performances in that hall for the first time since at least 1985.
Continue ReadingAt its heart, “Sylvia” is a ballet about the resistance to love—a theme that continues to resonate deeply, as the human spirit often recoils from love, driven by fear, pride, a need for control, or the weight of duties and moral constraints.
Continue ReadingSince the 1970s, the Paris Opera Ballet has cultivated a distinctive tradition of nurturing its own dancers as emerging choreographers.
Continue ReadingIn John Cranko’s world, “if ballet only consisted of dance steps, it wouldn’t be worth dedicating your whole life to it,” and this sense of devotion is at the heart of Joachim A. Lang’s German-language film, John Cranko (2024).
Continue ReadingOne of the hottest entities of Europe’s dance world is surely (La)Horde. A collective of three artists—Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel—the French theatrical trio could not be more on trend.
Continue ReadingYellow caution tape dangles from the doorway to the Jerome Robbins Theater and ropes off every row of seats.
Continue ReadingThe Trisha Brown Dance Company embarks on a national tour this June celebrating the centennial of avant-garde American visual artist Robert Rauschenberg.
Continue ReadingFor Ballet Hispánico’s upcoming season at New York City Center from May 29-June 1, the company will present Gustavo Ramírez Sansano's “Carmen.maquia,” a contemporary take on the timeless story at the heart of George Bizet’s unforgettable opera “Carmen.”
Continue ReadingAngelina Laguna kneels on the sidewalk and places her body perpendicular to the flow of the First Avenue foot traffic.
Continue ReadingWhen the lights for “Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503” come up on four dancers silhouetted by refracted light of a billowing cloud of fog, the scene rivals halftime at the Superbowl.
Continue ReadingOn a bright spring afternoon, as Paris basked in long-awaited sunlight and the city frantically moved in the heat, the Opéra Garnier opened a portal to another world—a realm of eternal forms, ethereal beauty, and blue distances: those trembling horizons where the sea dissolves into sky, and the eye reaches toward the infinite.
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.
Continue ReadingBeneath 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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