Creative Risk
If the ballet world now seems inundated with Dracula productions, Frankenstein adaptations are a rarer sight.
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This performance of Alexander Whitley’s “Pattern Recognition,” which premiered at London’s Platform Theatre in April, was the kick-off to a five-leg autumn tour around the UK. The London-based choreographer has teamed up with digital designer Memo Akten to create a 50-minute contemporary work that uses motion-responsive technology to explore themes of consciousness, memory and fragmentation in the digital age. The technology comes in the form of eight chunky floor lamps that sense and track the dancers’ movements, responding with their own illuminated patterns. The lights, the programme makes clear, “are not pre-programmed but are driven only by the movement of the dancers.”
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Alexander Whitley and Natalie Allen in “Pattern Recognition” by Alexander Whitley. Photograph by Tristram Kenton
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If the ballet world now seems inundated with Dracula productions, Frankenstein adaptations are a rarer sight.
Continue ReadingIt’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?
Continue ReadingAs 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.
Continue ReadingMisty 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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