Ultimate Release
Perhaps not since Mikhail Fokine’s 1905 iconic “The Dying Swan” has there been as haunting a solo dance depiction of avian death as Aakash Odedra Company’s “Songs of the Bulbul” (2024).
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World-class review of ballet and dance.
There was a series of warnings that led up to the moment it all fell apart, but no one listened. Everything appeared to follow a linear trajectory, an illuminated, diagonal path that led straight to the suspended glass orb at the foot of the stage. But the breakdown that ensued, it was neither smooth nor gradual. And it certainly was not linear, as complex, interwoven systems sought to find an equilibrium in the aftermath. You can push things past a tipping point, easily, when armed with a three-pound mash hammer.[1] What you cannot do is push them back. The orb, once broken into pieces, cannot be reassembled. Irrespective of how much you try, you cannot reverse the transition of states.
Performance
Place
Words
Perhaps not since Mikhail Fokine’s 1905 iconic “The Dying Swan” has there been as haunting a solo dance depiction of avian death as Aakash Odedra Company’s “Songs of the Bulbul” (2024).
Continue ReadingDance, at its best, captures nuance particularly well, allowing us to feel deeply and purely. In its wordlessness, it places a primal reliance on movement and embodied knowledge as communication all its own. It can speak directly from the body to the heart, bypassing the brain’s drive to “make sense of.”
Continue Reading“Racines”—meaning roots—stands as the counterbalance to “Giselle,” the two ballets opening the Paris Opera Ballet’s season this year.
Continue Reading“Giselle” is a ballet cut in two: day and night, the earth of peasants and vine workers set against the pale netherworld of the Wilis, spirits of young women betrayed in love. Between these two realms opens a tragic dramatic fracture—the spectacular and disheartening death of Giselle.
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