Why it’s called American Street Dancer
Books are banned, DEI scuttled, and Africanist studies scaled back. Yet, the irrepressible spirit of African American artists is not extinguished.
Continue ReadingWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
The haute joaillerie house Van Cleef & Arpels has a long history of supporting dance, since Louis Arpels attended the Paris Opera Ballet in the 1920s. In the 1940s, the company began producing jewel-encrusted ballerina clips. When Claude Arpels met George Balanchine in 1961, it led to the New York City Ballet’s first abstract full-length ballet, “Jewels,” in 1967. Since 2012, the house has sponsored the L.A. Dance Project, and, in 2015, they began awarding the Fedora–Van Cleef & Arpels Prize for Ballet. Winners include Alexei Ratmansky, William Forsythe, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. So it was fitting that VC&A commissioned a new dance to be performed during its second annual Fifth Avenue Blooms festival, an outdoor celebration of spring running along NYC’s Fifth Ave from 50th-59th Street throughout the month of May. What was less fitting was the choice of downtown experimentalist choreographer Pam Tanowitz to headline this floral-festooned uptown stretch of consumerism—and the incongruity was a delight.
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Books are banned, DEI scuttled, and Africanist studies scaled back. Yet, the irrepressible spirit of African American artists is not extinguished.
Continue Reading“Lists of Promise,” a new work currently in a two-week run from March 13- 30 at the East Village cultural landmark, Theater for the New City, promised more than it delivered, at least for now.
Continue Reading“State of Heads” opens with a blaze of white light and loud clanking onto a white-suited Levi Gonzalez, part Elvis, part televangelist addressing his congregation. A pair of women sidle in—Rebecca Cyr and Donna Uchizono—dressed in ankle-length white dresses and cowered posture.
Continue ReadingThe late John Ashford, a pioneer in programming emerging contemporary choreographers across Europe, once told me that he could tell what sort of choreographer a young artist would turn into when watching their first creations.
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