World-class review of ballet and dance.
Some stories take hold of you and just will not let go. The film Call Me Dancer tells such a story—the true-life story of Manish Chauhan, a Mumbai street dancer, who nurtures the dream of becoming a ballet professional against daunting odds.
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In spring of 2017, Ellen Graff, Stuart Hodes, and Marnie Thomas Wood, all former members of the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Tony award-winning Broadway choreographer George Faison, set out to make dances for a group of older adults, many of whom had never performed onstage. Josefina Rotman Lyons, an older dancer herself, volunteered to film the project. The resulting documentary, “Revival,” is an honest and engaging take on what it’s like to dance in later life. Now available for streaming at Revivaldocumentary.com, the film won jury and audience awards when it made the rounds of film festivals. At a...
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As we blink from the stupor of the near-hibernation of New Year and slowly come around to (supposedly) changing seasons, Northern Ballet have provided some incredible work on film to watch as storms batter the United Kingdom. Here is a round up of some of the most interesting ones to catch online. The artistry is superb, inventive and all have completely distinct visions in their ouevre.
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The “Nutcracker” has a way of feeling magical year after year. But something new is always welcome—especially as the ballet has long perpetuated cultural stereotypes. In “The Gift,” Boston Ballet drastically reinterprets the “Nutcracker,” and in doing so, proves that the ballet’s holiday magic extends beyond just its storyline and costumes.
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It may seem strange for all of the supposed progress being made in understanding medical matters that there is still a societal stigma in how we lean into issues around mental health in 2021. Creating an effective discourse around it, in order to normalise it, is incredibly important. Art is a great platform for tackling big issues, such as depression and anxiety. Dance, then, can express with bodies something that can be hard to say out loud, for fear of othering, rejection, or being cast aside, either from friends, loved ones, or employers in a working environment.
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Tapping into wanderlust in its seventh season (and most ambitious one yet), Fall for Dance North (FFDN) took audiences on an expansive journey to Bangalore, Havana, and London through its Signature Program, a three-part dance film conceived by Ilter Ibrahimof and Indo-Canadian director Vikram Dasgupta.
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Commissioned by Fuel and directed by filmmaker JJ Abrahams, this intensely personal film, “Salt & Sugar” for Dance International Glasgow is beautiful, but bracingly unsentimental. At forty, critically acclaimed choreographer and dancer Hemabharathy Palani is looking back and taking stock of her life thus far. This film isn't a linear, autobiographical piece though—it is lyrical and dense, showing Palani dancing, teaching and exercising in a variety of locations, such as forests, shimmering grassy fields and indoors in practice studios.
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Lucinda Childs is considered one of the pillars of the Judson Dance Theater collective and often hailed as a “master of minimalism.” In 1979, she created one of her pure dance works to a score by Philip Glass, while Sol LeWitt contributed film decor featuring the original cast of dancers. Layering rhythms, patterns, and images of dancing bodies, “DANCE”—the result of this collaboration between three art world icons—returns to New York City’s the Joyce Theater October 19-24. Candice Thompson spoke with producers and dancers Caitlin Scranton and Matt Pardo (The Blanket) about why this 40-year old work endures, what it...
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What makes German choreographer/performer Frauke Requardt's work so special is that she never uses spectacle for its own sake—there are always enough ideas to accompany her own vivid, inventive choreography, which scratches both itches of live art and contemporary dance at once.
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London-born dancer Matthew Hawkins has always been a singular force of nature, so it makes sense for him to collaborate with the iconoclastic Scottish musicians Red Note Ensemble and lithe, soulful French dancer Soraya Ham. For this film, Iconnotations, the setting is the beautiful Greyfriars Kirk in the “old town” side of Edinburgh, a spacious and ornate parish church. It has been previously performed in St. Magnus Cathedral in Orkney, the island where Maxwell Davies lived laterally. The main piece, Vesalii Icones, features a musical score from late English composer Peter Maxwell Davies from 1969, which is filled with so...
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Battery Dance Festival returned to the stage last week in celebration of its 40th anniversary, presenting six days of international dance live and livestreamed from the spectacular Robert F. Wagner park in lower Manhattan. The festival ran Aug. 12th through 20th and featured 56 total performances, including 16 dance films which opened the first three days of the festival online.
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“Your body is a repository of memory,” says the voiceover in Retrace-Retract, Gregory Maqoma's film which is part of the Dancing In The Streets series for the Edinburgh International Festival, focusing on the issue of home. ”I am your compass. . . The spirit will guide you.” Threaded throughout this beautiful, inspiring film, directed and choreographed by Maqoma, is the poetry of Jefferson Tshabalala, which interrogates issues around poverty, inequality and strategies for survival; but also of selfhood and spirituality. These particular streets—Soweto's bustling streets in South Africa—are the backdrop. They signify the return to the source, the retracing of...
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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