World-class review of ballet and dance.
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The crowd is the first thing I notice in the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s 2016 performance of “Figure Eights” as part of a performance at Seattle Art Museum. The audience clusters behind the row of six dancers, who are all dressed in casual white shirts and loose, white pants. The audience claps and takes pictures, sits stage-side, heads in their hands, on their phones.
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Who knew that the performance of American Ballet Theatre's world premiere, “Of Love and Rage,” that I was privileged to see at Segerstrom Center for the Arts on March 5 would be the last live dance concert I would share with some 3,000 thrilled theater-goers. Yes, that’s a rhetorical question, but since the world irrevocably changed in a matter of weeks because of Covid-19, the novel coronavirus, all dance troupes, performing arts organizations and any place people gather—whether for culture, entertainment, dining, drinking and/or to experience nature—have effectively shut down.
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The ink is barely dry on year-end top ten lists, yet the first months of the new year bring no respite from heady contest. In sports (the Super Bowl), cinema (the Golden Globes through the Oscars), and politics (the primaries), winter in America is rife with competition. Why should the ballet world be any different? In the span of roughly a month, NYC dancegoers had to choose between three major productions of that classic synecdochical of the art form: “Swan Lake.” Actually, there were four—but in this review I won’t cover the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater’s two shows at BAM....
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On a Wednesday afternoon in Toronto, I watched two former dancers, husband-wife duo Alisia Pobega and Louis-Martin Charest, work alongside a group of serious sixteen- and seventeen-year-old ballet dancers from Canada’s National Ballet School. Pobega crouches in one corner of the studio with half of the students rallied around her, speaking in low tones. Charest is on the opposite side of the room with his back to the mirrors, his dark hair barely perceptible above a crowd of ballet bodies clothed in leotards, loose t-shirts, and sweatpants. He draws the students in closer. They lean towards him, straining to hear....
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The Joyce Theater presented two festive tap shows this December: Dormeshia’s soulful “And Still You Must Swing” as well as a three-week residency by Dorrance Dance—featuring the premiere of a tap “Nutcracker Suite” to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s funky arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s ubiquitous holiday score. Dorrance’s programming changes weekly, but each show closes with the new “Nutcracker.” This comes to 21 performances, far more than most regional ballet companies and even American Ballet Theatre (with 12). Could a tap company loosen ballet’s yearly stranglehold on this Christmas classic?
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With a Jewish population of more than a quarter million and a rich dance culture that boasts five internationally known professional companies in as many ethnicities and dance genres, Philadelphia is a likely stage for a Jewish dance company. Jewish dancers, choreographers, presenters, entrepreneurs, critics, and even arts editors of prominent publications have largely shaped the city’s cultural dancescape over the past century. But, in fact, the first truly Jewish dance company, Koresh Dance Company, (KDC) was founded by Israeli Yemenite choreographer Ronen (Roni) Koresh in 1991. On its own, the company most represents Jewish dance in Philadelphia and nationally....
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As the sun set on a humid Central Park the first evening of August, Kyle Abraham, the artistic director of A.I.M (a modern, genre-bending dance company formerly known as Abraham.In.Motion), spoke with Gibney’s new curatorial director Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In the few hours before A.I.M’s performance at the Summer Stage, they talked about Abraham’s performance style and influences, his advice to those who started dancing late in life, and his apprehension surrounding a piece he is currently choreographing for New York City Ballet.
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Somewhere in the last few bars of the Bluebird coda from "The Sleeping Beauty," I felt my foot give way. I can’t remember exactly what step it was, but I knew instantly something was wrong. I almost managed to get to the end of the rehearsal, but the foot had completely locked up. Overwhelmed by a mixture of shock, pain and embarrassment, I needed to be out of view. As I limped to the seclusion of the corridor outside the busy rehearsal studio, all I could hear was white noise. Our company ballet master and my dance partner joined me...
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Just over a year ago, I made an early decision to retire from my career as a professional dancer. Leaving behind the glory of the stage, the grind of endless hours in the studio . . . the past 16 years of my life dedicated to performing art. I know for certain that not one day has gone by that I haven’t considered my decision, contemplated my timing . . . wondered what ballet I might be rehearsing or injury I might be nursing if I was still “in the game.” I go to the theater frequently to get my...
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“Will you hold this, please?” I look up from my notebook to see a young woman pressing a length of string into my hands. A beat later she slinks away, leaving me to fumble with the thread as its other end is pulled taut by a man swaying across the room.
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Watching 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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