World-class review of ballet and dance.
This winter has been one of the wintriest in recent New York City memory. Between the unnavigable mounds of dirty snow at every intersection, dangerous patches of black ice, multiple days of subzero temperatures, power outages, and frozen pipes, there has also been the bone-chilling rise of authoritarianism in America.
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Dominica Greene makes snow angels in a small pool of light. As the audience chatter at Danspace Project quiets down, she revs to life. Rocking and talking about a rickety fan found in her grandparents’ house in Guyana, her shakes and shudders illustrate the pleasure her body derives from the appliance’s particular rhythm.
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In an animation that is woven through the performances of traditional dances in Indigenous Enterprise’s “Still Here,” a young boy watches a video of powwow musicians and dancers with his grandfather on Youtube.
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“Was it Benjamin Franklin, that sagacious and witty man, who, on signing the Declaration of Independence that hot July day in 1776, admonished his colleagues that they had better hang together lest they all hang separately?
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The lobby of the Ace Hotel Boerum Hill is an excellent place to work, particularly in the room with the long table and library lamps.
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Tushrik Fredericks walks as if in a trance, arms floating forward and pushing back with each step. Fog transforms the air into a tangible element.
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Angelina Laguna kneels on the sidewalk and places her body perpendicular to the flow of the First Avenue foot traffic.
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When Camille A. Brown appears out of the dark upstage and into the light, it prompts an unironic version of the question: “To what do I owe this honor?”
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Okwui Okpokwasili’s arms undulate, reach, and circle in the near dark under an oval projection of rippling water. Her arms babble out from her expressive back, capable of relating tales both epic and intimate. Notably, this is how I first encountered her work, nearly a decade ago, in “Bronx Gothic”—through her incredibly articulate spine and upper body coming into its own, conveying the metamorphosis of adolescence.
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In the world premiere of Miguel Gutierrez’s “Super Nothing,” the quartet of performers fly through the vast, empty black box theater at New York Live Arts, small forms cast out like particles of light.
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In a four-day span of early January I saw: Monica Bill Barnes wrestle a giant beach ball at Playwrights Horizons; Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris shoot blanks into the rafters of the Chocolate Factory in honor of Judith Jamison’s spirit; Symara Sarai run in and out of a swirling lasso at New York Live Arts Studios; and Angie Pittman dart across a shallow stage, in character as a vampire, cape flying, at BAM Fisher Hillman Studio in a shared bill with Kyle Marshall Choreography. In short, it was APAP season.*
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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