World-class review of ballet and dance.
Cassandra Trenary, American Ballet Theatre soloist, for one, had a very good year. The fast-rising star debuted as Princess Aurora in Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Sleeping Beauty” during the company’s spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, reprising the role while on tour to Paris.
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“I was very fortunate in Australia; I had an amazing four years at the Australian Ballet School—which was the best training—and when got into the company, I got to dance a Christopher Wheeldon ballet within the first three months of joining.”
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“My choreography was everything that I wanted it to be and more. For me personally, it was a huge challenge when it came to internal virtues, like leadership. Getting up in front of the room and having to own it.”
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“Why did you quit?” and “Why did you give up?” were some of the responses that Shelby Elsbree, former dancer with Boston Ballet, heard upon announcing her retirement from the stage earlier this year.
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Winning this year's competition for the Erik Bruhn Prize, hosted by the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto, were two dancers from San Francisco Ballet, soloist Angelo Greco, 23, and corps de ballet dancer, Natasha Sheehan, 17. Together they performed a captivating pas de deux from “Giselle” for the classical repertoire, and danced a contemporary duet choreographed by fellow company member Myles Thatcher.
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When Michael Smuin, founder of Smuin Ballet (now known as Smuin), passed away unexpectedly in 2007, Celia Fushille, dancer and then associate director for the company, had but a few days to gather her thoughts.
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Feminism, queer theory, ontology, postcolonialism—these subjects and more cropped up in the whirlwind 90 minutes I recently spent interviewing Cecilia Lisa Eliceche ahead of the UK premiere of her latest work, “Unison.” The Argentine choreographer is an avid political activist and well versed in the academia behind the issues she’s drawn to, which range from wealth inequality to racism, sexism and international human rights abuse.
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It’s been nearly 35 years since Steve Paxton, whom the New York Times once dubbed “a titan of the 1960s and 70s avant-garde,” created and performed his solo work, “Bound.” But who’s counting?
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“You—you alone will have the stars as no one else has them . . .” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince in all its aphoristic wisdom will soon be on stage in the form of a ballet, to be performed by the National Ballet of Canada.
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Complexions Contemporary Ballet, by virtue of its name, conjures graceful athleticism with the more formal rigors of ballet. Co-founded by Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson in 1994, the 15-member troupe is testament to sculpted lines and a hyperphysical aesthetic, one whose brand is instantly identifiable. Indeed, the Rhoden/Richardson partnership has not only built a company that tours the world, but has served as one of dance’s most illustrious creative pairings, with Richardson, still performing at 47, Rhoden’s muse.
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One might say that they’ve got ballet in their blood. Colleen Neary has been dancing since she was nine; her husband of nearly 30 years, Thordal Christensen, since he was six. This year, the co-directors of Los Angeles Ballet, founded in 2006, celebrate the troupe’s 10th season, a near-miraculous feat, really, in a town not known to be particularly pointe shoe-friendly.
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Do you recall seeing your first ballet? No, says Francesco Gabriele Frola, first soloist with the National Ballet of Canada, but he does recall the first one he was in. “Every time my mother danced “La fille mal gardée,” she was pregnant,” he says. With two brothers and a sister, “after four times, she had enough,” he laughs.
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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