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INTERVIEWS | By Karen Greenspan

Jacob’s Pillow Honors Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

I drive the winding ascent to the bucolic grounds of Jacob’s Pillow on opening day of the longest-running dance festival in the United States. The historic farmstead in the foothills of the Massachusetts Berkshire Mountains was purchased in 1930 by modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn. Today it is abuzz with activity gearing up for its 90th anniversary season and gala. The Pillow’s artistic and executive director Pamela Tatge gives me a rundown of what has been accomplished in the 90 years since Ted Shawn and his all-male company began holding “Tea Lecture Demonstrations” in 1933─the beginning of what was to evolve into the...

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

Peter Boal, Devoted to Dance

Born in 1965 and raised in the town of Bedford in Westchester, New York, Peter Boal began studying ballet at the School of American Ballet at age nine. His life has been devoted to the art ever since. Boal joined New York City Ballet’s corps in 1983 and became a principal dancer six years later. In 2003, while still at City Ballet, he founded the eponymous Peter Boal and Company, a risk-taking chamber ensemble that commissioned original works, often from little-known postmodern choreographers. (He had also been a full-time faculty member at his alma mater since 1997.)

INTERVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Global Moves with Margaret Jenkins

On June 16th, San Francisco’s Margaret Jenkins Dance Company will premiere perhaps its most ambitious work yet, “Global Moves.” An indoor/outdoor site-specific work moving between more than a dozen “stations” at the Presidio Theater, with its view across the Presidio National Park, “Global Moves” extends its horizons far beyond the Pacific Ocean. For nearly two years, Jenkins has been working with India’s Tanusree Shankar Dance Company, China’s Cross Move Lab, and dancers emeritus from Israel’s Kolben Dance Company. She has collaborated with these dancers separately since 2006, but this is the first work to draw the creators from all four...

INTERVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Radical Dance with Dana Mills

Dana Mills is an activist and political theorist who has written extensively on dance, history, and politics. Her first book from 2016, Dance and Politics: Moving Beyond Boundaries, examines a range of historical dances within their political contexts. Her new book, Dance and Activism: A Century of Radical Dance, which was published in January of this year by Bloomsbury Press, further explores the role of dance in social justice.

INTERVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Paul Michael Henry talks Shrimp Dance

To watch Paul Michael Henry dance is to experience something that exists in a liminal space. He creates primordial work which is nonetheless rooted in the issues of our time. So it is with “Shrimp Dance,” a unique, mesmerising piece which interrogates the depletion of the shrimp population and the wider implications for our ecosystem, using Butoh performance, live music and multimedia.

INTERVIEWS | By Veronica Posth

Core Values

Born in Buenos Aires, Gaston Core is a choreographer, theatre-maker, curator and director. Trained as a performer in his native Argentina, Core moved to Barcelona in 2001 where he continued his work as a director and theatre-maker. In 2012, Core became the director of the experimental theatre space, the Sala Hiroshima Project. There he focused on the production and exhibition of the most innovative trends in the international contemporary performing arts scene. His choreographic work, “The Very Last Northern White Rhino,” the first in a trilogy, recently toured in Europe. Veronica Posth spoke with Gaston Core about collaboration, creating for stage, and...

BOOKSHELF | INTERVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

Ode to “Serenade”

To many dancers, Balanchine is a figure so imbued with history, he’s almost not real. He lives on through his 465 works, which we study in dance history classes, watch onstage, and—if we’re lucky—learn ourselves. He’s almost been stripped of humanity, raised up to such a high status that it’s easy to forget that he—in his own words—“pulled the toilet chain for the same reason you do.” Toni Bentley, and her latest book, Serenade, are here to remind us.

INTERVIEWS | By Victoria Looseleaf

True Calling

Having choreographed more than 100 works for companies worldwide, including American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the National Ballet of Japan, Jessica Lang, who grew up in Bucks County, PA, began studying ballet as a child. At the tender age of 13, realizing that dance was her true calling, she never looked back, becoming a creative force in the process.

INTERVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Far Away and Personal with Janie Taylor

I had the pleasure of interviewing Janie Taylor, my close friend of 25 years, in advance of the L.A. Dance Project’s upcoming run at the Joyce Theater. From May 3-15, LADP is presenting two programs of works by female choreographers—one of whom is Janie. Though she started choreographing just three years ago, Janie has two ballets in the lineup which will have their NYC premieres: “Adagio in B Minor,” a duet to Mozart, and “Night Bloom,” an ensemble piece to Stravinsky that will close every night. She will also perform in Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber’s Covid-inspired work, “Solo...

INTERVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Dancing Together

Sam Pratt and Amadi Washington have been dancing together since they were ten years old. The dancer/choreographer duo known as Baye & Asa, who are 2021/22 Artists in Residence at the historic 92Y and have recently completed a commission with the Los Angeles-based Bodytraffic, met in elementary school as students at the prestigious Dalton School in New York City. Their first dance class together was in fifth grade.

FEATURES | INTERVIEWS | By Lauren Wingenroth

Past Meets Present

Claudia Schreier’s “Passage” for Dance Theatre of Harlem was commissioned to mark the 400-year-anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619. But to think of “Passage” as a commemoration, or as a historical piece, doesn’t do justice to its purpose or its power.

INTERVIEWS | By Sophie Bress

The Voice Within

When Seibi Lee discovered Kathak, at first, she says she almost didn’t know what happened. Up until that point, her life—at least in terms of her career—was that of a typical 20-something: exploring, learning, and trying out multiple options in hopes of finding the best fit. Then along came Kathak, merging her multiple life paths and bringing a clarity and confluence that she hadn’t felt before.

Featured Reads

REVIEWS | Lorna Irvine

Teenage Angst and Institutions

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,...

INTERVIEWS | Marina Harss

The Me of Today

The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky reflects on the war in Ukraine, the connection between geopolitics and ballet, and joining the house of Balanchine.

REVIEWS | Rachel Howard

Starry Nights

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.

REVIEWS | Faye Arthurs

America, F**K Yeah

After 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.

REVIEWS | Emily May

Acosta Danza’s Choreographic Soup

An “Ajiaco” is a type of soup common to Colombia, Cuba, and Peru that combines a variety of different vegetables, spices, and meats.