World-class review of ballet and dance.
Ethan Stiefel thinks the world could use some laughter right now. “My mantra as of late has been that love and laughter can prevail,” says the former American Ballet Theatre star, who took the reins of the Princeton, New Jersey-based American Repertory Ballet last summer. “I felt that coming out of the pandemic it would be great to have a new ballet that really exudes laughter and joy.”
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If there’s a secret to keeping a dance company together for more than 50 years, Garth Fagan knows what it is. Indeed, his Rochester, NY-based Garth Fagan Dance was founded in 1970 (first called Bottom of the Bucket, BUT…Dance Theatre), and, at 81, Fagan, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, has no plans to retire.
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Andrew Tay has a kaleidoscopic vision for what dance can do. As a choreographer, dance curator, performer, and DJ in Montreal for the past 20 years, he has bridged diverse audiences and artistic communities through his multidisciplinary dance events that sit somewhere between a conversation with a stranger, interactive art installation, and late-night party.
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Sara Mearns has never been afraid of hanging up her pointe shoes for the night: In recent years, she’s thrived in the work of Merce Cunningham, Jodi Melnick, Isadora Duncan, Honji Wang, Martha Graham and others. But Mearns’ latest project, a weeklong engagement at New York City’s Joyce Theater, will be a new test of her capacity to work outside of what she calls “the ballerina bubble.”
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When Jacques Heim, who founded DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion™, in Los Angeles in 1992, he married his abiding love for dance with his passion for architecture. In the process, Diavolo became one of L.A.’s pre-eminent dance companies, one that also toured internationally for some two decades. But the global pandemic changed the ways in which all choreographers, dancers, artistic directors and presenters thought about dance, and Heim, born in Paris in 1964, was no exception.
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Writer, director, and choreographer Alan Lucien Øyen grew up with the theatre in his blood. As the son of a dresser, Øyen’s second home was a small theatre, Den Nationale Scene, established by Ibsen himself, in the town of Bergen, Norway. From age 17, Alan studied ballet and went on to dance with Norwegian national contemporary dance company Carte Blanche, and Pretty Ugly, Amanda Miller’s Cologne-based company. In 2006 Øyen founded his own touring company, winter guests, a multidisciplinary company bringing together actors, dancers, writers, set designers and technicians, where his uniquely emotional and dramatic dance-theatre could come to life.
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Federico Bonelli's award-winning career is a long and illustrious one, scanning many decades. The multi-faceted dancer, who was born in Genoa, Italy has performed with Zurich Ballet, the Dutch National Ballet and, since 2003, the Royal Ballet. Bonelli has brought his extraordinary, gravity defying frame to such celebrated works as “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Nutcracker,” “La Sylphide,” “Pierrot Lunaire,” “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,” “The Dante Project,” “Giselle,” “Frankenstein,” “Manon,” and “Woolf Works.” He has garnered many awards, notably first prize at the Rieti International Ballet Competition, and a Prix de Lausanne scholarship.
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Even when Lauren Lovette was in the corps de ballet, standing somewhere on the side of the stage, somehow you just couldn’t miss her. Her eyes and face always seemed to find the light. The quality never left her, as she took on an increasing number and range of roles in ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and, more recently, Alexei Ratmansky. Her performance of the dopey princess in Ratmansky’s “Namouna” was unforgettable, not just because of the go-for-broke quality of the dancing, but because of the imagination and personality one could sense behind every step. She seemed to be...
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I first spoke with Harrison Coll when I was writing a feature about young boys performing the role of Nutcracker Prince for the first time at New York City Ballet. Coll, then a member of the corps, had performed the part as a kid, and has since danced almost every role in that ballet, from Candy Cane to Cavalier, including hiding under Marie’s bed and wheeling it around the stage. One could say he grew up with New York City Ballet, starting at School of American Ballet at 7, before joining the company and rising to the role of soloist in 2018. He has become a particular...
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If ever there was a can-do dancer, it’s Megan Fairchild. At New York City Ballet, where she has been a principal dancer since 2005, she performs all the toughest ballets, the ones that are full of jumps, quick footwork, and pin-prick pointework. At a point in her career when most principals forego certain punishing roles like Dewdrop in “The Nutcracker”—all those jumps! so much speed!—she has no plans to take things easy on herself. In fact, when I caught up with her to talk about her new book The Ballerina Mindset (Penguin Life, December 2021), Fairchild was in the middle...
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If you’re wondering what James Whiteside, principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, did last year during the pandemic, here’s the answer: he wrote a book. How does that make you feel about your own productivity? Well, Whiteside isn’t one to waste time. His new book, which goes on sale in August, is a memoir, with the very clever title Center Center. Center center, in Whiteside’s words, is the name for “a mark on every stage around the world that signifies the center of its depth and width.” This, naturally, is where he aimed to be from a very young age....
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Alessandra Ferri celebrates her 40-year long career with a revival of “L’Heure Exquise,” which premiered at the Ravenna Festival, at Alighieri Theatre in June. Maurice Béjart first staged his own version of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days for Carla Fracci and Micha van Hoecke in 1998, and the performance is studded with references and full of memories, both personal and artistic, which the Italian étoile is enthusiastic to recall. This revival is also the occasion for Alessandra Ferri to bring back to life a lively character, Winnie, the last one in her gallery of beloved heroines: Juliet, Manon, Carmen, Blanche,...
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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