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Continue ReadingWorld-class review of ballet and dance.
These days you’re hard pressed to use the internet without running into artificial intelligence.
Continue ReadingAll reviews of live performance are an exercise in hindsight. No matter how diligent a notetaker I will forever be rearticulating my in-the-moment responses into something that is ideally a cogent and cohesive response to a work.
Continue ReadingThis season opener from English National Ballet gathers four markedly different works to showcase the gamut of the company’s evolving repertoire.
Continue ReadingIt will be impossible to walk past the Panthéon again without recalling what happened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in late September 2025: the extraordinary transformation—verging on possession—of Germaine Acogny into Joséphine Baker.
Continue ReadingThe curtain opens on a stark, grey stage. Cut off from the vitality of the world, an aged man, shabby and nondescript, exists only for his books. Inspired suddenly by a romantic vision, he forces a lazing servant to attend him and leaves behind this colorless prison, carrying his fantastical determination along with the dated accoutrements of a crusading knight.
Continue ReadingFor its twentieth anniversary, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham showcased a trio of established works set to live music at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center.
Continue ReadingSemantic satiation is the psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener.
Continue ReadingI make my way up the stairs at the Substation. Along all four sides of the large room, rows of seats are arranged. Event warning: sudden loud noises. Content warning: death. I find a seat along the long side wall, with my back to the window.
Continue ReadingFrom the back of the stage, a single searchlight points in the direction of the audience, and as it does, it sweeps across the forms of seven dancers in Stephanie Lake’s “Seven Days.”
Continue Reading“Are we cancelled now?” James Jordan queries mischievously, eyes shining. He’s just made some chancy quips regarding recent Strictly Come Dancing controversies, alluding rather than directly addressing the issues. “We were the good boys on all of our series,” he insists.
Continue ReadingAt a time when the arts in America are under attack and many small dance companies are quietly disappearing, San Francisco’s dance scene—for decades second in its volume of activity only to New York—still has a pulse.
Continue ReadingNoé Soulier enters the space without warning, and it takes a few seconds for the chattering audience to register the man now standing before them, dressed simply in a grey t-shirt and black pants, barefoot.
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.
Continue ReadingBeneath 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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