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REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Nuts and Bolts

Making an annual visit to the New York City Ballet’s “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®” is like tuning into a balletic State of the Union address. This is the time of year when City Ballet asserts cultural and commercial dominance (it has the preeminent “Nut” in the marketplace) and company patriotism burns brightest (in advertising, anyway—just look at all those possessives and the trademark in the title). But though this oft-imitated production is copyrighted and tightly regulated, it is not inalterable. Like the Constitution, it is amendable and evolves with the times. Most of the changes have been positive: in recent...

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Sunburst and Snowblind

With frost on the ground, and a nip in the air at minus 7 degrees, “The Snow Queen” is back again for another spin—what new approaches and tweaks can we expect from this evergreen winter ballet? Well . . . there's a carnivalesque approach to this particular iteration, from Scottish Ballet's artistic director Christopher Hampson, with all of the well-known beats ramped up to campy, but exuberant, levels. The emphasis on disruption of the main narrative is a welcome choice, as the two leads—Anna Williams' Gerda and Bruno Micchiardi as Kai—while sweet, are a little bland and saccharine—at least, initially....

REVIEWS | By Karen Hildebrand

Be Like Water

Given the title, “Rivulets,” I’m thinking about water even before the stage lights go up. So I’m primed to view the opening tableau as a strand of bedraggled seaweed washed ashore: eight dancers, sprawled in a languid glowing heap of green, blue, and black. After a short period of stillness, the painterly tableau dissolves into distinct individuals who interact. They variously bow, lunge forward, recoil. Their heads jerk forward and yank back repeatedly. Tight turns open out, then reverse, as if tossed this way and that in the current.

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Dreamy Episodes

Evoking its title, Tere O’Connor’s “Rivulets” trickled through a series of dreamy episodes where movement, music, and gathering collided with a quieter sense of interiority. The world premiere at Baryshnikov Arts Center on Wednesday evening was an unfussy affair, staged in a studio with a light grid and a few rows of seating on either side of the floor. Without a discernible plot or recognizable story, the dancers communicated with one another in streams of expressive and at times, exhausting, choreography (to which they received collaborative credit).

REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

Daring Dances

Although audience members shivered in the first cold night as they entered one of Philadelphia’s finest downtown performance palaces, the Wilma Theater, Ballet X offered them a program of warm memories, thoughtful reflections and a touch of nostalgia on November 30.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Elvis Sighting at the Joyce

Dwight Rhoden might be the only person in the world who likes a high leg as much as I do, so I have a fondness for his work. Wacked-out extensions are the defining feature of the troupe he co-directs with Desmond Richardson, the Complexions Contemporary Ballet. But aside from this undeviating, extreme pliancy, the Complexions roster is one of the most diverse groups working today in terms of race and gender, and especially size and shape. There’s Jillian Davis, who towers even on flat, at 6’2”, and whose powerful, shapely legs could’ve used a bigger stage. And then there’s Vincenzo Di...

REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Old Love, New Love

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is once again ensconced New York City Center for its annual December season. The programs offer the usual mix of dances by Ailey, pieces by twentieth-century masters—which this year include Twyla Tharp’s “Roy’s Joys”—and new works commissioned from contemporary choreographers. And, of course, “Revelations.” At a recent performance, the patron behind me sighed unhappily upon hearing that Ailey’s 1960 masterpiece was not on the program.

REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Mad World

What is it about Emanuel Gat’s “Lovetrain2020” that is so captivating? The piece, which came to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week, is set to songs by the emo-electronica band Tears for Fears, and that is certainly part of its charm, at least for members of my generation (Generation X), which, let’s face it, constitutes a significant portion of BAM’s audience. But it’s hardly one of those jukebox medleys that basks in the beats of a previous era. Nostalgia is part, but not all, of the story.

REVIEWS | By Rachel Howard

Seasons' Canon

I woke this morning realizing I had dreamt extensively about Crystal Pite’s “The Seasons’ Canon,” and I’d wager that anyone who saw the work on the second repertory program of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 50th anniversary season in Seattle is still dreaming about it, too. Even viewed on screen as a digital stream, which I settled for as a distant admirer of the company (thank you, PNB, for extending your pandemic video options!), this 54-dancer spectacle leaves lingering questions. Whether those questions lead to the kind of contemplation we seek from art or send us spinning in surface ruminations is another...

REVIEWS | By Marina Harss

Dantesque

Everyone knows that Sarasota Ballet is Frederick Ashton’s unlikely home-away-from-home, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Or not so unlikely, given that it is directed by Iain Webb and his wife Margaret Barbieri, both of whom danced for the Royal Ballet in London. Barbieri, in particular, worked directly with Ashton, as well as with Kenneth MacMillan, whose ballets are also performed here. The company’s second repertory program of the 2022-2023 comprised works by both, including two early ballets seldom seen anywhere. Each is a curiosity.

REVIEWS | By Candice Thompson

Flora, Fauna, and Flesh

On the evening of Tuesday November 8th, 2022, I was not up for a night out. An existential dread, induced by the U.S. midterm elections, had finally caught up with me as I was walking up to Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater. A friend texted me a list of soothing cures which included plunging your face into a bowl of ice water for 15-30 seconds. A little over an hour later, I added another item to that mood-lifting list: Lia Rodrigues’s “Encantado.”

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Extending the Limits

Dimitris Papaioannou's “Transverse Orientation” starts with a joke: Entering from a single door in a blank white wall, several tall, pin-headed figures rush onstage with ladders. Dressed in all black, they skitter towards a lone, flickering fluorescent light. How many of the faceless shadow people does it take to change a lightbulb? They put their shrunken heads together to find out.

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.