World-class review of ballet and dance.
There was nothing new about the trio of works on show at New York City Ballet on May 10—“Apollo,” “Orpheus,” and “Agon,” except the pairing with a brief orchestral suite by Stravinsky at the start of the evening. Stravinsky’s “Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra” is a charmer, in the composer’s neoclassical style of the 1920’s, light, sparkling. Its second movement, a jaunty waltz for the flute, is like a playful out-take from “Petrushka.”
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Spring Forward Dance Festival is a project born ten years ago by Aerowaves, a European network which promotes emerging contemporary dance artists in Europe and abroad. Aerowaves began in 1996 with a small group of European dance colleagues at the Place in London, where John Ashford was director, presenting ten promising short pieces at the Place Theatre. It expanded into a network of 44 partners and presenters from 35 European countries showing 20 emerging choreographers each year.
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L.A. Dance Project's two-week run at the Joyce Theater opened May 3 with a program of mainly post-modern works by three female choreographers. Founded in 2012 under the artistic direction of former Paris Opera Director of Dance and New York City Ballet star Benjamin Millepied, the Los Angeles-based dance company celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Since its inception, the company has presented over 40 works, both new and restaged, from a diverse array of choreographers including Justin Peck, Merce Cunningham, Kyle Abraham, Ohad Naharin, and Martha Graham.
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It wouldn’t hurt to have a tutorial at the ready when attending a show by Time Lapse Dance. The dynamic movement and flowing fabric that are signature elements of work by founder and choreographer Jody Sperling deliver a visually gorgeous evening of performance, but there is always a deeper level to discover for those curious about how and why the works exist. “We start with the science,” said composer Matthew Burtner about his collaborations with Sperling, during the post show Q&A on May 5 when the company showed four works in Manhattan, its first stage appearance in two years following...
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It has been a few years since New York City Ballet danced Balanchine’s “Symphony in Three Movements,” so its return as part of the company’s Stravinsky Festival is particularly welcome. Created the same year (1972) as his “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” it represents the pinnacle of Balanchine’s response to Stravinsky’s music. The ballet’s confidence, from start to finish, is monumental.
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The 1972 Stravinsky Festival at New York City Ballet is one of those mythical moments people speak of with glowing tones of wonderment: 30 ballets! 20 premieres! New works by Balanchine, Robbins, John Taras, Todd Bolender, and more! Not to mention the fact that it was the occasion of the creation of two the greatest Stravinsky ballets ever made: “Symphony in Three Movements” and “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.”
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The dancers of Sasha Waltz & Guests and the musicians of Bang on a Can All-Stars walked onstage in silence, their forms making dark silhouettes against a saturated pink backdrop. For a few minutes they milled about, reconfiguring into different pairs, groups, and lines before the musicians eventually settled themselves at their instruments and the dancers found their marks. A bright chime sound, coming from percussionist David Cossin, set the the driving beat that propels Terry Riley’s iconic minimalist score “In C” forward. As more lights came up and the dancers warmed up with rhythmic shoulder rolls and head turns,...
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Dozens of ballet luminaries including Hamburg Ballet director John Neumeier, Joffrey Ballet director Ashley Wheater, and recently retired New York City Ballet principal Gonzalo Garcia gathered here last week on a confetti-blasted opera house stage to mark the end of an era. Helgi Tomasson, artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet since 1985, is about to finish his final season. The larger ballet world’s moment of overwhelming change, with the revamp in leadership at New York City Ballet, and Kevin McKenzie’s impending retirement at American Ballet Theatre, feels magnified here. Tomasson has served seven years longer than McKenzie has led...
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George Balanchine’s “Divertimento No. 15” is a ballet one longs to see, but seldom comes out of the theater fully satisfied by. “Arlene Croce quipped that ‘Divertimento No. 15’ is one of those ballets that are famous for not being done well,” Nancy Goldner writes in her essential volume More Balanchine Variations. “My experience with it would prompt me to amend that to ‘not done well enough.’” I tend to agree with the latter assessment. It is an extraordinary ballet, sophisticated, pure, both light and transparent in its construction. But it seldom achieves the kind of transcendence and flow suggested...
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It’s almost 18 months since David Hallberg, the South Dakota native and long-time New Yorker, took over as artistic director at the Australian Ballet, and it finally feels as though the Covid shackles are off. To date, there hasn’t been a true opportunity to see what he might bring to Australia. But here it is: “Kunstkamer,” a wildly ambitious contemporary work, it feels like a make or break work for the new artistic director. And, with it David Hallberg's dramatic return to the stage.
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The first edition of the “Gala Fracci,” an initiative of ballet director Manuel Legris, took place at La Scala as a commemorative evening. In her beloved theatre our prima ballerina assoluta was raised but was refused as a ballet director. The calling for a series of masterclasses on “Giselle” just before her death and this very sincere Gala has healed past wounds. In a packed house, Beppe Menegatti, Fracci’s husband, was missing, due to illness or maybe to the fear to be overwhelmed by emotions. A pity, as he was the Pygmalion of the ballerina’s extraordinary career, well retraced by...
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In March 2020, just as the Flamenco Festival was rolling into town, the world shut down. The dancers packed up their flamenco shoes and went home. The festival’s return, two years later, then, is also a welcome return to one of the city’s most celebratory yearly rituals. (This is the festival’s twentieth anniversary.) Even if this year’s edition is smaller than earlier ones, with just two dance shows at City Center versus four or five or more, the overwhelming sense is one of relief. The flamencos are back.
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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