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Lucinda Childs is considered one of the pillars of the Judson Dance Theater collective and often hailed as a “master of minimalism.” In 1979, she created one of her pure dance works to a score by Philip Glass, while Sol LeWitt contributed film decor featuring the original cast of dancers. Layering rhythms, patterns, and images of dancing bodies, “DANCE”—the result of this collaboration between three art world icons—returns to New York City’s the Joyce Theater October 19-24. Candice Thompson spoke with producers and dancers Caitlin Scranton and Matt Pardo (The Blanket) about why this 40-year old work endures, what it...

REVIEWS | By Ilena Peng

A Farewell Serenade

The opening to George Balanchine’s “Serenade”—dancers standing feet parallel, right arm reaching up with the palm facing out as if to block the light—sometimes looks like a goodbye. It certainly did on Saturday, as 29-year-old principal dancer Lauren Lovette performed for the last time with New York City Ballet.

REVIEWS | By Sara Veale

Chaos Within

A beast mourning the beauty he could never have—this is the fate of Creature, the protagonist in Akram Khan’s new production for English National Ballet, just as it was for Quasimodo, King Kong and the canon’s other brutes before him. An apparatus fashioned to withstand the harsh conditions of some indeterminate final frontier, Creature unites mechanical might and human brainpower, a combo that eventually fells the military operation he was designed to bolster. His keeper Marie is the only person who treats him with compassion, but it’s not enough to save either of them from a grisly end. Once the...

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Water on the Water

Leave it to Mark Morris to debut his new piece, entitled “Water,” right alongside the East River, at the very tip of Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The score was by Handel, whose “Water Music” was composed for King George I in 1717 and meant to be played on a barge during a royal joyride along the Thames. Uncharacteristically for Mark Morris, the music for this debut was recorded and not live. But the extra percussion added by the helicopters, coast guard boats, ferries, and jet skis was most definitely in-the-moment, and heavy on improv. Despite these distractions, “Water”...

REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Deep Dive

To look at the ocean can be deceiving. With feet planted in the sand, facing the horizon, we think we know where we are; the tide signals for how long. To look into the ocean is a different story: Looking in offers no sense of start and stop, no sides to stand on, no tide nor time. Looking in confronts us only with an endless sense of motion encompassed by a larger unknown. Bill T. Jones's long-awaited “Deep Blue Sea,” a work massive in both size and depth and presented at the Park Avenue Armory in New York through October...

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

Return to Form

It was a historic event. The New York City Ballet performed at the David H. Koch Theater on Tuesday, September 21st for the first time in 18 months. The audience was entirely vaccinated, entirely masked, and even more revved up than a Fall for Dance crowd. Dance legends were scattered all around, Edward Villella sat prominently in the first row. It was a cathartic evening. The outpouring of love for the dancers and the musicians was immense. Each ballet received three curtain calls and a standing ovation. Confetti fell from the rafters at the end. It was wondrous to behold. Was...

REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Swell, Magnifique!

Gene Kelly, what can ya say? A class act. Timeless and evergreen, he is still notching up homages on films and television; and millions of hits on YouTube to subsequent new generations, twenty-five years after his passing. A legend of Hollywood, from the time of wise guys and sassy dames: he was a singer, dancer, actor—the triple threat, the epitome of an all-rounder.

REVIEWS | By Merilyn Jackson

BalletX takes Flight

Pago Pago, Samoa, January 11, 1938: Pan American Captain Edwin Musick piloted the inaugural airmail flight from Hawaii to New Zealand in December 1937. Beginning the return flight to Honolulu and home to Seattle, his plane caught fire, exploding midair. No remains of the seven onboard were found among the wreckage located later that day. The previous year, Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific along with navigator Fred Noonan who had earlier navigated the China Clipper on its first flight between San Francisco and Honolulu, piloted by Musick.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Consumer Durables

What makes German choreographer/performer Frauke Requardt's work so special is that she never uses spectacle for its own sake—there are always enough ideas to accompany her own vivid, inventive choreography, which scratches both itches of live art and contemporary dance at once.

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Lorna Irvine

Anatomy Of Dance

London-born dancer Matthew Hawkins has always been a singular force of nature, so it makes sense for him to collaborate with the iconoclastic Scottish musicians Red Note Ensemble and lithe, soulful French dancer Soraya Ham. For this film, Iconnotations, the setting is the beautiful Greyfriars Kirk in the “old town” side of Edinburgh, a spacious and ornate parish church. It has been previously performed in St. Magnus Cathedral in Orkney, the island where Maxwell Davies lived laterally. The main piece, Vesalii Icones, features a musical score from late English composer Peter Maxwell Davies from 1969, which is filled with so...

DANCE FILM | REVIEWS | By Cecilia Whalen

Bringing the World

Battery Dance Festival returned to the stage last week in celebration of its 40th anniversary, presenting six days of international dance live and livestreamed from the spectacular Robert F. Wagner park in lower Manhattan. The festival ran Aug. 12th through 20th and featured 56 total performances, including 16 dance films which opened the first three days of the festival online.

REVIEWS | By Faye Arthurs

BAANDing Together

Five NYC-based dance companies (Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem) joined forces to put on 5 outdoor shows in the Damrosch Park area of Lincoln Center this past week. NY Senator Brian Benjamin, who co-introduced the performance, said that Covid-19 “created a lot of trauma in our lives, but it also provided opportunity for collaboration.” We are not yet on the other side of this plague, but even in the midst of the Delta surge there are already signs of rebirth. Much has been made of how...

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.