Intimacy and Infinity
The Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory is a yawning, cavernous space. In its depths, even the fiercest applause can be rendered a mere din, sounding hollow and unappreciative.
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World-class review of ballet and dance.
The Wade Thompson Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory is a yawning, cavernous space. In its depths, even the fiercest applause can be rendered a mere din, sounding hollow and unappreciative.
Continue ReadingNoé Soulier’s “The Waves” ran for two nights at the Joyce Theater in early March as part of the Dance Reflections Festival by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Continue ReadingIn transparent specimen bags, arranged in a circle, float Lemon Myrtle, Warrigal Greens, and Red Bottle Brush.
Continue ReadingWhere language falls silent, dance speaks. That is the case for balletic interpretations of Shakespeare’s great works—particularly Lar Lubovitch’s three-act “Othello,” choreographed for American Ballet Theatre in 1997.
Continue ReadingLike most new adaptations of existing story ballet classics, the world premiere of artistic director James Sofranko’s “Swan Lake” for Grand Rapids Ballet retained the bones of the original it was based on.
Continue ReadingShakespearean purists, leave your expectations at the door. With his rendition of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet,” first staged in 2009 to mark the 10th anniversary of K-Ballet Tokyo, Tetsuya Kumakawa plays freely with details from Shakespeare’s tragedy to create a psychological, theatrical study of doomed love.
Continue ReadingFrom charming stagings for children to edgy dance theater, Un Yamada Company, a creative collective based in Tokyo, has built a reputation for consistently innovative productions.
Continue ReadingFor much of “Romeo & Juliet Suite,” Benjamin Millepied’s stripped-down take on the Sergei Prokofiev ballet—billed as a gender-bent, “contemporary, site-specific” version of Shakespeare’s classic—I find myself thinking of a different play by the bard. Specifically, the direction in The Winter’s Tale: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Most of the drama here, after all, happens offstage.
Continue ReadingMontreal based choreographer and artistic director, Virginie Brunelle’s eponymously named company performed its 2022 “Fables” at Penn Live Arts Zellerbach Theatre series on the brink of Women’s History month.
Continue ReadingWhat distinguishes a dancer from a choreographer? This is, in the end, an empirical question, one that can only be answered in the theatre.
Continue ReadingThere is something charmingly didactic and intellectually generous about American dance companies touring Europe. At the start of a performance, it is not unusual for a director to step forward and offer a brief introduction, explaining the reasons for the tour and sketching the wider context of the programme. Paris audiences experienced this with the Martha Graham Dance Company last autumn, and now again with Dance Theatre of Harlem. Robert Garland, at the helm of the ensemble, took a moment to anchor the performance in lineage, recalling the company’s origins and its illustrious founder, Arthur Mitchell. As Garland recounted, Mitchell...
Continue ReadingHubbard Street Dance Chicago’s Winter Series takes its audience on a journey back through time.
Continue ReadingThe title of this dance interpretation of The Tempest highlights a notable departure from canon. In “We Caliban,” Shobana Jeyasingh imagines Shakespeare’s titular native in the collective sense—a tribe, a spirit and a place at once.
Continue ReadingLong before the dancers take the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem’s season at New York City Center feels like one of the most energizing cultural events of the spring.
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It is rare for George Balanchine’s grand, bedazzled “Symphony in C” to open a program. Its champagne-popping finale for 52 dancers tends to be a nightcap.
Continue ReadingWhen we think of countries that have shaped the world of dance our mind will often drift to the United States, Russia, or Germany. But what of Luxembourg?
Continue ReadingIn times of rapid change, predicting the road ahead can seem to be a fool’s errand. But on a spring afternoon at Lincoln Center, I feel confident in this assertion: the future of dance is very bright.
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